My First Pesach at the Jim Joseph Foundation: Reflections from a Program Associate

For all Jews worldwide, it recently was Pesach. What did it mean to you? To me, every year, it means reflection on two questions emanating from the same root: Am I free and Are we free? The “we” meaning my family, my friends, my communities (Jewish and otherwise), my city, our society, our world. These questions could be unpacked in a host of different ways, discussed, argued, and contested. After all, that’s the point right? For me, these questions held special significance this Pesach because I asked them as a recent hire of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

At the end of January I began my job as Program Associate at the Foundation. The Program Associate role is a new one for the Foundation. It was conceived as a way to provide the opportunity for a professional new to the field to learn about the art and science of grantmaking dedicated to the support of Jewish education. It is one way for the Foundation to positively influence the next generation of Jewish philanthropic leadership.

During my first few months I have engaged in important onboarding work to gain an understanding of the Foundation’s practices: shadowing colleagues in meetings, participating on calls with grantees, and spending a good amount of time with my direct supervisor, Josh Miller, a Senior Program Officer at the Foundation. This time has afforded me the opportunity to discuss the business of the foundation, to ask questions, and to be mentored. Learning from and working with Jim Joseph Foundation colleagues is humbling. So, too, is my new reality that I practice through this work—the pursuit of helping to create more philanthropically funded Jewish learning experiences and sparking individuals to lead vibrant Jewish lives.

Even I wouldn’t have expected to be in this position as little as two or three years ago. My background is in the inter- and multidisciplinary worlds of research, community planning, and secular education. I have spent time in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Bay Area as an academician and practitioner interested in questions on how place and education intersect and impact one another. As many organizations and authors have noted, where you live affects how long you live, and the opportunity afforded to you during your life.[1] Put plainly, your zip code matters.

It was through these social justice and education issues that I began to understand myself as a Jew in a renewed way. When I moved to the Bay Area in the summer of 2012, I became involved in organizations such as Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, American Jewish World Service, and The Kitchen. I sought out places to engage Jewishly with peers who had similar hearts and minds. I also began to realize that although I had previously held Judaism and “doing Jewish” at arm’s length, I now had something to say about being a Jewish millennial with a renewed desire to “do Jewish” on my own terms. And isn’t this what education and learning is about? Knowing thyself.

Building on this concept, when I saw that the Foundation was seeking a program associate, I realized that this was an opportunity to further “have my say” and add to the conversation. I’m not only tasked with professionally growing and developing within the organization. I also contribute to the Foundation’s work of providing, through its grantees, opportunities for other Jews to learn, grow, and develop; to reach Jewish youth and young adults where they are.

Amartya Sen, the Nobel scholar and economist, wrote a notable book titled Development as Freedom. Within its pages he argues that “freedom is both the end and most efficient means of sustaining economic life and the key to securing the general welfare of the world’s population.” Freedom. The ability to choose for oneself. The ability to act on one’s own behalf. As a program associate at this Foundation, I feel wholly empowered to creatively think about Jewish learning and life. I feel free. A humbling thought, especially given the notion that so many still are not. How do we as a Foundation, and I as a part of this organization, imbue freedom of Jewish opportunity? How do we imbue freedom of Jewish expression, freedom to be Jewish in the ways that resonate with each of us, freedom to learn and live a vibrant Jewish life?

It has been a privilege to be at the Foundation and ask myself these questions most every day. During Pesach, these questions took on special meaning. From my eyes, what the Jim Joseph Foundation is doing is at the heart of what the Pesach story teaches us about what it means to be a Jew. To be free to learn and understand — something I look forward to continuing to experience on the job and to seed to others through the job.

[1] For one example of this, see Robert Wood Johnson Foundation article, http://www.rwjf.org/en/culture-of-health/2014/12/why_zip_codes_matter.html.