Today is Yom Ha'atzmaut - Israel’s 64th Independence Day!

As we prepare for San Diego Celebrates Israel this Sunday, our community celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut, we thought you would all like to get a glimpse of some of the work we are doing in San Diego in support of Israel, our connection, and one Jewish People. 

This past Tuesday evening about 400 community members shared in the annual Yom HaZikaron (Day of Remembrance) memorial service recognizing those individuals who have died in service to the State of Israel or through acts of terror. Shoshi Bogoch, our Community Shlicha provided exceptional support for the annual Yom HaZikaron commemoration committee.
 
This coming Sunday, April 29th, more than 70 organizations, synagogues, schools and merchants are partnering to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. We are expecting more than 2,000 participants and several community leaders have remarked about the positive energy in the community around the extensive organizational engagement. For the first time ever, the Friendship Circle is holding its Friendship Walk in collaboration with San Diego Celebrates Israel, and some of the funds raised will benefit children with disabilities in Sha’ar HaNegev.

Thanks to all of the members of our Sha’ar HaNegev Partnership Committee who are working with us to have a strong showing at Yom Ha’atzmaut; and a special shout out to Debbie Kornberg, our Planning Officer, who stepped in to create this highly collaborative community event with Shoshi and Dana Mekler from our Israel & Overseas Center and Nurit Ambrose, Planning Associate. Aaron Truax, Director of Marketing, also has provided a high level of expertise in communicating the “Yoms” to our many stakeholders. 

Please see the eblast below that we sent out yesterday and check out the website at www.sdcelebratesisrael.com to see the day’s highlights. 

More than 700 people attended San Diego’s Yom HaShoah Commemoration at the JCC on April 15, which our JCRC Director Linda Feldman planned with a committee of community partners. 

We cherish our partnership with Sha’ar HaNegev and rest assured, many of those who come to Yom Ha’atzmaut this weekend will hear about the history of our special relationship, the excitement around the school opening in June, and the work that’s underway to take our partnership to the next level. Thanks to Alon Schuster, Aharale Rothstein, Gil Ya’ari, Udi Tzuri and the Israeli members of the Sha’ar HaNegev Partnership Committee for all that they are doing to strengthen our partnership.

Yom Ha’atzmaut Sameach,
Claire Ellman, Jon Schneider, Lisa Haney and Michael Sonduck

San Diego Celebrates Israel on April 29!

The Jewish Federation of San Diego County and community partners are proud to announce our annual community event to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut on April 29th held at Ski Beach in Mission Bay Park. This is a free event to celebrate and educate our local community about Israel and her culture. The entire San Diego Jewish community is participating, including Friendship Circle of San Diego, which will be kicking off the day with the annual Friendship Walk on Vacation Isle at 9AM to benefit children with special needs in San Diego and Israel. This year we have partnered with many local organizations, synagogues and vendors to make this the best year ever! We are excited to come together as a community on this day to show solidarity and celebrate Israel’s 64th birthday.

The festival will include a hummus cook-off, free live music, entertainment, with local and special performances, Israeli folk dancing, a circus, kid’s activities, sports, teen programs, arts and crafts, games, a seniors club area, shopping and delicious kosher food! We will also hold an drawing to win free tickets Israel provided by El Al Airlines!

For more information on San Diego Celebrates Israel, visit sdcelebratesisrael.org or call 858.571.3444.

To register from the Friendship Walk, visit: http://friendshipwalksd.com

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/230465147061764/

#NextGenJewCon: JFNA’s TribeFest Hits The Jackpot

The laughing and eager crowd of mostly single, Jewish adults were watching the large projection screens at the front of the conference hall, because the on-stage speaker, Rachel Dratch, appeared tiny and barely visible.

Dratch, a spunky and hilarious veteran of Saturday Night Live, got her point across, as did the other speakers on the Main Stage over the three days of the Las Vegas conference, pitching the Jewish Federation in an elaborate promotion of Jewish community involvement.

By the time the curtain closed on Tuesday morning, TribeFest II seemed like it was a success.

TribeFest, a conference for Jews in their late 20’, 30’s and 40’s, was held for its second year in Las Vegas. Vegas is a town that everyone loves for conferences because even if the conference is boring, there are myriad ways to be entertained and the hotel rooms are to-die-for. For the Jews of TribeFest, Vegas offered a beckoning non-stop night-life to enjoy after a half-day of conferencing.

The conference excitement did not depend solely on Vegas. Organizers and partner organizations crafted a program of break-out sessions that tapped into hot issues in the Jewish community such as sustainability, social entrepreneurship, LGBT, Israel & Zionism, dating, and the upcoming Presidential elections. The entire Monday morning program was devoted to a massive social-action project that brought thousands of books and reading help to students at troubled Vegas schools.

Aside from laughing with Dratch, there were more tears, laughter and inspiration to be found on the Main Stage. A team of lay leaders and staff selected the speakers with a strategy in mind — to underscore the TribeFest narrative of Jewish identity and how attendees can impact their community, do more, and give back, especially within a Jewish and Federation context.

TribeFest presented inspirational speakers such as Talia Leman (age 16) the CEO and a founder of RandomKid; Rochelle Shoretz, a two-time breast cancer survivor, who founded Sharsheret; and Jonathan Greenblatt, founder of Ethos Water, which provides drinking water to impoverished children. Many of the inspirational speakers shared stories of overcoming illness and personal adversity, in addition to their connections to the Jewish community. They also featured community and social entrepreneurs on the massive stage such as Jordan Wolfe from CommunityNEXT in Detroit, and Shoshana Boyd Gelfand, the Director of JHub in London.

I asked many participants about their level of current involvement in the Jewish community. While only the Federation surveys will be able to tell exactly, anecdotal evidence suggests that most of the participants are engaged in some way with their Jewish communities back at home. There were also many age-appropriate, Federation fundraisers, programmers, and lay leaders, in addition to Jewish organizational professionals who were there to participate and present. It is the hope of organizers that those already involved with the Federation will bring back enthusiasm from TribeFest and previously un-engaged participants will be more likely, in the future, to become engaged in local activities.

Sunday and Monday programming culminated with a mash-up of dinner, drinks, music and a shuk of Jewish organizations and initiatives from everywhere. Ethiopian crafts, and Israeli High-tech projects were present along with groups like Israel Forever, Nefesh b’Nefesh, AEPi, and Repair the World. Rabbinical seminaries also had booths. Relatively obscure but eminently talented Israeli acts, reggae band Hatikvah 6 and rocker Aya Korem, were a huge hit in addition to American hip hop artist Kosha Dillz, and the Israeli American band Moshav.

TribeFest participants were fortunate to be joined by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson whose company owns the Venetian. The Adelsons participated on Sunday and Monday and made themselves available to speak with participants for nearly two hours at Sunday’s Mashup.

There were other gatherings on the periphery of TribeFest. A leadership track, a rabbinical track, and some independent parties. Jewlicious and another event organizer, E-3 from Denver, created a huge sensation with a cocktail party replete with DJ and extravagant drinks, in one of the hotel’s finest 8,000 sq foot Chairman Suites.

One of the most memorable moments for me came towards the end of TribeFest. I found myself laughing with 200 other participants at one of the worst on-line dating profiles in the history of Jewish online dating, which was being displayed as an example of how-not to create an online persona. The room, full of single Jews, many of whom with tales of woe and disappointment from the dating experiences among their tribe, offered advice to the speaker about how to make the profile better. And this only made the audience laugh more.

The primary motivations behind getting Jews to Vegas for TribeFest were opportunities to socialize with other Jews and the attractions the city offers. But the primary message they carried away was not one of hedonism and excess. Most came away embracing the Federation’s mission to help Jews in need, Israel, and to serve as dedicated members of the tribe.

The organizers were clearly interested in how many participants took advantage of the subsidized stays in Las Vegas to conference and how many to party, after facing criticism from some about last year’s event. Event participation was recorded for each person by tracking their conference badge via RFID, a wireless non-contact system that uses radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer and store data. Among the key things that JFNA wants to learn are which issues resonated most deeply with participants to help shape future events, and how to use data on individual participants’ interests to help connect them with programs in their communities.

TribeFest is the best thing going for JFNA — a significant organizational and communal accomplishment for the largest charitable network in the Jewish world. So while participation on a national level at their annual General Assembly convention is down, and Federations around the country are downsizing, TribeFest’s 1,500 delegates is more that last year’s participation and shows no sign of slowing down.

Taking off my observer hat for a moment: TribeFest, like Limmud and Jewlicious Festival, has my backing. We need many more creative efforts to bring Jews together for the purposes of connecting with one another, becoming connected to and inspired about Jewish community, and, yes, partying with fellow Jews.

Our people — and especially those in their 20’s and 30’s — sorely need these experiences as part of their Jewish identity. The number of young Jews around the country eager for opportunities for Jewish connection is huge.

Rachel Dratch, herself of TribeFest participant age, told me, “TribeFest feels very community oriented…. It’s nice to plug back into the Jewish community, I feel a bit unplugged. Its good to recharge and get the Jewish energy going again.” Many others echoed her sentiments.

Building a Jewish future requires us to deploy new and creative ways of engaging our people who are often only partially committed to creating their own Jewish futures. The Jewish Community in North America has tools to engage the Next Generation.

As Sheldon Adelson told me, “Tomorrow’s adult participants are what will connect one generation to the other. These [young] people are the cement. Gatherings like [TribeFest] are the cement to connect generations.”

TribeFest, Jewlicious Festivals, and Limmud, are engaging young Jews by bringing dynamic people together as speakers, teachers, performers, and participants, in intense communal Jewish experiences. These immersive programs help this generation feel proud, feel connected, solve problems, and understand that they are a valued part of the Jewish community.

This approach is working.

————-

Rabbi Yonah is Director of Jewlicious. Follow him on twitter.com/rabbiyonah.

Chag Pesach Sameach from the Federation!

Dear Friends: 

As the Rabbis tell us, Pesach is a time of redemption, not just the historical redemption of the Israelites   from the ancient Egyptians, but of our own redemption, in each generation. Every year we are instructed to experience the Passover as if we were there, because in fact we are, as the recent events in Israel, in Toulouse, at UCSD and throughout the world remind us every day.

As the Board Chair and new Interim President & CEO of your Federation, we'd like to take this opportunity to wish you, your family and our extended Jewish community Chag Pesach Sameach, Happy Passover. May you be surrounded by family and friends and experience the joy of your own redemption this season. May the words of the Shechehyanu prayer be real for all of us. May we each remember and be grateful for life, for sustenance and for the ability to celebrate the season of our redemption.

As most of you know by now, this is also a time of change at Federation. Claire Ellman has been our Board Chair for four months and Michael Sonduck has been our Interim President & CEO for two weeks. While we each are in our new roles for only a short time, we have known each other and worked together for more than seven years. We are both committed to seeing Federation through the challenges of this transition and are embracing this as an opportunity to improve it in every way. We'd now like to report to you on what we're doing with the able assistance of the Federation Board of Directors and staff.
 
This month, we launched a transition plan to focus volunteer and staff attention on the most important work we have to do and issues we have to face. These include successfully closing this year's annual fundraising campaign; preparing grant recommendations to support the more than 40 organizations in San Diego and throughout the Jewish world that receive funds from Federation; preparing next year's budget; assuring staff continuity and morale; and addressing the myriad daily management and leadership challenges all organizations face.

With the leadership of Caryn Viterbi, we're planning for the review and renewal of Federation's vision and mission, a process last undertaken in 2001 and 2004 respectively. Our Board feels strongly that engaging community leaders and members is essential in this process. We will complete this work within the next four months and look forward to reporting to you on our progress.  

The search for a new President and CEO will follow shortly on the heels of the vision and mission work. Brian Tauber and Theresa Dupuis, both long-serving members of the Federation Board, are co-chairs of the search committee. They are already at work selecting committee members, screening search consultants and refining the process. While the transition, vision and mission, and CEO search work launches, we are also striving to fulfill Federation's commitment to maintaining a strong, vibrant Jewish community in San Diego and throughout the world. Here are a few highlights:

More than 50 community representatives and leaders met on February 29 to launch the new Jewish Community Relations Council. The JCRC will be our Jewish community's "external affairs" arm, focusing on intergroup and interfaith relations, media and government relations, advocacy for Israel and the Jewish people locally, in California and nationally. 

Last week, 35 YAD (Young Adult Division) members from San Diego joined over 1,500 other Jewish young adults from across North America for the second annual TribeFest in Las Vegas from March 25 to 27. Dan Weiss, San Diego’s TribeFest coordinator said "Tribefest was an incredibly worthwhile conference for everyone who attended. We discussed topics on how to motivate and involve Jews in their 20s and 30s, become active in the community, embrace our culture and spirituality, network, and give back. We met other young Jews just like us to learn how their communities are thriving while promoting the ingenuity of San Diego's Federation, YAD events, Clusters, and programs. And Vegas certainly showed us a good time!"

On March 23, 15 local Jewish organizations gathered to receive $100,000 in grants from Federation's Innovation Fund and to listen to David Cygielman, founder and President of Moishe House (Federation's first Innovation grantee), speak about the power and future of innovation in Jewish communal life.

On Sunday, April 15, at 1:30 p.m. the San Diego community will present a special Holocaust commemoration (Yom Hashoah) program. On Tuesday, April 24, at 7 p.m the Israel & Overseas Center of Federation will host Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Day of Remembrance. Both events will be held at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center.

More than 40 community partners and event underwriters are working with Federation’s Israel & Overseas Center in the final planning stages for this year's San Diego Celebrates Israel Festival to be held on April 29 at Ski Beach in Mission Bay Park. Last year more than 2,000 people attended the annual free event, and more are expected this year. 

In March, the Partnership Together (P2G) joint committee of San Diego and Sha'ar HaNegev leaders met in Sha'ar HaNegev, Israel, to determine which projects will be jointly supported through Federation's Israel & Overseas Center grants.

With funding from an anonymous donor, Federation launched The Mitzvah Makers, a new program in collaboration with area synagogues that inspires values of tzedakah and tikun olam for bar and bat mitzvah-aged young people.

Please take a few moments to follow this link to the Federation website to learn more about these programs and all the work of Federation made possible by your generous support. Your gift to the 2012 annual campaign makes our work possible.

Please take a moment to watch this one minute youtube video as together we celebrate our freedom.

If you haven't yet made your gift to the 2012 Campaign, please click on this link to DONATE NOW!

May your Passover holiday be filled with love, blessings and the joy of freedom.

Thank you, Chag Pesach Sameach,



Claire Ellman
Board Chair

Michael M. Sonduck

Interim President & CEO

Friday's Innovation Celebration a Huge Success!

More than 50 community and Federation leaders, professionals and grant recipients came together today to celebrate innovation in the Jewish community. In 2011 and 2012, Federation has awarded about $200,000 to seed and support projects that stimulate increased Jewish engagement and deepen Jewish identity. Ten, 2011 grantees were honored for their accomplishments in improving the lives of people with disabilities and mental health issues, training college students how to respond to anti-Israel movements, helping Jews who are struggling in today's economy, and other projects. New 2012 grantees also were announced (see chart). 

2011 Grantees Awarded 2^nd Year Funding - $50,000

Project	Organization/ Fiscal Sponsor	Description
Chesed Home	Hope Village San Diego	First home for Jewish adults with mental illness in San Diego County. In year one they secured property with 4 homes, developed business plan, website and marketing collaterals. Leveraged close to $200,000.
Emergency Fund	G'mach - Jewish Gift Closet	Collects and provides services, money, used goods for those in need. Secured location and committed to initiate tracking of numbers served, in first year of funding. Leveraged $27,000.
Friends at Home Training and Learning Packets	Friendship Circle of San Diego	Enables Jewish teens to provide in-home Jewish holiday training for children with disabilities. Trained teens to educate Jewish children with disabilities about holiday celebrations, established 26 weekly teen visits with Jewish children, and developed evaluation program including a parent phone survey. Leveraged $2,500.
I-Pitch for Israel: Jewish Student Leadership	Anti-Defamation League	Jewish student leadership classes for college students to respond to anti-Israel rhetoric on campus. Increased numbers served and doubled training sites (UCSD and SDSU). Participants include students from Miramar, Palomar, Mesa, Southwestern and National University. Leveraged more than $3,000.
Jewish Culture and Hebrew Class Subsidies	Tarbuton	Provides educational programs emphasizing Israel, Israeli culture and Hebrew. Increases cultural exchange and understanding between Israeli-born and Diaspora-born Jews through wide variety of classes in modern Hebrew and Israeli cultural heritage. Provided scholarships for children to attend two different types of classes and increased student enrollment in holiday program to 84. Leveraged $14,500.
Jewish Discovery Expo	Chabad Jewish Student Life	Focus is on uniting Jewish young adults through hands-on Jewish experiences. Developed strong social media to engage young professionals in shofar factory, olive oil press and other events. More than 180 participated. Leveraged $4,000.
Jewish Gene Screen Outreach	Victor Center	Creates awareness among Ashkenazi Jews about the 19 heritable diseases and connects families to local screening services. In year one, trained more than 30 representatives of Jewish organizations about the prevalence of Jewish genetic diseases and secured significantly reduced cost of testing from $500 to $25, increasing accessibility.
Pathways to Judaism	Pathways	For unaffiliated and intermarried families to engage in community. Thirteen families began participating in 11-week course, taught by six rabbis representing three movements. Leveraged $40,000.
Shabbat Vibes	Congregation Beth El	Engages young professionals with fun, educational and social Shabbat experiences. Committed to increasing tracking in year two. Leveraged $3,500.

2012 New Grantees - $50,000

  

Project	Organization/ Fiscal Sponsor	Description
Bible Raps	National Conference of Synagogue Youth	Fuses rap music with Jewish discourse to engage and educate Jewish teens, building and strengthening Jewish identity. Teens from current NCSY programs, JCC Teen space, Young Judaea and Hand Up Youth Food Pantry at JFS will be targeted for participation.
Camp Gan Israel	Chabad of Oceanside	Provides the only summer day camp experience for Jewish children in North County’s northernmost coastal and inland communities (Oceanside, Vista and San Marcos) in an informal Jewish educational setting.
Israel Engagement and Education	House of Israel	Showcases the history and culture of Israel to the San Diego Community and general public using multimedia displays and special exhibits. The House of Israel will expand its hours of operation, increase local access and provide part time staffing to support volunteer force.
Jewish Culture Club	National Conference of Synagogue Youth	Engages Jewish Teens in exploring their Jewish identity, inspiring them to create a connection to the State of Israel and to become more involved in the San Diego Jewish community through leadership-building activities.
Jewish Multimedia Xperience	National Conference of Synagogue Youth	Uses theater and mixed-media to convey Jewish concepts and values to Jewish teens, addressing issues such as anti-Semitism, body image (shmirat haguf) and greed. Post-production workshops are geared to fostering thoughtful and robust discussions.
Russian Jewish Community Services Outreach	Jewish Family Service	An outreach program developed to counter deceptive proselytizing tactics by Jews for Jesus currently impacting elderly Russian Jews in downtown San Diego.
Social Action Leadership Institute	Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center	Israeli advocacy teen leadership program in which participants will travel to Washington, D.C. to meet with prominent political leaders and implement three, year-long advocacy projects in San Diego.

 David Cygielman, CEO of Moishe House, which Federation was instrumental in bringing to San Diego in 2010, presented on his experiences expanding to 46 Moishe Houses in 14 countries.  He challenged Jewish funders and organizations to develop a systemic approach to sustaining post start-up or "mezzanine" innovation projects to maintain an enduring impact and further strengthen the Jewish community. 

Remember, Honor, and Teach: Righteous Among the Nations - Yom Hashoah April 15

On Sunday, April 15, at 1:30 p.m. the San Diego community will present a special Holocaust commemoration (Yom Hashoah) program. The event will be held at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, in the Garfield Theater, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. The theme will be Remember, Honor, and Teach: Righteous Among the Nations.

The Reverend Canon Jack E. Lindquist will speak on ‘Righteous Gentiles’ and Nazi Resisters Among the Christian Clergy: Eight Examples. His talk will be followed by a brief filmed interview of Irene Gut Opdyke, a Polish Christian rescuer who, among other lifesaving actions, hid 12 Jews in the cellar of a German officer’s villa, where she was the housekeeper.

The program will open with a military color guard reminiscent of camp liberation, a musical presentation, and a traditional candle lighting ceremony, with candles lit by Holocaust survivors and their descendants in memory of those who perished. Interspersed throughout the program will be musical selections. The entire event will last approximately 90 minutes.

The Rev. Canon Jack E. Lindquist is a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He serves as a priest and Canon for Biblical Studies at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego. Since 1970 he has taught at the University of San Diego in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Canon Lindquist’s most popular course in the Catholic university is entitled “The Holocaust and the Churches in Nazi Germany.” He teaches about the complicity of the Lutheran and Catholic churches and their leaders in the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust, and also about the courageous few among the Christian clergy who resisted the Nazis.

The Holocaust Commemoration has been held in San Diego for more than three decades and is the largest in the United States. Last year more than 700 people attended.

The event is a collaboration of the San Diego Rabbinical Association, Jewish Community Relations Center of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, the New Life Club, the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center Jacobs Family Campus, the Center for Jewish Culture, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Community Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information about the 2012 Community Holocaust Commemoration contact Linda Feldman, Director, Jewish Community Relations Center, at 858.737.7138.

Jewish Federations Reflect Upon Funeral for Victims of Toulouse Shooting

A mourner reacts during a joint funeral in Jerusalem for the victims
of Monday's shooting in Toulouse, March 21, 2012. via VOA

At a donor lunch this morning, Claire Ellman, Board Chair of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, lead a moment of silence as we reflect on the tragic events of this week and offered our community's deepest sympathy to the victims families.  

Meanwhile - significant developments took place today following the killing on Monday of a teacher and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France.

The bodies of all four victims were flown to Israel overnight, accompanied on the flight by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, family members and leaders of the Jewish community in France. The victims, 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, his sons Arieh, 5, and Gabriel, 3, and seven-year-old Miriam Monsonego were all laid to rest in Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuchot Cemetery, accompanied by over 2,000 mourners. The Jewish Federations of North America’s senior vice president, Rebecca Caspi, represented Jewish Federations at the funeral, accompanied by Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh Jeff Finkelstein.

As the funeral took place, police and special forces in Toulouse, France had surrounded a house apparently containing Mohammed Merah, the terrorist who carried out the shooting, who was identified as a member of an Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group. Reportedly, the gunman is alive inside the house and has admitted to carrying out the attack, as well as a separate shooting that killed three French soldiers.

A large number of dignitaries attended the Jerusalem funeral including Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Minister of Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and both the country’s chief rabbis.

Turning to the victims’ families during his eulogy, Edelstein said: “An entire nation embraces you.”

Rivlin echoed the sentiment saying that “Jews around the world are standing with us today, in shared pain, facing people filled with hate; murderers, who kill indiscriminately.”

“I’m here to represent the French government and president,” Juppe said, adding that he wanted to express his solidarity with the families of the victims. “This was a despicable and intolerable murder. The blood of both the French and Israeli nations was spilled in the vicious attack.”

JFNA’s Israel office also represented Jewish Federations at a special committee meeting in the Knesset yesterday that discussed the shooting. Attended by the French ambassador to Israel and numerous members of Knesset, the session discussed security precautions, potential aliyah from France and other issues connected with the attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu severely condemned the terrorist incident. Read his full remarks.

After the funeral, JFNA’s Rebecca Caspi penned the following comments:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about the cost of Jewish education all morning. I’m not thinking about the price of tuition or the longer school days we sometimes have to talk kids into accepting. It’s something much more basic. I’ve been thinking about how a father who chose not to pursue fortune or fame, but to dedicate his life to teaching, lost his life because of that decision. And I’ve been thinking about his wife – now a widow – who lost not only a husband, but her two beautiful sons. Aryeh was only six, and Gavriel just three. And I’ve been thinking about Miriam Monsonego who got up to go to school and was brutally murdered instead.

“None of them had to be at the Ozar HaTorah school in Toulouse this Monday morning. They were part of a Jewish community that was building a Jewish future – securing our continuity as a people – by investing in education. And for that, they were sacrificed.

“Jeff Finkelstein and I met to attend the victims’ funerals together. On this beautiful spring morning in Jerusalem, we were part of a single community – our global Jewish family. Alongside murmuring in French, Hebrew and English, we were repeatedly startled by the keening of relatives whose grief poured out unrestrained. I hope that they will somehow draw comfort from the presence of so many of their fellow Jews – we distant cousins – who mourn their terrible loss.

“Let the memory of Rabbi Yonatan Sandler, Aryeh Sandler, Gavriel Sander and Miriam Monsonego be a blessing.” JFNA and its Secure Community Network will continue to monitor the situation closely and report developments as needed