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22 November 2019
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the many ways you have helped guide our community and our organization this year.
This has been a truly transformative year for Federation.
We have taken several bold steps forward, doubling down on our ability to serve as strategic investors, conveners, and advocates in Jewish Greater Washington. I am particularly proud of our ability to support communal efforts to strengthen Jewish life in Northern Virginia and to engage the next generation of Jews with Jewish life. We have provided significant incremental funding to innovative and impactful initiatives that further these goals, and have leveraged our position in the community to bring organizations of all sizes together to connect and collaborate.
We have also remained fully committed to our core, foundational mandate to strengthen and sustain Jewish life, and address critical needs locally and around the world. Federation remains the largest single donor to most local Jewish agencies. Not only have we maintained our support for essential human service programs, we have also sought to bring more organizations into the fold and help foster a network of care across the community. We are passionate about leveraging our reach, resources, and unique vantage point to the benefit of our full community.
We are also focused on finding meaningful ways to help our community members connect to one another, to the big questions that shape our lives, and to the forums that help us address those questions. Through our partnership with the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, we have brought people together to wrestle with some of our community’s most pressing challenges. We want to help foster a culture of thoughtful, respectful dialogue. We want the Jewish community of Greater Washington to be a place where people can come to think about and talk about issues together, even at a time when the broader country is struggling to do so. Our community can be a model of what is possible when people respect one another and work together to create positive change.
Of course, our work on these and many more fronts has only just begun. In order to live up to our potential and achieve our shared vision of a vibrant Jewish community, we need your support. We cannot do this vital work without your leadership and your investment.
Therefore, as we look ahead to 2020 and to a new horizon in Jewish life, I encourage you to give generously to our Annual Campaign. All new or increased gifts made through November 30 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.
Thank you for all you do for our community and for the Jewish future. We would not be where we are today without you.
Shabbat Shalom,
Gil