Shabbat Message - August 13, 2021
This message has 889 words and will take a little more than 4 minutes to read.
We have some exciting news to share with you, and to start off today’s message I want to introduce Candace Kwinter, our Board chair.
Over the past seven years, our Federation has achieved a number of milestones that have been crucial to our ongoing success, and in turn to the success of our partners and our community. In that time, we have grown our strengths in every key area: bringing our partners together, facilitating collaborations, planning for the community’s future, and generating the funds our community relies upon. During this time, we developed the strategic priorities that guide our work, and last year we were the ninth largest charity in the province.
We have truly gone from strength to strength, and throughout every step we have benefited from the leadership of our volunteers and professionals. In particular, I want to commend the senior management team of Marcie Flom, Shelley Rivkin, Becky Saegert and Jeff Balin.
Leading our staff team is, of course, our CEO, Ezra Shanken. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I am very pleased to let you know that we have offered Ezra a new contract through 2027, and he has accepted. Please join me in congratulating him!
Strong professional leadership and senior volunteers form a crucial partnership. We believe this is the team that will take us into a future of continued success.
Before I turn the message back to Ezra, I want to thank the Board and the team that worked on the contract: Alex Cristall, who took the lead on this during his term as Board chair; Rick Kohn, chair of the Finance Committee; Jessica Forman, chair of the HR Committee; and our past president, Mitch Gropper.
Sincerely,
Candace Kwinter
Board Chair
I would like to thank the Board of Directors for their support, and for this opportunity to provide a measure of consistent leadership to the Federation. Volunteer leaders are the heart of our organization and I want to acknowledge the Board chairs with whom I have had the opportunity to work very closely: Diane Switzer, Stephen Gaerber, Karen James, Alex Cristall, and Candace Kwinter.
They join more than 200 volunteer canvassers (who are going to start calling you soon about the Annual Campaign!) and the thousands of donors whose generosity makes the work possible.
Rachel and I are absolutely thrilled to be able to continue the work we have started, and the life we have built here in the Lower Mainland. We embraced this amazing community from the moment we arrived. We are raising our family here. And we are so pleased to be able to deepen the roots we have planted here.
In addition to the ongoing work of our Federation and our community, there are significant new initiatives that we have begun recently, namely community recovery from the impact of the pandemic and the JCC site redevelopment. We are doing things that bigger organizations and communities only dream of, and as a Jewish communal professional, it means a great deal to be here to see those through.
I am particularly excited by what we can accomplish together in the future. Jewish Federation is engaging in new strategic planning initiatives. We are continuing to grow the emerging Jewish communities around the region. And we are acutely aware of the monumental difference the JCC site redevelopment will make in our community and beyond.
When we arrived in 2014, I was incredibly fortunate to walk into an organization that was already on a strong, positive trajectory. The leadership of my CEO predecessors, Steve Drysdale, Drew Staffenberg, Mark Gurvis, and interim CEO Richard Fruchter was evident. Most of the senior team that is in place today was working here then, which is not common in the Federation world.
Marcie Flom, Shelley Rivkin, and Becky Saegert have each served our Federation for more than a decade and are among the finest and most seasoned Jewish communal professionals anywhere. Adding Jeff Balin, a dedicated professional with community leadership experience, to our senior team last year brought a welcome new voice to the table. We could not do our work to such a high caliber without them. I also want to acknowledge our manager of the executive office, Gabe Bloomfield, for her support.
Rachel and I believe this community is a place of great possibility, and we are excited to be here to help build its future. This news is a double blessing, because it means that Rachel can continue to serve our community, too, in her role as director of operations at Jewish Family Services.
That brings us to the partnerships we have with the dozens of organizations that join us in this work. I want to thank the heads of our partner agencies for working collaboratively with us, and the senior clergy across our community for providing the spiritual leadership that is at the core of who we are.
I got into this work because of a dedication to Jewish peoplehood that was instilled in me through my parents and grandparents. Our Federation’s best days are yet to come, and I am grateful to wake up every morning and work alongside the team that will make that happen.
Shabbat shalom,
Ezra S. Shanken
Chief Executive Officer