I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard these lines, and they never get old…
“I met my wife on a UJA mission.”
“We became best friends sitting on a UJA committee.”
“I regularly volunteer together with my family at UJA.”
“Our kids are getting involved now.”
“My daughter got a job with UJA.”
“This place changed my life.”
I can certainly lay claim to the last one. For decades, I was an active UJA volunteer — starting out in our young lawyer’s group — before leaving a 30-year legal career to become a UJA professional.
We know that UJA acts as a force multiplier, bringing together tens of thousands of people to address the most pressing issues of our times. But the coming together is itself life-enhancing — building a community of purpose for all involved.
That concept was front and center Tuesday evening, at an extraordinary celebration honoring Alisa and Dan Doctoroff. This event, once known as Keepers of the Flame, honors an individual or couple who've had a generational impact on our community. Since 1994, when we first honored Billie and Larry Tisch, we've had only five such events.
To know Alisa and Dan is to know how deserving they are: Alisa, a former UJA president, is one of the great builders of Jewish life. And Dan, a former deputy mayor, is one of the great builders of New York.
Neither is a native New Yorker, and by their own admission, when they came as young professionals they didn’t plan to stay long. But community beckoned. They found it and they built it.
Alisa, in her many roles at UJA and across the Jewish world (including as chair of the Jim Joseph Foundation and president of the Heschel School, just to name two), has championed innovation and helped nurture many of the leading programs and places that today enable Jews of all ages and backgrounds to experience the joy of Jewish community.
Dan, as deputy mayor for economic development in the Bloomberg administration, helped lead the city’s economic recovery after 9/11. His vision can be seen everywhere in neighborhoods across the five boroughs. Currently, Dan is revolutionizing ALS research, fostering unprecedented scientific collaboration between academia and the pharmaceutical/biotech industry.
UJA has been enormously blessed to have the Doctoroffs in our orbit, and yet, to hear them tell it, the story is about how UJA has impacted their lives.
As Alisa and Dan said on Tuesday evening: “UJA has been a magnet for us because it is the ultimate fusion of what matters to us. Jewish life and New York. Community and purpose… What gives life meaning, what we are proud of, what gets us up in the morning.”
It's a beautiful sentiment I hear so often from the many who come together around our work.
Of course, our primary objective is helping people in need and shaping the Jewish future. Providing food for the hungry with an emphasis on dignity. Giving refugees a fresh start. Making the isolated elderly feel less lonely. Giving a child access to the joy of Jewish summer camp. We make all this possible and much more, changing the lives of millions in powerful ways.
But in the process of doing this work — sitting at one of UJA's myriad planning and fundraising tables, volunteering with our nonprofits partners, diving deeply into the issues — we too are impacted.
And, in the end, the lives we may be changing most by being part of this community of purpose…
Our own.
Shabbat shalom