News

As Our Children Grow

November 18, 2024

For the last 20 years, my mother and I have debated whether I was an "at-risk" teenager. She says I was; I always thought I was just waiting—waiting for someone to engage me, make me feel valued and assist me in bringing out my talents. Eventually, someone did, and it changed everything. Everyone in their life at a certain point wants to feel valued and be given real responsibility.

There’s a direct correlation between the amount of responsibility that you feel and the length of your prayers. When I was newly married, my prayers were short because my worries were few. It was just my wife and me, and life was simple.

But as our daughters came along, the stakes got higher, and my prayers grew longer. With each child comes so much to worry about. The world today is so complex, especially for raising kids.

Our children are growing up fast. On Yom Kippur this year, I asked one of our teenage daughters how she was doing with the services in synagogue. She answered “fine” in that teenagery sort of way with a roll of her eyes. Then she admitted that she was kind of relying on me to pray for her, since she knew how much thought and concern I put into my prayers.

At first I was slightly annoyed when I heard that, but I walked away from her feeling pretty good. I love that she knows I'm thinking about her and that she feels secure in my support and love for her. Also, knowing that someone is relying on me makes me want to have their back even more.

This is exactly how I feel about our growing organization and the grad students we serve.

Back in September, we had our annual Partners Summit for Jewish grad student leaders across the country. We have it every year, but this year it felt different. Students kept coming up to me and telling me that if not for JGO, they wouldn’t have much going on. It struck me that for many of them, JGO is their only support system; the only community where they feel truly supported in their Jewish identity in a time of uncertainty and fear.

They are relying on us. And that means I will do everything in my power to have their back.

We’ve projected that we need to raise $2.8 million to meet our growing budget this year. It’s a reflection of our growth and the increasing needs of over 10,000 grad students on 155 campuses.

It’s my responsibility to raise this money, and I’ll admit – sometimes I miss those simple days 13 years ago when I was a one man show raising a budget of $150k. But there is no going back. Our students, like our children, need us – and I want the responsibility. And so my prayers keep getting longer.

I invite you to join me in this mission during our annual crowdfunding matching campaign which takes place this coming week. The main days are November 20th and 21st, but our campaign page is already live now! The 3x matching is on so every dollar you give will have quadruple the impact.

As JGO grows, please share in this responsibility along with me.

https://www.charidy.com/jgo



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