Jill Blair, Senior Fellow for Strategy & Organizational Effectiveness, Peninsula Jewish Community Center, Foster City, CA September 13, 2017<\/p>\n
I have been a kind of Maestro of Mayhem at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center (PJCC) in Foster City, CA. for the last six months. I was invited in to this nearly 70-year old Jewish Community Center in northern California for one year to be a disruptive force \u2013 to challenge assumptions; question practices; and create some discomfort \u2013 all in service of cultivating curiosity and courageous creativity as we find our way forward at a time of uncertainty. Like other Jewish legacy institutions across the nation, we are in a process of deep consideration about how to honor and express our Jewish heritage while maintaining relevance in an ever changing, diverse and complex society.<\/p>\n
I treasure this assignment because it gives me an opportunity to see from the inside what can hold legacy institutions in place; the practices, beliefs, fears and commitments that can stand between the present and a promising future. I treasure this assignment because it matters to me deeply whether our Jewish communal institutions in general, and JCC\u2019s in particular, survive and even more importantly, whether they produce the great social value that is needed to help heal this very broken world.<\/p>\n
I love THIS particular place because somewhere on the order of 70% of our 10,000 membership roster define themselves as \u2018other than Jewish; many come from places \u2018other than the United States\u2019 and speak languages in addition to English. All of these people \u2013 from all different perspectives, religious beliefs, experiences and identities, are standing with us \u2013 in a tent we have been able to create precisely because of who we are \u2013 because of our Jewish history, our values, our obligations.<\/p>\n
As I walk the halls of our magnificent Center and see the great and colorful mosaic that is OUR community, I sense our Jewish self in how we treat those who come to us; in what we offer by way of education, culture, conversation and caring. I know our Jewishness by how we show up and what inspires our efforts. I know we are made better by and because of the encounters we foster; the opportunities we enable to share ourselves with others and to have others share with us. We can be a bridge for understanding and sharing between the Jewish community and the broader community \u2013 a home for one and, also, a home for all. This is unique to Jewish Community Centers because we are not institutions of belief; we are institutions of belonging. Our challenge is existential \u2013 to retain our roots AND extend our reach.<\/p>\n
I have had the good fortune of participating in the Jewish Peoplehood Conversations convened by Dr. Shlomi Ravid, director of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education. These discussions have helped me begin to visualize a through-line between our past and our future as American Jewish communal institutions \u2013 as essential elements of Jewish civilization. These discussions have brought to light some beliefs that inform my efforts\u2026<\/p>\n
In the end, my sense is that to sustain ourselves is to embrace the evolution \u2013 to understand that our institutions will only endure if we manifest our lineage and our deepest identity not by who we serve but by why we serve all we do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
"I have had the good fortune of participating in the Jewish Peoplehood Conversations convened by Dr. Shlomi Ravid, director of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education. These discussions have helped me begin to visualize a through-line between our past and our future as American Jewish communal institutions \u2013 as essential elements of Jewish civilization. These discussions have brought to light some beliefs that inform my efforts\u2026"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[37],"class_list":["post-14809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cjpe","category-opinion","category-1","category-4","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14809"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.jpeoplehood.org\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}