Finding Community at Work

While I have not always worked in the nonprofit Jewish space, I have especially enjoyed serving the Jewish community in a professional capacity. To be an engaged Jew, and also to work in a Jewish job, has united my personal and professional values, roles, and passions in a seamless way.

Whether working in a Jewish social service agency, on a college campus, in a synagogue, or for a pro-Israel organization, I have felt like the subject of Amir Gilboa’s 1950s Israeli poem, “Pitom Kam Adam,” (“Suddenly a Man Arises”) which begins, “Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning, he feels he is a nation and begins to move forward.” Attending shul with my family, teaching religious rituals to my children, and using my talents to build Jewish life—all have been, to a large degree, in the service of “the nation,” the Jewish people.

There is a palpable sense of Jewish community in a Jewish workplace. I think back in particular to my last job, where most of my colleagues were Jewish as well. While few kept kosher, I was not obliged to explain why I could not eat the same foods that they did when we ordered lunch. They accepted without protest my taking off what they viewed as “minor” Jewish holidays (such as the last two days of Passover), and they understood when I was a bit tired from jetlag the day after my return from a trip to Israel.

We shared birthday cakes at work; we invited each other to our children’s bar and bat mitzvahs. When my father died just six weeks after I started the job, my co-workers showed up at my house for the shiva. Likewise, when a colleague’s husband passed away, I attended his funeral and shoveled earth on his coffin, even though he and I had never met. When my job ended because of the pandemic, I felt acutely the shearing of the bonds among us, even though I had not seen my co-workers in person for more than six months.

An especially rewarding aspect of working for the Jewish community in Baltimore is the sense of camaraderie among the employees of different organizations. In what other major city does the entire nonprofit Jewish community gather in one room for an annual conference? (I’m referring to JPRO Day, organized by the Darrell D. Friedman Institute.) Jewish professionals tend to have close friends, neighbors and sometimes even family members who work for other local Jewish agencies.

I don’t know if my next job will be for a Jewish nonprofit; I’m open to working for any organization that is making a difference in our world by bringing people together and healing our broken world. But, if the right opportunity arose, I would certainly be interested in joining the staff of a Jewish one again. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks calls Judaism a “religion of the future,” hence “a religion of human freedom” in which great things are possible. Whatever our future will be, it would be an honor to be part of the blessed group that is tasked with creating it.