Shabbat Message – January 2, 2026

Dear Friends,

This Shabbat, I’ve been thinking about transitions, the kind we mark on the calendar and the kind that arrive quietly in our own homes and suddenly make time feel louder. As we turn the page into 2026, it feels like a natural moment to ask: what do we want the year ahead to stand for?

This past week, my family experienced one of those moments that makes everything else slow down. Our oldest daughter, Addy, got engaged. She was home from New Haven, where she is in her first year of psychiatry residency at Yale, and we had the gift of being together with her and her fiancé. There was great joy, of course, but also something deeper, a quiet awareness that a life is never built by one person alone. It is shaped by the people who poured in early, by communities that showed up consistently, and by experiences that widened a child’s world long before they knew to ask for it.

Watching Addy this week, I kept thinking about her at 14, when she participated in Partnership2Gether (P2G) and spent three weeks in Israel with teens from Columbus’ partnership city, Kfar Saba. The following year, those Israeli teens came to Columbus and spent three weeks here, including time with our family. One of those friendships, her connection with Hadar, has lasted through every stage of her life: high school, college, and now into adulthood.

It’s a reminder of something we all know intuitively but don’t always say out loud: the strongest kind of Jewish continuity is built not only through institutions, but through relationships.

JewishColumbus made that experience possible. Our community connected Addy to Israel in a way that felt personal and real, and in doing so, helped shape who she is today. Addy is just one example of the impact our Israel and Overseas team and committee make possible every day as they connect our community with Israelis, the land of Israel, and our partnership communities of Kfar Saba and Kibbutz Carmia.

This year, those bonds were strengthened through:

• A Yom HaAtzmaut culinary delegation, including Druze, Ethiopian, and Kfar Saba chefs.
• Educational initiatives such as Remembering2Gether and Educational Bridge.
• The hiring of a dedicated professional team in Kfar Saba, to support our partnership and People2People programs.
• The Israel 614 Mission (see photos from the mission here), where 190 community members shared meals, conversations, and a meaningful evening with our Kfar Saba partners.
• An annual investment of $150,000 in Israel programs, partnerships, events, and education.

This is one of the many reasons I am optimistic about 2026.

Even when the world feels uncertain, we know something enduring: when we invest in Jewish experiences that are authentic, formative, and relational, we are not simply running programs. We are strengthening the fabric of Jewish life, one person and one connection at a time. Years later, we see the ripple effects in the lives people build and the values they carry forward.