The State of the Federation
Shalom Chaverim—Hello Friends,
As we mark our Annual Meeting this evening, no words will hold back the tears. We carry unbearable pain these last weeks and months since Hamas invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people, taking hostages, and triggering a traumatic war in Gaza with horrific loss of lives.
If something that can give us hope and strength it might be this: My sister Martha lives in Israel. She’s a videographer. She interviewed this man, a fireman from Kibbutz Kissufim (pictured below).
His only child, a daughter, was murdered on October 7 with her husband. His message: Kadima! Kadima! Kadima!
KADIMA is the Hebrew word for FORWARD. We must go FORWARD!
I’m Moshe Kruger, Executive Director of the Jewish Federation. The theme of my remarks this Evening of Impact is KADIMA.
Kadima: In prayer.
Kadima: In love.
Kadima: In hope.
Kadima: In community.
Kadima: In action—with vision, grit, and determination.
My focus tonight is two-fold. I’ll begin with a brief Year in Review. And then we’ll turn our attention to South Bend’s Jewish future —where do we go from here?
From the beginning, nothing about the miracle of Jewish history has been easy, from the journey out of Egypt to the founding of modern-day Israel.
After Oct 7, it seems all that we do as Jews and being Jewish is more challenging, complicated, and stressful.
Israel is experiencing a nationwide trauma. The Jewish Diaspora, like the rest of the world, is reeling from the extremity of violence in Israel and Gaza. And here at home, we’re grappling with how to build and sustain a community.
For all of us who believe Israel has a right to exist, we feel called at this moment to support the people of Israel as they recover from the shocking attack by Hamas just eight months ago—an unprovoked war that has unleashed a tsunami of anti-Israel hate, global isolation, and mounting outrage.
And for all of us who believe we cannot recycle yesterday’s solutions to sustain Jewish life today, we are called at this moment to engage in bold community planning, question assumptions, and produce ideas that inspire.
Producing inspirational ideas, this is what we do at the Fed. We are an enterprise tasked with KADIMA. The success of our journey demands forward motion.
So, here we are in our 79th year—the Federation remains a vital resource for Jewish life, and I can report with confidence the Fed had a good year moving toward this objective.
Our Year-in-Review makes a compelling case. Team morale is high. Motivation is high. In short, we are a team deeply passionate about our mission to connect people to Jewish life.
We continue to raise the bar in youth programming, whether it’s Camp Ideal’s record enrollment, our new and improved PJ Library children’s programs, the family-oriented Sunday Fundays, or the holiday programs.
Our Holocaust Education programming continues to engage scores of area middle and high school students while expanding the work of the Federation beyond its four walls.
In addition, our adult programming including Date Night, Film Fest, Art Exhibits, NEXTGen, Forever Learning, CRC, and Yom events are opening doors to community engagement with renewed depth, vibrancy, and relevance, all while delivering incremental gains in program revenue.
Our community can also be proud of the emergency humanitarian funds we raised for Israel. Together, the Federation system raised over $845 million, which supports the life-saving work of more than 450 organizations such as our core partners at The Jewish Agency for Israel and JDC.
Here at home, the sacred work that Jewish Family Services performs to ensure the health and well-being of our community remains a central pillar of the Federation.
Our monthly newsletter, weekly email updates, and special features such as “The Missing Context” are packed with timely information, designed to connect you with everything Jewish.
My Year-in-Review concludes with a groundskeeping and building report. The Campus grounds have never looked better. I’ve been at the Fed for 3½ years, and the drive up the forested s-curve Shalom Way to the building still feels both enchanting and very magical.
And speaking of the building; new improvements inside the community center are creating a buzz of excitement. See for yourself. During the reception that follows, you’re all invited to tour the new universal kitchenette and Ideal conference room.
Highlighting these two new initiatives offers a good transition to springboard to the year ahead and beyond. As we approach our 80th anniversary in 2025, our little Fed has reinvented itself time and time again to strengthen Jewish life in Michiana, Israel, and around the world.
When it comes to sustaining our Jewish community in the 21st century, there is a pervasive sense that the rules of the game are changing.
In Jewish communal life today, we see an urgent need to move forward beyond the ideas, beliefs, and institutions that were central building blocks of our Jewish American experience in the 20th century.
In my concluding remarks at the last annual meeting, I said: “We can’t take our future for granted. We’ll be judged, as every generation is, not so much by what we’ve accomplished in the past but by the foundations we lay for an even brighter future.”
To realize this brighter future, the Federation undertook a thought process to rethink, reimagine, and where relevant, reinvigorate and reclaim Jewish life in South Bend.
The vitality of a Jewish South Bend is encapsulated with possibilities and opportunities to reimagine our institutions, rethink the idea of community, and construct new avenues of personal connection.
This is why I’m delighted the Federation has joined Sinai and Temple in forming a Community Task Force. The two congregations have agreed to share one building with a preference to locate this building on the Federation’s campus.
In my conversations with community members about our community’s future, one idea that is sparking interest is to build a South Bend Campus for Jewish Life. The new Campus would house the Federation and the new shared facility for Sinai and Temple.
When fully developed, the Campus enterprise will be an oasis of learning, prayer, and respectful exchange, an incubator for arts and ideas, a space to celebrate, engage in Jewish life, and intertwine with the broader Jewish world.
In addition, this shared Campus offers potential streamlining efficiencies for staffing and business operations and would have a positive effect on our collective financial health.
Moreover, what if we created a Campus that transcends denominational boundaries? And what if we married this unorthodox idea to another novel ideal of having one Jewish community membership, rather than multiple memberships?
At first blush, these sound like provocative and uncomfortable ideas. But as mentioned earlier, yesterday’s solutions are ill-suited for today’s challenges. We all know that small Jewish Communities that fail to act while there is time to course-correct and take action will suffer the all too well-known consequences.
So, in the spirit of those who love to create lists, here are the top three issues the Fed will address in 2024:
Work with our community partners to explore the benefits of creating a Campus for Jewish Life as we develop a consensus approach to creating community.
Collaborate with the Community Task Force leadership team to strategically map the consensus approach and align talent and organizational resources around the most important community-building initiatives.
Accelerate time to impact by establishing a sense of urgency and mobilize influencers and neighbors to communicate the change vision and generate short-term gains to reinvigorate the process and produce more change.
Our community will learn that we are only strong when we are united.
Something deep and tribal has touched us since October 7. The massacre of that fateful day, followed by months of anti-Israel and antisemitic rage, has triggered among many Jews a sense of being under siege, a feeling that it’s us against the world.
This “us” is our Jewish lifeline. It augurs a reconnection with Jewish peoplehood, community, and our uniquely dramatic story.
This story continues in South Bend. With the support of my professional staff and the newly elected Federation board and officers:
We believe in our community.
We believe in Israel.
We believe in peace.
We believe in compassion.
We believe we are all God’s children.
And we hold in our hearts empathy and mourning for Israelis and Palestinians.
October 7th taught us two important lessons. First, what affects Israel, and the Jewish world, affects each of us deeply. Second, we care about each other even more than we know.
Before wrapping up, I want to acknowledge the support of my wife, Karen Richman. Without her love and understanding, I simply would not have the strength to do this job.
Right behind Karen, I’ve had the vital support of board president Alon Shemesh, the board of directors, the annual campaign committee, and many community members. You fill me with gratitude. Thank you.
And I want to welcome the new slate coming in under the leadership of Cristyne Porile. I look forward to working with you in the spirit of KADIMA.
Thanks again for attending our Annual Meeting. Thank you for caring about the future of our community. And thank you for your generosity to our annual campaign. Your support is vital and fuels our mission: Kadima. Kadima. Kadima!
May God remember all those who have been taken from us.
May the All-present have mercy upon our people in captivity and bring them forth from darkness into light.
And may the One who makes peace in the heavens, make peace for us, and Israel, and the world. And let us say Amen.
Moshe Kruger
Executive Director
Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley