…was the theme of the 79th Savannah Jewish Federation Annual Meeting. Not that we all got together in advance to coordinate our remarks, but the theme(s) of the remarks from the four congregational rabbis, outgoing President, Kenneth Sadler, Federation President, Linda Sacks, as well as my own comments were quite similar.
A thriving Jewish community depends on a safe, secure community. Through our relationship with the Secure Community Network, we are deep in the process of hiring a Community Security Director who will provide individualize assessments for our community organizations (they have already done Threat Vulnerability Assessments for the JEA, Congregation Bnai Brith Jacob, and Rambam Day School), train our lay and professional community, and be a liaison between the Jewish community and Savannah Police, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, Homeland Security and SCN’s national security infrastructure.
For the benefit of us all, it is essential that we all have common training and similar responses if an incident occurs.
Over the next three months, with the assistance of Memorial Hospital Head of Trauma Services, we will be having community training in Stop the Bleed (sign up through the eNews link) and will be having Active Shooter Training, Run, Hide Fight, and Security Awareness training from Secure Community Network.
Linda Sacks spoke about “What is community?”:
“A group of people with diverse characteristics, linked by social ties, common shared perspectives, attitudes, and goals whose members engage in joint actions.”
Could there be a better definition of what Federation was, is, and seeks to be?
“The Federation is umbrella organization, the beg tent, the sum total of all of the different components. Without the respect and empathy of each segment for the other segments, we are no longer deserving of the name, ‘community.’”
Linda went on to talk about her vision of unity, “a condition of harmony, a totality of related parts, the state of being joined together in agreement. Unity is difficult to find and hard to maintain. When a group of people act 5 as one and are on the same page, they're displaying unity. When we bicker and are disorganized, there's no unity. “
She went on to describe what the Federation can do towards unifying our community.
Kenneth Sadler, in his “parting comments” spoke about Linda is the right person at the right time to lead the Savannah Jewish Federation forward.
We couldn’t agree more.
Click here to read President Linda Sacks' remarks
Click here to read Outgoing President Kenneth Sadler's remarks