This is What it Means to be Part of Federation

Editor’s Note: The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta recently led a trip to Israel. Federation CEO Renee Kutner has shared her perspective on the trip.

To the community,

Warning – this message is long … but in a few minutes read I’m going to take you through five incredibly powerful days of tears, laughter, despair, hope, ingenuity, and strength, so I hope you’ll get comfortable and join me for the ride.

Our goals were simple:

*To understand the impact of our investments all across Israel – in Yokneam/Megiddo, Kibbutz Nachal Oz, and Shlomi
*To see firsthand the tremendous needs that still lie ahead, and
*To stand in solidarity with the people of Israel

There was almost no tourism. No Masada, no long market strolls. For five straight days, almost every moment was spent listening — in safe rooms, in municipal offices, in youth programs, and in underground hospital facilities.

In Nachal Oz, we sat in Adi’s home — the first house terrorists entered on Oct. 7. She described sitting in her safe room for 20 hours in the dark, listening to the terrorists right outside her door. And when she heard a Palestinian mother cheering on her son, she told us that she finally understood Golda Meir’s line about peace requiring loving your children more than you hate ours. That wasn’t politics. That was a mother just sharing her story of protecting her family.

We met Ron, a music producer who was at the Nova festival. He talked about dancing one minute and running for his life the next. About abandoning his car. About losing friends. And he told us why he keeps speaking — because staying connected to that survivor community helps him survive.

And Sigal, who lost both of her daughters in the Nova massacre, but rather than just emptying their clothes into a Goodwill bag, she started a nonprofit that empowers at-risk girls through style workshops using their clothes and others, living out her daughter’s dream of combining fashion and psychology.

We listened to Sharon, who was taken hostage into Gaza with her husband and twin 3-year-old daughters, separated from one of the girls for the first 10 unbearable days. Before she was released with the girls in the first hostage deal, she described being given three minutes to say goodbye to her husband, David, before they took him away, not to be reunited until the last hostage deal two years later. There are moments when a room goes completely still. That was one of them.

The human cost of this war is not abstract. It is personal. And it is ongoing as Israelis cope with everything they’ve experienced.  And yet — everywhere we went, we saw something else, too. We did not see an Israeli people who need to be rescued. We saw pride and an unbelievable strength.

In Shlomi, along the Lebanese border, where Atlanta was the very first Federation to invest in rebuilding, nearly 100 percent of residents have returned after evacuation. Not because it’s easy. But because it’s home. And they are rebuilding with their own hands – the new pioneers of Israel.

We heard about youth programs that take young people “from dependence to independence to leadership.” In our partnership region of Megiddo, we met adults like Nigist, who was part of Federation-supported programs 30 years ago when she arrived in Israel on foot from Sudan and now has two degrees. We saw the product of sustained investment in changing lives as seeds we planted 30 years ago have turned into today’s doctors, educators, soldiers, leaders.

In Megiddo, local leaders told us that even in the middle of war, they conducted a strategic planning process to imagine the next 10 years. That’s not just resilience. That’s leadership.

This mission reminded me of something important about Federation’s role: We are not just responding to crisis. We build systems. We invest until local leadership and government can sustain the work — and then we move to the next frontier. We stretch dollars to create the greatest impact — teaching people how to fish, not just giving them fish.

And in this moment, the needs ahead are significant: trauma support, rebuilding border communities, strengthening leadership, confronting ideological challenges around the world.

But I did not leave Israel feeling hopeless. I left feeling proud. Proud of the people we met. Proud of what this community has helped build. And deeply aware that the work is unfinished.

This mission reminded me of something important about Federation’s role: We are not just responding to crisis. We build systems. We invest until local leadership and government can sustain the work — and then we move to the next frontier. We stretch dollars to create the greatest impact — teaching people how to fish, not just giving them fish.

Standing in solidarity is not just showing up.  It’s committing — in relationship, in partnership, for the long haul. We are not observers of this moment. We are partners in shaping what comes next.

While I was in Israel, we read the Torah portion of Yitro, where the Israelites received the Torah at Sinai. It’s a portion filled with thunder, awe, and revelation.  This week, in Parashat Mishpatim, the drama fades and the real work begins.

Instead of spectacle, we receive law. Instead of inspiration, responsibility. The Torah makes a powerful point: revelation is not enough. It must become structure. Inspiration must become infrastructure. That is what I saw in Israel.

There are Sinai moments — the emotion, the unity, the moral clarity. But what sustains a people is Mishpatim: the systems of care, the partnerships, the long-term commitments that quietly hold communities together long after the headlines move on.

Mishpatim also reminds us that how we help matters. We are commanded to protect the vulnerable and to preserve dignity — not as charity, but as covenant. Not as rescuers, but as partners.

That is our work. Federation exists not only for the moments that move us, but for the disciplined, strategic, sustained work that strengthens Jewish life for the long term — here and in Israel. Sinai awakens us; Mishpatim builds us. May we continue to do both.

And if you’ve made it this far, I hope you can hold on for one more story – trust me, this one is worth it in connecting the dots of all of the elements of this trip!

Despite not being a typical tourism trip, we had two first-timers on our journey.  When I asked one of them what brought her on the trip besides our amazing chairs, she shared an incredible story with me. Her son had gone to Weber and traveled to Israel on their school trip. When he was in college, he went back to Israel to visit a Weber friend who had joined the IDF as a Lone Soldier. On that trip, he met a guy named Bar Kupershtein. Bar was a security guard at the Nova festival, taken hostage into Gaza and held for almost two years until the final hostage deal in October. She vowed that if he was ever released, she was going to go to Israel.  What she didn’t know was how Bar was connected to our community. When I had the privilege to travel to Israel in January 2024 with a group of community leaders, the first people we met were Bar’s grandparents – themselves Holocaust survivors telling us about how they we living through a second Holocaust. From that moment, he was etched in the hearts of our community.

But there’s more … Bar’s father was in a terrible accident several years ago that left him unable to talk or walk.  He goes to the Spivak Sports Center for his therapies – a longtime project that our community has been proud to invest in. We visited the center on our trip, and while we were there learning about their work, in came Bar and his father to speak with us. Bar’s father shared how he learned to speak again because he needed to advocate for Bar and he learned to stand so he could properly hug Bar when he came home – all because of the services he received at the Sports Center. Talk about a full circle moment for this first-timer participant! And this story truly exemplifies how the work we do at home, such as investing in Jewish education, ultimately intersects with the work we do in Israel.

This is what it means to be part of global Jewish people.  And this is what it means to be part of Federation.

Shabbat Shalom,

Renee Kutner, Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta CEO