A message to the community from JFS President Marty Nelson and CEO Rabbi Will Berkovitz on the events in Poway, California, on April 27, 2019: Yesterday as we celebrated Shabbat, the final day of Passover and the start of our liberation from the narrow places of Egypt, our joy was once again shattered by a…
Committed to Climb Together
Listen to the 2019 Luncheon remarks from Rabbi Will Berkovitz, CEO of Jewish Family Service. Back when I thought I was immortal, I liked to go climbing in the Cascades. Today, I prefer to limit my vertical exposure to air travel, a nice chairlift and maybe watching a climbing movie like “Free-Solo.” People who aren’t…
An Act of Solidarity and of Kindness
CEO Will Berkovitz’s remarks from the vigil for Pittsburgh and the Tree of Life Congregation on Monday, October 29, 2018. You can watch the full vigil here. Your presence here tonight is an act of solidarity and of kindness. People are afraid. Afraid that our country’s light is dimming, our democracy is fading, that we are…
Hope Is a Verb
There is no word for history in the Jewish tradition. The word we have is memory. My family’s memories and our story have been on my mind a great deal since my father died back in January. “I guess I made it 90 years and four months,” he said the week before he passed. Occasionally…
125 Years: A Milestone of Significance
“As in the rest of America…growth and success did not extend to all in Seattle.” This passage from Carolee Danz’s history of JFS isn’t a contemporary reference. It’s the description of Seattle, circa 1892, the year the women of this Jewish community first organized to collect and distribute aid to the most vulnerable. Those acts…
Placing Our Hearts
We are living in an era when attention spans are assumed to be 140 characters or less — two bits as my dad would say. That’s how much we are willing to “pay” for our attention. In Hebrew, “pay attention” is literally translated as, “place your heart.” Placing our hearts requires effort. It requires us…
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