Federation Report: Emerging Generation – The future of our Jewish community

Emma Mallach

Zev Kershman

By Emma Mallach and Zev Kershman

We are excited to share an update on the Emerging Generation (EG) in Jewish Ottawa. EG is a division of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa made up of young professionals aged 40 and under. It’s a crucial demographic since this age group often includes the unaffiliated and less engaged. Until, of course, people start having kids, at which time it is common to form or re-establish links to the Jewish community.

It’s with this outlook that we are co-chairing the EG Division for the 2020 Annual Campaign. We take pride in showcasing the amazing programs, opportunities and people that define our Jewish community. We encourage participation and listen attentively to reservations people might have about getting involved, in the hope we can identify some common ground.

Some defining programs over the past year that served individuals and families include: the annual EG Chanukah party with nearly 100 guests (we’d like to see that number grow at this year’s party on December 14!); this summer’s PJ in the Park event with close to 200 parents and children in attendance; and a growing pool of EG volunteers to help us with EG and PJ events, canvassing for the Campaign, and creating the best quality events for the Ben-Gurion Society, young adults who donate $1,000 or more to the annual campaign.

Thanks to the generous donations of local families who participated in the 2019 Challenge Fund gift-matching incentive, Federation was able to broaden EG grants to create the Jewish Experience Microgrants program, which is now available to individuals as well as Jewish organizations that serve the Ottawa Jewish community. Have a great idea that brings people in the Ottawa Jewish community together? You can get up to $2,500 to make it happen.

These funds are providing seed funding for interesting and innovative programs for young Jews in Ottawa. An example of a recent and ongoing project funded by Federation Microgrants is the Stock the Freezer program. This project is a series of group cooking events in which various community members (b’nai mitzvah students, families, co-workers) come together to cook and freeze healthy meals for later distribution to Ottawa Kosher Food Bank clients. Several successful cooking events have taken place with three more coming up. So far, the grant has supplied lasagnas, honey cakes, and apples and honey packages to 28 families.

Another new program is Jewish Jumpstart. This was a membership incentive grant for Jewish individuals and families who were not yet members of an Ottawa synagogue or the Soloway Jewish Community Centre. Within a few months, the program reached capacity with 118 approved applications!

Clearly, Federation understands that it is people who are at the core of this community. It’s the personal connections that we’re building for ourselves, and which persist over generations, that motivate us to stay involved. Countless volunteers are devoting time, energy, and resources to the community and the Annual Campaign and we thank them for this investment.

EG represents the future of Ottawa’s Jewish community. Over the past seven years since the division was formed, we’ve demonstrated that we are dedicated to the Federation’s goals. Our numbers may be small, but there’s no question we are strong and mighty.

We thank you in advance for your support and hope to see you at our next event!

Emma Mallach and Zev Kershman are co-chairs of the Emerging Generation Division of the 2020 Annual Campaign.

For more information on upcoming EG events and how you can get involved, contact EG Director Jordan Waldman at jwaldman@jewishottawa.com or 613-798-4696, ext. 240.

Federation Report: The simple truth – A gift to Federation helps all of Jewish Ottawa

Rabbi Reuven Bulka

Karen Palayew

By Karen Palayew and Rabbi Reuven Bulka

As co-chairs of the 2020 Jewish Federation of Ottawa Annual Campaign, we have taken on the important responsibility of leadership in fundraising for our community. In doing so, we recognize, appreciate, and value the over-arching role that Federation plays for every member of our community. Federation ensures that each and every one of us is safe and secure, that we are cared for at every stage of our lives, and that we have access to vibrant, meaningful, and inclusive Jewish experiences.

Federation is committed to us. We are committed to Federation. We feel it is important to bring to our community a greater awareness of Federation’s mandate, and the enormous support it provides.

So, what do AJA (Active Jewish Adults) 50+, Camp B’nai B’rith of Ottawa, the Chabad Student Network, Hillel Ottawa, JET (Jewish Education through Torah), the Jewish Youth Library, Limmud Ottawa, Ottawa Torah Centre, the Sephardi Association of Ottawa, the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge, Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, and Tamir have in common?

All of them are funded by Federation.

That is quite a range. And it does not stop there. Literally every Jewish education institution in Ottawa is funded by Federation. Add to this Birthright Israel, Emerging Generation programs, Holocaust education, Jewish Jumpstart, the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project, March of the Living, the Ottawa Jewish Archives, PJ Library, the Shinshinim Program, and the new kid on the block – Jewish Experience Microgrants.

The range is enormous and all embracing. Federation touches everyone in one way or another. If you are involved or value being a member of a strong, supportive, and compassionate Jewish community, then you benefit from Federation.

So, when we launch our 2020 Annual Campaign, we are effectively asking all of us to help each other, to help ourselves. That is the simple and full truth.

However much we do, we can do more. The most recent Campaign, vintage 2019, raised an extra $1 million, thanks in large part to the Challenge Fund made possible by Stephen and Jocelyne Greenberg, Dan Greenberg and Barbara Crook, Roger Greenberg and Robert Greenberg. These gifts have generated impactful new programs to benefit the community.

These same generous people have once again stepped forward to launch another Challenge Fund wherein all new dollars raised over and above last year’s donations will be matched dollar for dollar. We are excited at the prospect of once again generating more dollars to further impact Jewish life in Ottawa.

We hope that those of you who stepped up to the plate last year will do so once again, and even more so.

And those who did not, we hope you will hop(e) on to the Jewish Superhighway for an exciting ride into Jewish community excellence, wherein we are all together, where we all count, where we are all doing our best to enhance our community.

With best wishes for a healthful, tranquil, meaningful, and Happy New Year – A Shana Tova Umetukah.

Karen Palayew and Rabbi Reuven Bulka are the co-chairs of the 2020 Annual Campaign.

A View from the Bleachers: Celebrating that which unites us

Rabbi Steven Garten

By Rabbi Steven Garten

On Sunday evening, September 29, a significant percentage of the Ottawa Jewish community celebrated/observed Rosh Hashanah. Many gathered around family tables for a festive meal. Some observed the “first day of the seventh month” by worshipping in synagogues, temples, auditoriums and even in people’s homes. The next day, many of the same individuals returned to worshipping or continued with more private observances. The entire pattern will be repeated 10 days later on Kol Nidre eve and the day of Yom Kippur. Regardless of one’s personal choices, there is something special and unique about the two days when our Jewish community gathers together to celebrate that which unites us, rather than focusing on that which divides us.

I felt that unique sense Jewish unity on September 10 when I attended the Jewish Federation of Ottawa Annual Campaign Kickoff. Regardless of our personal feelings about Federation and the work it does, the gathering was transformative. Six hundred members of the community laughing together, mostly at our own foibles and nuances of tribal behaviour. We don’t often laugh together. In fact, we more often than not separate into denominational and ideological camps for our group gatherings. There is nothing inherently wrong with having alternative views/opinions on prayer, the Deity, Jewish tradition, Israel, interfaith coalitions, aboriginal reconciliation. However differences which serve to keep us apart are not a reflection of our potential strength as a community.

I felt the unique power of community on September 8. That Sunday afternoon I travelled to the wilds of Barrhaven to sample the products of the Ottawa Kosher BBQ Cook-off. This unique event was the brainchild of my colleague Rabbi Menachem Blum of the Ottawa Torah Centre. As I walked amongst the crowd, I was struck by mixture of kippot, black hats, Israelis now living in Ottawa, synagogue-goers, committed atheists, and most noticeably, young and old together. The food was nice, not Texas or southern barbecue, but nice. What was more than nice was the celebratory crowd. Hats off (black hat off) to Rabbi Blum and the volunteers who drew us all to the wilds of Barrhaven.

The sense of community pride was also on display during the Capital Pride weekend in Ottawa. Members of our community walked in the Pride Parade on August 25 identified as Jews. Unlike at some U.S. Pride Parades, the Star of David was prominently displayed, not forbidden. On Erev Shabbat there were dinners and programming in two synagogues. These outreach programs that bring together members of the LGBTQ community, their parents, and their supporters represent special opportunities for Ottawa’s Jewish community to display its commonality, not just its differences.

There are many other projects that will be supported by Federation’s Jewish Experience Microgrants that have the intentional purpose of bringing the community together. Stock the Freezer, a series of group cooking events, in which community members come together to cook and freeze healthy meals for Ottawa Kosher Food Bank clients, modelled on Soup Sisters of Calgary and other Canadian cities, has the potential of enticing whole families to have fun while manifesting Jewish values.

One more example of unique cross denominational programming is Jbotics, an opportunity for students in Grades 5-8 with an interest in sciences to learn about the intersection of Judaism, Israeli innovation, and hands-on building and computer programming. Though the program – supported by a Federation Jewish Experience Microgrant – is hosted by Temple Israel Religious School, it is open to all members of the community in those grades.

The High Holy Days are a time when members of our community observe and celebrate our Hebrew calendar in diverse ways. It is lovely to see so many members of the “people of Israel” gathering in prayer and observance. But these religious days do not resonate as they have in the past.

Growing up in the Bronx, living along the Grand Concourse, there were 200 minyanim, synagogues, and one large temple filled with primarily male worshippers on the High Holy Days. It was glorious to walk the 40 blocks between 201st Street and 161st Street nodding “Shana Tova” to one and all. But the Grand Concourse has changed. We no longer live in ‘gilded ghettos.’ The High Holy Days has lost its clarion call for many younger members of our community.

If we are to look forward and not backward, then we will need to innovate opportunities for communal celebrations and observances that supplement the traditional approaches.