Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton

It’s hard to believe that in the year 2019, issues that seemed to be a thing of the past are not only still a part of our world, but growing in intensity.

On October 27, 2018 – what was to be a peaceful Shabbat morning – 11 members of the Pittsburgh Jewish community lost their lives in a horrific act of hatred.

When my 8-month old son, Noah, died in 1994, I was completely heartbroken. Losing my only child devastated me.

This past weekend, I received a statement from the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation. A 20-year-old man posted a video on Instagram on July 11th which showed someone shooting a semi-automatic rifle with the caption, “Police identified the Youngstown Jewish Family Community shooter as local white nationalist Seamus O’Rearedon.”

Our city of Dayton has been inundated with an unprecedented amount of challenges in the past months. This weekend, the pain that has recently been felt in Pittsburgh, in Gilroy, and in El Paso, came to Dayton and it has impacted us all.

There is an abundance of activities in Jewish Dayton, including cultural, social, educational, and religious events for people of all ages.

Early on in my career, I moved to Chicago to work for the Hyatt Corporation. I was excited to be in a new city, with a new job, and to have the opportunity to meet new people.

I love baseball. In fact, one of the items on my bucket list is to visit all of the baseball stadiums in the United States.

While JFS continues to help our clients, we as a Jewish community can help our neighbors. By opening the Tornado Relief Fund, we will collect donations to be gifted from the Jewish Community as a whole, to the Miami Valley Community Action Partnership and the American Red Cross.

The Whim (short for What Inspires Me) was developed to communicate to our community the inspiring stories that emanate from our work as a Jewish Federation. However, my Whim this week expresses not just the inspirational but the disturbing.