Every career has a beginning. Mine might have started before I was born.

When I interviewed at The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, part of the process included a writing exercise. The assignment was straightforward: write a sample fundraising appeal. So I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, and got to work.

The desk where I wrote that appeal once belonged to my maternal grandfather, my Opa.

Long before I became a Jewish professional, long before I learned the language of campaigns, community building, stewardship, and philanthropy, my grandfather was doing the same work. From this very desk.

Opa’s story began oceans away from mine. As a young Jewish boy, he escaped the horrors of Europe during World War II, fleeing from country to country, even in Mandatory Palestine before Israel became a state, before eventually building a new life in the Bay Area, California. Along the way, he became a military officer, journalist, a traveler, and a gifted communicator. Fluent in five languages, he spent years telling stories and connecting with people across cultures and borders.

Eventually, those talents led him to a career in Jewish communal service. He became the Western Regional Director of United Jewish Appeal (which later evolved into Jewish Federations of North America), helping raise funds and build support for Jewish communities around the world. His friends were politicians and celebrities. He helped bring some of the earliest Israeli emissaries to the West Coast, a precursor to the shlichim programs that remain such an important part of Jewish communal life today. He founded my home synagogue in Northern California. And he spent the rest of his life helping strengthen Jewish community.

I was far too young when he passed away. I never had the chance to know him as an adult, to ask him about his travels, his work, or what it felt like to dedicate a lifetime to serving the Jewish people.

But somehow, pieces of him found their way to me anyway.

More than a decade ago, I began my own journey as a Jewish professional. Different organizations. Different communities, different coasts. Yet so often, I find myself drawn to the same things that animated his work: relationships, storytelling, connection, and the belief that communities are strongest when people come together in service of something larger than themselves.

Sometimes I wonder what he would think of today’s overall Jewish landscape and its space in our world. The man who embraced technology and innovation would have been fascinated by social media, virtual meetings, and the ability to connect with people across the globe with the click of a button. And I suspect he would have loved the fact that, thanks to a hybrid workplace, I now spend part of every week working from home at the very desk where he once wrote his own appeals.

A desk that has quietly served the Jewish community since the 1950s.

A desk that has witnessed handwritten letters, fundraising plans, newspaper articles, family photographs, and now Zoom calls and digital campaigns.

The wood is older now. So am I. But the work continues, and there is something deeply comforting about that.

In a world that changes so quickly, it feels almost magical to place my hands where his once rested and know that, in some small way, we are connected through a shared purpose.

Perhaps that is what legacy really is – the quiet passing of values from one generation to the next. The belief that community matters. The willingness to serve. The courage to tell stories that inspire people to care.

And sometimes, if you are very lucky, a sturdy wooden desk.

The photograph above is of my Opa and me at that same desk many years ago. Neither of us could have known then that one day it would become mine. Or that decades later, we would still be doing the same work together. Z”l Opa