2023 Funded Programs

Here is a little glimpse into this years’ activities:

There have been some very well attended and appreciated Jewish activities at The Colonnades this year. A lot of this is due to a team of Jewish residents who are planning, advertising and supporting the programs. The group calls itself “All Things Judaic.”

In February there was a screening of The Levys of Monticello followed by a discussion led by Phyllis Leffler. In March a video presentation of America's Jewish Women from colonial days to the present. In April we had a Passover seder, and in May a very engaging talk by Dori Katz a Holocaust survivor whose brother in law lives at The Colonnades. She spoke about her experiences which she wrote about in Looking for Strangers.

Last week, we showed Stephen Spielberg's semiautobiographical movie The Fablemans. This week we showed the first part of a video seres about the shtetl. It was very well attended and we were asked to show the next part as well. We all learned the importance of the shtetl and how Anatevka was representative and wasn’t.

In August The Colonnades resident poet will be presenting a program on Yiddish poetry. More is planned for the fall, including an Israeli movie about a prized etrog and welcoming guests for Sukkot, and a storytelling program and latkes for Hanukkah.

Herb Keutchen's 93rd birthday happened to coincide with CBI's Raise the Roof party. He totally enjoyed himself at the party, was greeted by many friends, and was sung to by the whole crowd. Herb said it was the best birthday present ever! There are also plans to show a movie this fall about the beautiful furniture that Herb made for CBI. The furniture includes the Tree of life, the amud in both the main sanctuary and the small sanctuary.

The Wise aging groups are continuing to have engaging discussions on topics ranging from friendship to resilience, to legacy, and death.

And on a final note-a small birthday party is planned this week to celebrate one of our elders' 90th birthday!!

Finding Jewish community in your 20s-30s can be difficult. We find ourselves as young adults caught between childhood tradition and finding our own way in new towns and friend groups. Having a place to come together, thanks to the generous support of UJFC makes such a big difference.

We are able to design programming for all Jews and their families regardless of their practice, and create community bonds that last beyond the hours of the event. We have hosted events with multiple other groups including CBI, Chabad, Blue Ridge Kehilla, and are excited to do some intergenerational learning with Senior Connections come fall.

Two event highlights from this year are attending an amazing acoustic Zusha concert and the summer launch of our book club facilitated by Victoria who will launch her own programming soon based on Rosh Chodesh practices. This is yet another example of the incredible connections that are possible when we have a partner in an organization like UJFC.

CBI Forest School, now entering our fourth year, uses our natural environment to help create a deeper understanding and respect for the world, as described by the Jewish value Shimrat Adamah. We believe that this in turn creates a passion for learning and a love for community within our children. We view our students as co-creators in their curriculum and daily discoveries. As Jewish educators, we observe and listen to our children and build lessons and experiences based on their interests and needs. We offer the children an ever changing classroom filled with trees, creeks, rocks, animals and opportunities to witness cycles of life. Experiencing Jewish time, starting the week with Havdalah and ending with Shabbat reinforces the natural rhythms of life where our children experience first hand the ups and downs of that a day in nature may bring! As we celebrate each image of the individual child, B’tzelem Elohim, the forest provides the ability for them to grow and build lifelong skills.

We also said “Shalom Havera,” to our beloved and dedicated teacher, Mary Meslar. Mary has worked at CBI Preschool teaching our two’s classroom for the past 20 years. She raised an entire generation of Jewish toddlers and we wish her a happy and well deserved retirement. She earned her stripes as a true mensch.

Submitted by Director Jill Abbey-Clark

CBI Camp, now rebranded CBI Journeys, is the summer home of Jewish children in Charlottesville. This summer we enjoyed over 80 children ranging in age from 2 to 12 with 11 of our CBI teens serving as camp counselors. In addition, we have 7 of our college aged, CBI raised kids returned as counselors, too. Our camp is a time to see how our community operates full circle! Young adults, who were not campers so long ago, now lead Shabbat singing, planning team chants and teaching through Jewish values.

We are enjoying our youngest campers this summer in the synagogue. The building feels like old times. They are making challah, splashing in sprinklers in the courtyard, and visiting McGuffey Park. Our older campers are spending their weeks swimming, kayaking, playing sports, writing skits, creating art and competing in Capture the Flag at the Lewis & Clark Center and Fry Spring’s Beach Club. They are making Jewish connections while engaging in epic water balloon extravaganzas and singing their beloved camp songs like “Boom Chicka Boom” and “Shiru.” We are thrilled to see the camp thriving in its new iteration.

Submitted by Director Jill Abbey-Clark

The Brody Jewish Center has had another wonderful year of bringing together the UVA Jewish community and empowering students to take ownership of their Jewish identity! Thanks to the support of organizations like the UJFC and our generous donors, the BJC has been able to continue to innovate with our programming, train more student leaders, and provide more immersive experiences.

In order to connect students to meaningful and relevant opportunities, we utilize an intern cohort to meet students where they are - building personal relationships and understanding their interests. Our interns receive weekly mentorship from our staff and participate in monthly Jewish learning sessions. With this foundation of support students are equipped to engage their peers with one-on-one coffee dates, home-hosted Shabbat and holiday meals, and programming that covers all aspects of the Jewish experience, from cooking classes to Tikkun Olam projects in the Charlottesville community. Along with staff engagement meetings and our major holiday programming, the BJC engaged 636 students throughout the year! Of these 636 students, 309 of those students met our in-depth metric, either attending 6 or more events and engagement opportunities with the Brody Jewish Center, or participating in an immersive experience.

We see these students often at our weekly programming offerings: Shabbat services and dinners on Fridays, Bagels on the Lawn on Wednesdays (a student favorite!), and Kvetch and Kvell on Thursdays, where our Assistant Director Annie Weinberg brings snacks to a library and hosts students as they build community through either bragging or complaining about their week depending on what they need. These weekly offerings provide consistent opportunities for our community to gather, allowing for the vibrancy of Jewish life at UVA to be on full display almost every day of the week!

Students who participated in immersive programming with us this past year often did so on a trip to Israel with the Brody Jewish Center. Over the course of the school year and into this summer, we sent over 110 students to Israel! We took two full buses on Birthright Israel over winter break, with another Birthright Israel bus traveling after classes finished in the spring. We currently have students doing internships across Israel right now as part of the Onward Israel program, and we debuted a new Perspectives trip this summer to build on our efforts to engage non-Jewish students around Israel.

We’re incredibly proud we can provide such varied and impactful programming for our students. Seeing how students engage with their Jewish identity and grow into impressive Jewish leaders throughout their time at UVA is incredibly rewarding and meaningful. We continue to be grateful to be able to do this important work and can only do so thanks to your support.

Submitted by Hillel Assistant Director of Development Truman Brody Boyd

In May, a group of 9 moms from the Charlottesville area traveled to Israel through the MOMentum program.

The group joined 300 Jewish women from around the world, all of whom came to deepen their connection to Judaism, the land of Israel and the Jewish community.

Our travels included Tel Aviv, where we visited the old city of Yafo and the Ethiopian Israeli museum, Tzfat, where we visited an ancient mikvah, the Judean desert where women who had never received a Jewish name were able to participate in a beautiful Jewish naming ceremony, and Jerusalem where we toured the old city and danced at the wall as we welcomed Shabbat.

It was an exciting, emotional and spiritual journey which continues now that we are home, with monthly gatherings.

Our first meeting was spent reflecting on our experience, what we learned and what we want to put into practice in our homes and our community. One woman has started baking challah on Shabbat with her children, another has begun turning off her phone on Shabbat in order to connect more deeply with the meaning of Shabbat, and another has chosen to continue deepening her knowledge of Judaism through reading Jewish books.

While each woman found different meaning and inspiration from their trip, the common experience was a deeper connection with each other and with the Jewish people as well as a desire to bring their inspiration back home.

Next month we will be painting hamsas as we discuss our plans for the coming months!

The Charlottesville Jewish Oral History project (CJOHP) began in 2017. The intent was to document the growth and change in Charlottesville’s Jewish community from the 1950s on. An earlier effort to capture the foundations and growth of the community occurred in the 1990s and led to the publication of “To Seek the Peace of the City” -- a joint effort by Carol Ely, Jeff Hantman, and me. The CJOHP, based on individual interviews of those who have lived experience in Charlottesville and have witnessed the dramatic change over time, will document and preserve the insights of many who have a long history to share.

By 2019, 48 people had been interviewed. They included some who sadly are no longer alive. I am so grateful to have been able to speak with people like Robert Langbaum, Jack Levenson, Henry Abraham and Jack Hirsch. Through their stories, we learn so much about life in Charlottesville in the 1960s – a time when fewer and fewer people from our community are present.

The COVID pandemic hit the US in full force in the early months of 2020. As a result, the CJOHP was forced to defer further interviews. But the project did not cease. Instead, the time was used to develop a relationship with the digital Institute for Applied Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at UVA. All 48 interviews have now been coded for key terms and themes. In the past year, I have engaged a UVA student to help with this process. By the end of the summer, we will have entered all 48 initial interviews into a database, written summaries of the interviews, and posted relevant photos of interviewees and artifacts they shared with us. While the database is not yet publicly available, it will become a major resource for understanding local history, and will be available both for our community and for researchers about the Jewish South more generally.

We intend to interview approximately another 40 people in order to have a representative sample. Interviews will resume by the end of the summer. Hopefully, the second round of the interview stage can be completed within a year.

Much of this work has benefitted enormously from UJFC funds. Working with UVA to create the database, coding of the interviews, and populating the database could not have been accomplished otherwise. I am so grateful for this support.