By Matt Golden
Chief Impact & Strategy Officer
Matt Golden
Chief Impact & Strategy Officer, Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC
You’re reading the Community paper right now. Maybe you’ve started with the obituaries; maybe you just read a rabbi’s D’var Torah, or maybe (if you’re my mom) you went looking for this article. You made a conscious decision to spend a few minutes connecting to Jewish Louisville through this paper. On behalf of the writers and staff here, thank you. For some of us, reading this paper may be the only “Jewish” thing we will do this month. This paper belongs to you and me; it’s ours. Because of that, we also share a responsibility to sustain it.
When the forerunner of Community was launched in 1913, the editors provided this introduction:
“With this issue the YMHA ‘Chronicler’ makes its initial bow. The editors being confirmed optimists look forward to a long and successful career for this periodical. It will be the recognized official organ of the Association. All activities, be they ever so small or most extensive, will receive just consideration and attention in these columns.”
Now, 111 years later, we’re still giving attention to Jewish stories in Louisville with “just consideration and attention.” Our paper has had a “long and successful career” those optimists from more than a century ago could not even have conceived. Community has witnessed two world wars, the Holocaust, the founding and flowering of the State of Israel, survivor stories, acknowledging Jewish people at every level of our government, society and walk of life. It has celebrated Jewish life here—all its joys and all its oys—by recording our stories throughout it all. In short, it has been a love letter to our people.
Every month, a print version of our paper goes out to more than 6,000 homes, just like yours. Our electronic version is available to anyone, anywhere via our website. It is a free monthly paper. We employ photographers so we can capture the experiences of our kids, our seniors, community connections and our life events. Our writers and editors tell the stories of the people in our community that make us unique; our partnership with national and international Jewish press agencies allow us to share Jewish stories from across the globe. Our paper reflects the joyous fact that the Louisville Jewish community is more than any one facility, more than any one rabbi, more than any political party, more than any single definition of Judaism.
Yet the care and stewardship of the Community paper is only one small thing that we—again, you and me—do here at the Jewish Federation. We help our most vulnerable. We provide meals, social events, and mental and physical activities to our seniors to directly improve their health and well-being. Last year alone, the Nancy Abrams Kitchen at the Trager Family JCC served over 15,000 free and subsidized meals to seniors, providing healthy, fresh food including the home delivery of kosher meals to Meals on Wheels recipients. Our in-house Chef, Helen Impellizeri, is a treasure.
We support our future through our work with kids. We know that early connections to Judaism through Jewish education and making Jewish friends is key to a growing and thriving Jewish future. We operate the Trager Family JCC Early Learning Center at the Roth Family Education Center, which weaves Jewish values and traditions throughout the curriculum for 165 kids. In partnership with the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, we send free Jewish books to Jewish households—more than 4,000 books to 350 Louisville families—through our operation of PJ Library. We give camp grants to allow children to attend Jewish camps regardless of financial ability, providing more than $230,000 in assistance last year alone. Because of all of us, more than 25 first-time campers and nearly 60 kids were able to experience their connection to Jewish culture and friendships that would not have been available to them otherwise.
Together, we raised more than $1.5 million in the wake of October 7 for emergency funding to humanitarian aid in Israel. Because of the longstanding relationship between Jewish Federations and those aid organizations in Israel, your dollars were able to make an immediate impact. The Jewish Federation of Louisville helped build a bomb shelter for preschool kids—Jewish and Muslim—in our Partnership region in the Western Galilee. We provided aid so that Israeli Jewish children could come to U.S. summer camps to escape the horrors of war, at least for a month. And rather than shy away from our connection to the people of Israel, we have two Israeli teens working with us for this entire year to strengthen our bonds through our ShinShinim program. We do the same work at home and provide financial support and partnership to every area synagogue and to Jewish Family & Career Services.
Community safety is one of our highest priorities. Our Regional Security Advisor has provided more than 150 security assessments throughout our community and to every Jewish organization in Louisville. We are expanding and partnering with other Louisville community organizations to enhance our safety and their safety as well.
All of this is, of course, in addition to operating the Trager Family JCC, Kentucky’s only Jewish Community Center. More than 1,500 people a day come through our doors, making us the front porch for the Jewish community. In our house, you can see CenterStage productions (we’re the oldest community theater in Kentucky), enjoy our award-winning facility, join in fitness and aquatic programs, and watch our campus grow as we strive daily to do even more. The truth is, we’re doing what we’ve been doing for more than a century.
But here is a truth as well. The Community paper, the security network, the day camps and grants, this entire facility — none of that works without donors and volunteers. In other words, none of it works without you. And for every one of the 111 years that people have been reading our words in these papers, those same people have recognized the importance of doing their share to help. They have contributed.
I titled this article as clearly as I could, because I am making an ask. We are a non-profit organization. We are asking for financial help to keep our Community paper thriving, to keep sending children’s books to households for free, to keep feeding seniors healthy meals, to keep subsidizing kids’ camp and education initiatives, and to keep maintaining and expanding our support for the synagogues and other Jewish organizations in our midst. There is not a single thing we do that isn’t important. We are growing our reach, expanding our support for high school and college students, creating new and meaningful programming for adults, and dreaming of a future where we can fulfill more needs, preserve our past and work towards our future. All of that depends upon your financial support of our annual campaign. Inside this newspaper, you will find an envelope and below this article you will find a QR code. We want your decision to support our causes—again, yours and mine—to be easy to fulfill. But it does start with your contribution to keep our more-than-a-century of work going forward. Together, we grow.
In an article entitled A Letter from France, printed in our January 1919 edition, a young army corporal from Louisville named Meyer Brill recounted his experiences being at the front during World War I and surviving trench warfare fighting for the United States. He shared his dreams of returning from Europe and “lounging around the lobby” telling stories surrounded by his friends. Most importantly, he stressed how much his local paper meant to him when he received it at the front. “It tends to bring back fond memories,” he concluded. Meyer would go on to marry Fannie Berkowitz here in Louisville, and have two children, Elaine and Stanley. When Meyer’s daughter, Elaine Brill Kahn, passed in 2013 leaving children and grandchildren—exactly 100 years after this paper was founded — the Community reported that too. We have an obligation to everyone who came before us to keep providing them the “just attention and consideration” those editors hoped for in 1913. Please consider making a meaningful contribution to the Jewish Federation to help us maintain that legacy.
Matt Golden is Chief Impact & Strategy Officer of the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC.