Month: May 2026

I just finished Stained Glass by Flora Cassen, a book that explores antisemitism’s effect on Jewish identity. She puts into words what’s been on my mind lately, which is that this is a challenging time for many to navigate Jewish expression. At times, life as a Jew in the DMV feels pretty great. We have amazing institutions, myriad forms of programming across a variety of interests, and an actively engaged community. And yet, there’s another dynamic afoot. Something that causes us to question whether we should put on a Star of David, wear a shirt with Hebrew writing, or plan a Jewish event in public.

By way of a snapshot, in the same historical moment in which public schools in our area are designating days off for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, vandals are spray-painting swastikas on desks. What are we to make of such a juxtaposition?

I don’t want to minimize the way in which our community has become ingrained in the fabric and rhythms of the region and the country more broadly. As others have said, almost any generation in Jewish life would trade their circumstances for ours. What Cassen points out, however, is that we have a lingering sense of insecurity based on centuries of history and, with a rise in antisemitism, a new and justifiable sense of unease.

Our job as a Federation is to recognize and shape our reality to the best of our ability and to build, continuously, toward a better future. That means supporting our communal ecosystem to be able to double down on the good and push back against the bad. We are situated at the epicenter of Jewish life in Greater Washington and can partner with, convene, and mobilize individuals and agencies to help more people live proud Jewish lives, as publicly or privately as they choose, independent of any external factors.

This work includes tackling antisemitism for the sake of current and future generations, in addition to helping more people deepen their ties to the ongoing story of the Jewish people. We don’t have to classify this moment as positive or negative, golden or threatened. What matters is that we move forward as a community in pursuit of a future that we define for ourselves.

We are here to strengthen a Jewish ecosystem capable of spurring Jewish pride and connection while doing what we can to influence the landscape of Jewish life in America, no matter which way the winds might blow.

In Pirkei Avot, we’re taught: “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” In the Torah, we are commanded not to stand idly by when our neighbors are in need.

These Jewish values—responsibility, solidarity, and action—were loudly heard last week when hundreds of Jewish leaders and advocates gathered on Capitol Hill to advocate for the safety and security of our Jewish communities nationwide.

More than 400 leaders from 82 Jewish communities came to Washington, DC as part of The Jewish Federations of North America’s Security Fly-In. Representing Jewish Federations, synagogues, JCCs, schools, camps, Hillels, community relations councils, and security organizations, participants arrived carrying not only policy priorities, but deeply personal stories.

The Greater Washington delegation, organized by The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington alongside partners including Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, met with members of Congress and congressional staff from across our region, including Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

Every Person Had a Story

Before those meetings began, something else happened in the room: people shared their fears, their exhaustion, and their determination.

Every person present had a story of how their community has had to grapple with rising antisemitism and security concerns.

A synagogue leader explaining the impossible budgeting decisions communities now face as security costs continue to rise. A parent describing that their five-year-old child knows not to enter their synagogue building if there’s no security on duty. A camp professional talking about the responsibility of creating joyful Jewish experiences while also preparing for emergency scenarios no one ever imagined would become routine.

Eddie Rubin, a parent at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan where there was an antisemitic attack in March, shared: “I need people to understand what ‘inches away’ meant.” If the car packed with explosives made it just a few more inches, “That’s my kids classroom, where he’s sitting. Had [the attacker] been able to get out of that car, he would have been inside my kids’ classroom in seconds. And my kids would not be here today.”

The emotion in the room was palpable. Many spoke about how difficult it has become to accept heightened security as “the new normal.” Communities are doing everything possible to keep people safe, but funding has not kept pace with the growing threats facing Jewish institutions and other faith communities across the country.

Turning Personal Stories Into Advocacy

And yet, amid the fear and frustration, there was also tremendous strength.

There was power in seeing hundreds of Jewish communal leaders from every corner of the country come together with one shared message: Jewish life must be protected, and our communities deserve to gather openly and safely.

Those personal stories became the heart of conversations on Capitol Hill. Our delegation urged lawmakers to strengthen federal support for nonprofit and faith-based security programs and to advance legislation like the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act, which seeks to expand resources that help protect vulnerable communities.

This advocacy effort comes at a time when antisemitism and threats against Jewish institutions have reached alarming levels. Across the country, Jewish communities are being forced to make impossible choices between funding critical programs and funding the security measures needed to protect them.

In Greater Washington, our community is working proactively to meet this growing need through initiatives like JShield, Federation’s community security initiative. By leveraging trusted partnerships, strong relationships with law enforcement, and a community-wide approach to safety, JShield is helping build a culture of security across our region—one where every institution and community member understands their role in keeping our community safe.

JShield provides one-on-one consultations, emergency preparation plans, security trainings, help securing nonprofit security grants, and more to hundreds of local Jewish institutions entirely free of charge, ensuring that cost is never a barrier to safety.

Showing Up for Our Community

As we marked Jewish Heritage Month, the Security Fly-In served as a powerful reminder that Jewish identity is not only something we celebrate, it’s something we have to protect. Advocacy is one of the ways we do that. By showing up. By telling our stories. By refusing to stand idly by.

The work ahead is not finished. But last week, hundreds of voices came together to ensure that Congress heard clearly what our communities need: safety, partnership, and the ability to live Jewish life openly and without fear.

How do we build a healthier Jewish community rooted in respect, trust, and constructive dialogue, when it feels like we can barely agree on anything?

That’s the one million dollar question, and it’s exactly what brought 22 local leaders from throughout Greater Washington together over the last four months. From February through May, this group took part in the Courageous Leadership Fellowship, a partnership between Federation and the Shalom Hartman Institute, to sharpen their ability to lead with empathy, courage, and respect in a world that feels increasingly polarized.

Grounded in shared values of mutual understanding and encouraging belonging, participants explored what courageous leadership looks like in practice and left better equipped to lead meaningful change and foster constructive conversations across our community.

Instead of just talking about these ideas in theory, the sessions got down to the intricate reality of community work. Led by Hartman scholars Sara Labaton, Elana Stein Hain, and Masua Sagiv, the group explored various themes, including finding inner clarity, leadership in polarities, the challenges and importance of maintaining a big tent community, and finally the future through two lenses: repair and transformation. Through a “where do you stand” activity, they moved past case studies and tackled real communal dilemmas, followed by small group discussions.

By the time the fellowship wrapped up, these leaders walked away feeling far more confident in their ability to facilitate difficult dialogues and communal decision-making, and just as importantly, deeply connected to the leaders and institutions who are actively shaping the future of Jewish life across Greater Washington.

This work gets to the heart of one of Federation’s core commitments: creating a community where everyone feels like they belong, that they’re listened to, and that they can contribute to a vibrant Jewish future, not in spite of our differences, but with them.

A strong community doesn’t require us to always see eye-to-eye. It requires us to know how to talk to each other when we don’t. By investing in leaders and relationships across our communal landscape, Federation is helping cultivate the trust, respect, and connection our community needs to stick together and thrive.

Learn more about Federation’s work to build a strong, inclusive community here.

The air inside Bialik 26 was thick with excitement. It was May 2018, seven years before the world as we knew it would fracture on October 7, and the popular Be’er Sheva neighborhood spot was packed to the brim. That night, the student cafe was the beating heart of the city’s queer community. Everyone was crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes glued to the glowing screens broadcasting the world’s largest music competition, the Eurovision Song Contest.

Netta Barzilai was onstage singing “Toy,” an unapologetic, feminist anthem wrapped in quirky pop brilliance and thousands of shining lucky cats (see them in all their magnificence here). When the final votes came in and Israel was declared the winner, the whole place burst into tears and cheers.

We couldn’t believe it had actually happened. Israel had won the contest exactly 20 years after its last win in 1998!

It was one of the most powerful, unforgettable moments of my life. That night, the entire country felt unified in an overwhelming wave of pure, unadulterated joy.

The Reality of Being a Shlicha Today

Fast forward to nearly a year ago, when I packed up my life in Israel and moved to the U.S. to begin as a shlicha (Israeli emissary) at The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. At a time when so many are navigating their relationship with Israel, Federation’s shlichim program brings Israelis into local classrooms, synagogues, and living rooms, creating a space for real conversation and connection.

Shortly after I arrived, I quickly realized that being an Israeli emissary today looks radically different than it did in the past. In our post-October 7 reality, discussions about Israel and Jewish life are heavier, more emotional, and infinitely more complex. At the same time, they are deeply rooted in something essential: Jewish peoplehood, shared identity, and joy.

From the beginning, I felt a strong responsibility to show up for difficult conversations about Israel wherever they happened. But, over time, I’ve come to understand that my role is also to offer something broader, to reflect the full story of Israel and the Jewish people. Not only complexity and challenge, but also resilience, pride, and (even) fun.

That understanding came together this month in a very natural way with one of the most unifying cultural moments in Jewish and Israeli life-Eurovision season!

For anyone here in America, you might not have even heard of Eurovision, or maybe you’re just noticing it pop up on your feeds now that it’s finally having a breakout moment on TikTok. But in Israel? It’s like the Super Bowl, but for musicians. It’s a massive song contest combining fierce cultural pride, voting drama, and representation on the global stage.

With Israel proudly taking home second-place just last week, it was the perfect moment for me to help our Greater Washington community look at Israel through a different soundtrack.

A Nation’s Story, Written in Song

Ever since October 7, it is incredibly easy for our relationship with Israel to be entirely defined by trauma, crisis, and anxiety. But relationships can’t survive on the negative. If we only look at Israel through the lens of heartbreak, we lose sight of the very thing we are trying to protect.

Through Federation’s Hands On Israel workshops, I get to move past headlines and bring the real, lived reality of my home directly into local spaces. Over the past few weeks, I traveled across multiple communities in Greater Washington, using the lens of Eurovision to open a portal into Israeli society.

I shared how Israel celebrated its first historic win in 1978 with Izhar Cohen’s “A Ba Ni Bi” just five years after we entered the contest in 1973. Then, just a year later in 1979, “Hallelujah” captured the magic of hosting the contest in Jerusalem for the first time, launching us to a back-to-back victory. By 1983, the tone shifted to one of profound historical weight, when Ofra Haza sang “Chai” (alive) defiantly in Munich, Germany. The song became a breathtaking symbol of Jewish resilience in the shadow of a horrifying past.

As the decades marched on, the music mirrored a rapidly modernizing society. In 1998, Dana International’s historic win with “Diva” reflected a 1990s Israel that was embracing groundbreaking LGBTQ+ inclusion, female empowerment, and cultural openness.

Twenty years later, that legacy of radical representation culminated in Netta’s “Toy,” bringing a bold, global feminist voice back to the stage that I felt reverberate firsthand that night at Bialik 26.

The most recent chapters of our Eurovision journey allowed us to share the raw, immediate grief of our current era on the global stage. Eden Golan’s “Hurricane” in 2024 is deeply tied to the post-October 7 reality, capturing a nation’s immediate trauma and its stubborn insistence on standing tall despite the storm. The music looks forward with “A New Day Will Rise” in 2025, speaking directly to our collective yearning for renewal and rebuilding.

And just a week ago, we were able to experience the thrill in real time, as we listened to Noam Bettan capture hearts across the world (and a second-place win) with his powerful song, “Michelle.”

Shared Identity Over Debate

One of the most moving parts of this journey was watching the transformation inside the rooms here in Greater Washington. Across different synagogues, community centers, and living rooms, local American Jews and Israeli expats sat together in the same space. This kind of programming creates an exciting entry point into Jewish peoplehood. It moves the conversation into the heart, allowing people to connect emotionally. I am so grateful to be part of this work and to Federation for making this, and so many other meaningful Israel programs, available right here in our region.

Looking back at that euphoric night in Be’er Sheva in 2018, I am reminded that joy is a form of resilience. And as I continue my work here, I carry that music with me, always hoping, of course, to one day bring the trophy home again.

Interested in bringing similar experiential Israel education to your local community? Check out Federation’s Hands On Israel workshops to get started.

Learn more about Federation’s work strengthening Jewish peoplehood and sharing Israeli culture here.

A couple weeks ago, my wife and I set off on a drive up to Boston to see our daughter graduate from college and then a few days later over to Pittsburgh to see our son graduate with a Master’s degree. It won’t surprise you to hear that witnessing these two milestones got me thinking about life’s transitions and the swirl of excitement, loss, and uncertainty that frequently come with them.

As Bruce Feiler points out in his book, Life Is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age, we spend more of our lives in flux than we realize. Life events can be good or bad. They can be determined by a decision that we make on our own or something that happens to us. Major life events also typically last about five years, and much of our adult lives are spent in unsettled states. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing—change can indicate growth and evolution—but it is the reality of most of our lives.

This sense of unsettledness is pervasive for many of us today. The world is changing faster than any of us could have imagined. Deep assumptions about our security, identity, friends, work, etc. are being challenged. And that is beyond changes that may be happening in our personal lives. All of this can get to be overwhelming. But that sense of instability is lessened and, in some ways, even reversed when we find community.

Feiler argues that a well-constructed life is one guided by the ABC’s—agency, belonging, and cause. To thrive, we need to feel like we can impact the world around us; that we have people to lean on; and have a way to serve something greater than ourselves. These three factors keep us grounded through life’s twists and turns, and they are all on offer in our community.

That’s what I hope people who engage with Federation and our partners come to feel, that Jewish Greater Washington is a place where they can commune with the ABC’s, across every life stage and within the ongoing story of Jewish peoplehood.

Our work as a Federation, therefore, is to ensure our community remains host to a grand Jewish playground, where people can come learn about themselves and find people with whom to climb through good times and bad no matter what’s going on in their lives.

That’s what I see as the beauty of community building. In choosing to join forces on our quest for meaning, we vastly improve each other’s odds of success. By engaging in Jewish discovery and expression together, we multiply each other’s agency, deepen each other’s sense of belonging, and further each other’s ability to pursue what matters to us most.

P.S. happy to recommend Bruce Feiler’s thoughtful guest essay in today’s New York Times.

There’s a consensus brewing. Emerging across opinion pages, podcasts, and dinner tables is the idea that we’ve strayed too far from one another. The question driving many of our national and communal conversations is how do we renew our obligations to each other?

Just this week, I’ve listened to discussions about how generosity was meant to be one of liberalism’s founding principles. How our educational pursuits were meant to prepare us to be good citizens and servant leaders. How we were meant to talk to strangers. How we were never meant to bowl alone.

All these ideas are swirling within our Jewish community as well. For all our differences, the thing people want most is to connect—to feel like they belong and that the Jewish people would not be complete without them and what they have to offer. And, indeed, we are not. I believe wholeheartedly the Jewish community is incomplete without everyone at the table.

Which makes now a perfect moment to double down on the sacred, timeless work of community building. Next week is Giving Week and I am asking everyone who cares about the Jewish community and values the Jewish future to contribute. Your gift—of any amount—matters. Your participation matters. You matter.

Giving is a vote of confidence in our shared efforts to build a strong and joyful Jewish community, one that supports and brings together the full breath of Jewish life. It’s also what supports our work as a Federation to bolster a network of Jewish agencies and programs that care for people in need, engage people in every life stage in meaningful Jewish experiences, perpetuate and strengthen Jewish identity and peoplehood, and look after the safety of the Jewish people.

What’s more, the simple act of giving collectively, alongside so many others who care about Jewish life, makes its own powerful statement that we are here and that we believe in the promise of community and acting together to the benefit of others.

I lament the challenges and the tumult of our times. But I find incredible comfort and hope in the fact that our path to a brighter future involves so many beautiful things: connection, participation, curiosity, debate, and a love for Jewish wisdom and tradition.

It’s notable that in this era of hyper-individualism, people are hungry for mutual obligation. But that’s the punchline of responsibility and interdependence: it’s only in being tied to each other that we find the transcendence we seek. Obligations are on offer, I invite you to come claim them.

As Federation begins to look ahead to the priorities that will guide our work in the coming months and years, we are taking stock of what we’re hearing from our community. In fact, our Community Leadership Council recently concluded a monthslong listening tour to surface views and insights from across the community.

What they found was a widespread desire for Jewish life to be more accessible, affordable, and easily navigable. Just as we saw in our 2025 Community Impact Survey, people across almost all demographic, geographic, and socio-economic backgrounds want to be more engaged in Jewish life and community, but many aren’t sure where to turn or feel discouraged by barriers to entry. This is a sentiment we take seriously at Federation and one that will inform our continued efforts to ensure anyone who is interested in Jewish life can easily find what they’re looking for.

One project that is already underway is our work to make Jewish day school more affordable by taking advantage of a new Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program. We expect this program to complement and amplify Jewish day school’s current tuition assistance and fundraising efforts and provide opportunities for more students to pursue a Jewish education, which we know also has positive ripple effects on families looking to dive deeper into Jewish life.

Starting in January 2027, eligible taxpayers may receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 per year by contributing to an approved Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). Unlike a taxable donation, a tax credit provides a 1:1 reduction in taxes owed. These SGOs, which will operate as independent 501(c)(3)s, will then distribute need-based scholarships to participating schools and eligible families, who can then use those funds toward tuition or other education-related expenses.

Federation is working in close partnership with local day schools to set up SGOs in our region to ensure our community can benefit from this new program. We are also working with other Jewish organizations, public school leaders, and community non-profits to help them understand the changes and opportunities that come with the legislation.

Our work in this arena is only one part of a broader agenda to make sure that all members of the Jewish community seeking to engage in Jewish life are able to do so. As we consider the future, we can’t let a lack of information or inability to pay keep anyone from participating.

There is a lot of coordination going on behind the scenes, bringing together schools, partners, and community leaders to tackle crucial communal issues. Ultimately, this is where Federation thrives, aligning efforts, building and strengthening infrastructure, and helping turn opportunity into access. We don’t consider any of our work finished—far from it—but we are confident that as we move forward with a clearer sense of what’s getting in the way, and what it will take to address it, we can do so with an ear to the ground and eye toward progress.

A special thank you to the inaugural members of the Community Leadership Council. More to come on their findings from the listening tour!