A few weeks ago, I sat in the dining hall at Camp Livingston with Rini Levy, our Campaign Chair; Sherri Symson, our Board Chair; and David Harris, our Chief Development Officer. Lunch was winding down. Then hundreds of kids began singing Birkat Hamazon, the blessing after meals, pounding the tables and getting louder with every verse.
I just sat there and listened. That sound, all that joy and belonging in one room, is the whole reason for the work we do.
You haven’t heard from me since June. That was on purpose. Summer is our quiet season, and I’ve learned to trust it. But quiet, it turns out, depends on where you’re standing. This was one of the loudest and fullest summers we’ve had.
In my last update, I wrote that summer is when we pause, reflect, and plan. And before the quiet even began, we closed the most generous Annual Campaign in our history. Thank you. Everything I’m about to describe stands on what you helped build.
Here’s what the quiet held.
Inside our walls, every department spent the summer in planning retreats, wrestling with three questions: What are the major outcomes we’re trying to achieve? What choices will get us there? How will we know we’re succeeding? There is more I look forward to sharing when it’s ready. But I loved watching it happen: the security team and the marketers, the planners and the accountants, all working the same three questions. Different rooms. One plan.
In June, I traveled to the Jewish Federations of North America board meeting, where we set the national budget for the coming year. The agenda could have been written in Cincinnati: responding to safety needs and strengthening Jewish life. I stayed an extra day with CEO colleagues from across the country, and more than once the question came back to me: how is Cincinnati doing it? I came home proud.
Later in the summer, I spent two days in Columbus with a small circle of Federation CEOs, trusted colleagues who have become real friends. We traded what’s working in our communities and what’s challenging us. I filled pages of notes. And I came home grateful for peers who understand this seat.
Some of the summer’s most important work was also its quietest. I had lunch with Interim Cincinnati Police Chief Adam Hennie and Lieutenant Collin Vaughn to say thank you. While thousands of people moved through “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.” at Union Terminal this past year, their officers helped keep our community safe. Days later, our leadership team spent a morning at the Hamilton County Emergency Management & Homeland Security Agency, pressure-testing our crisis response plan. We even met the man who sets off the county’s tornado sirens. I have sat through dozens of exercises like that one, and I learn something every single time. Safety is quiet work. It is also what makes the singing in that dining hall possible.
Both things are true: we protect Jewish life, and we grow it. This summer, that care also reached beyond our own community. A $25,000 match from our Love Thy Neighbor Fund is helping HER Cincinnati launch its new program for women working toward stable futures. When we say we show up for our neighbors, this is what we mean.
And now the quiet is ending. Next Wednesday, our entire staff gathers at Summit Park, all of us in one place, before our new cycle launches. Two days later, our past presidents and campaign chairs will join us at the Mayerson JCC. They carried this community here, and we want to begin by thanking them in person.
Thank you for a summer that let us build. I am walking into the year ahead steady and hopeful. I know who is walking in with us.
Shabbat Shalom,
Danielle V. Minson
CEO, Jewish Federation of Cincinnati
PS: Our lay leaders had a quiet summer, too: Josh Blatt joined the Jewish Federations of North America Board of Trustees, and Karen Goodman joined Jennifer Knight Zelkind on the National Women’s Philanthropy Board. Cincinnati keeps earning its seat at the national table.