Jewish Federation of Cincinnati

Jackie Congedo — In Conversation

“Jewish tradition challenges us to invest in both concrete behavior (keva) and right intention (kavanah). The practices of democracy, too, require both deed and intention, both the actions we take and the meaning we make. The Talmud says that a prayer without kavanah fails to fulfill one’s obligation. Likewise, our acts of civic participation fail when we ignore (or worse, snicker at) the meaning behind them. When our civic obligations become rote and lose meaning, the keva lacks the kavanah, and democracy suffers.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of Cincinnati invests resources in people, projects, and partnerships that implement both keva and kavanah, action and intention. 

Through participation in the Greater Cincinnati Voter Collaborative (GCVC), JCRC has helped foster voter activism by providing various opportunities for education, outreach, and engagement as well as leading advocacy and transportation to the polls initiatives. GCVC is a local nonpartisan alliance of organizations working together to advance regional civic and electoral engagement. In the past two years, GCVC has hosted 71 voter engagement events, engaged 131 volunteers, and transported 121 voters to the polls. 

In the past year, JCRC also began piloting Leaders in Light, a civic leadership institute designed to bring diverse community leaders together from across Cincinnati to learn about and combat antisemitism, extremism and hate, and inspire community change. The cohort meets monthly to explore an array of relevant topics and discuss with experts in the field how they experience and see these issues arising in their own respective communities. In hearing each other’s stories, these leaders are building relationships, challenging the status quo and collaborating on ideas to strengthen Cincinnati’s civil society.

Additionally, JCRC engages the wider community through learning opportunities, such as its speaker series “To Bigotry No Sanction: Jewish Perspectives at the Crossroads of American Democracy and Pathways Forward” which examines the current crisis in America. Each program unpacks a different aspect of the changing dynamics in our democracy, and focuses on what we as citizens can do to strengthen it. Coming up in this series, Yehuda Kurtzer will join us to explore the responsibilities of citizenship and the calculus through which we understand both the burdens and the privileges of belonging. Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and a leading thinker and author on the meaning of Israel to American Jews, on Jewish history and Jewish memory, and on questions of leadership and change in American Jewish life. Register here for an opportunity to practice kavanah (intention) through learning with Yehuda Kurtzer.

As we light our hanukiyot (hanukkah menorah’s) we remember that the story of Hanukkah is one of many historical recountings of the Jewish people standing against oppression and fighting for our freedom. According to Rabbi Holzman: 

“American democracy resonated with him because it fulfilled a certain Jewish narrative into which he had been educated: God liberated us from Egypt to be a free people, governed by a system of ethics and laws, tasked with bringing the human project to fruition. Our Jewish ancestors came to America seeking not only opportunity, but also justice, not only to be welcomed, but also to end the exile.” 

At JCRC, we know that Jewish security depends on a just society for all. Join us in pursuing justice through both keva (concrete action) and kavanah (intention). “Judaism, Citizenship, and Democracy” with Yehuda Kurtzer is a free online event that will take place on Friday, December 10 from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm.