Dear Aish Family,
There is so much I want to tell you this week. I’ve been to three cities in North America and sat with the most incredible people. Yet, that is not what I want to focus on today. What I would like to share with you is why I joined Aish.
Unlike so many heroes that work for Aish, I did not have a strong relationship before coming here seven years ago. I did not know our founder and beloved leader Rav Noach Weinberg zt”l well. I had never met our current Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits. I had occasionally used Aish.com for educational material.
On the negative side, I was confronted by an organization which had slipped into financial hard times. There were competing interests and theories as to how to right the Aish ship after the passing of Rabbi Weinberg. Our Leadership Academy (Yeshiva) was bereft of students. I called a close friend at the time in a major Jewish organization who told me to “stay away until Aish gets their act together”.
The one point I just couldn’t ignore was that everyone I spoke to at Aish truly loved and cared about the Jewish people. This was the one organization that I had been to in my long career where all day and night they thought long and hard about how to help their brothers and sisters. They truly felt that the Jewish people composed one large family. Even though they had never met most of these Jews, they loved them so fully and completely.
Fast forward seven years and I believe that we still hold the value of love above all else. When you walk into Rabbi Berkovits’ office you see a map of the world with Jewish populations listed for all four corners of the globe. His mandate is clear. We must share Jewish wisdom with every Jew. It is that spirit that has created AishVision2030. We are engaging 3 million Jews – 20% of the entire global Jewish population – with learning Jewish wisdom. That is how we will create a culture shift that reverberates beyond Aish. That is how we will fulfill the mission of putting learning Judaism back into “Jewish identity.” We know it will improve people’s lives and give them a relationship to the Almighty. That is what we are all about.
This Sunday, we will officially embark on our 3for3 campaign, a crowdfunding initiative to raise money to support Jews all over the world.. Together, over 250 volunteers will come together to raise $3M to spread timeless Jewish Wisdom throughout the globe. But we need your help to improve the lives of Jews around the world. We need your help to engage Jews you’ve never even met. We need your help to bring back your brothers and sisters.
re our Jewish brothers and sisters.
