Shavuah Tov,
At the Tucson J, we talk often about what we do: the programs we provide, the experiences we create, the partnerships we nurture, and the many ways large and small, we seek to strengthen our community.
But underneath all of that is a deeper question: What kind of community are we trying to create?
Our Service Pledge provides our answer:
We create community based on Jewish values by providing the highest quality programs and services in a safe and secure environment for all people of all ages.
Those words are more than a description of our work. They are a promise.
Our aspiration is to create a kehilah kedoshah a sacred community. A place that is sacred and special because people know they belong. A place where a child discovers confidence, an older adult finds connection, a family builds friendships, and someone walking through our doors for the first time discovers welcome. A place where people of different backgrounds, beliefs, abilities, identities, experiences, and generations encounter one another with dignity and care.
Jewish tradition teaches that holiness is created in relationship. In Exodus, as our ancestors prepare to build the Mishkan, God instructs:
“V’asu li mikdash, v’shachanti b’tocham.”
“Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” Exodus 25:8
The text does not say that holiness will dwell simply in the sanctuary. It says b’tocham, among them.
Holiness lives between people.
That is the sacred space we seek to create at the Tucson J.
Another image from our tradition speaks powerfully to this aspiration. Each evening in Hashkiveinu, we ask God:
“Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha.”
“Spread over us a shelter of peace.”
I love that image for the Tucson J. A sukkah is open and welcoming, yet it surrounds those who enter. It reminds us that community can invite people in while providing safety, connection, and belonging. At a time when too many people experience isolation, uncertainty, and division, creating that kind of place matters.
Perhaps that is what it means to build a kehilah kedoshah: sacred community is the shelter we create for one another.
But no one builds that shelter alone.
Psalm 133 offers one of our tradition’s most beautiful expressions of this idea:
“Hineh mah tov u’mah na’im, shevet achim gam yachad.”
How good and pleasant it is when people dwell together in unity.
Yachad. Together.
That word captures something essential about the Tucson J. Community is not something one CEO, staff, board, donor, volunteer, or organization can create alone.
Community is built b’yachad.
Our professional staff bring talent, compassion, and commitment. Our board and volunteer leaders bring wisdom, stewardship, and vision. Our donors transform possibilities into realities. Our community partners expand our reach and remind us that collaboration allows us to accomplish what none of us could accomplish alone. And every person who enters the Tucson J contributes to the community we are becoming.
The American musical theater canon expresses a similar idea in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel: You’ll Never Walk Alone
That promise resonates deeply with what community can mean. Sometimes community means celebrating, learning, swimming, exercising, playing, singing, or gathering around a table. And sometimes it simply means knowing that when life becomes difficult, someone will walk beside us.
That is what we aspire to be for one another: a shelter of peace, a community that walks together, a kehilah kedoshah.
Achieving that aspiration requires intention. It requires excellence in our programs and services, an unwavering commitment to safety and security, genuine welcome, and continually asking whether every person who comes through our doors can see themselves as part of this community.
Our Service Pledge holds us accountable to that work.
To our staff, thank you for bringing this promise to life each day. To our board and volunteer leaders, thank you for your wisdom and leadership. To our donors, thank you for investing in people, relationships, and belonging. To our community leaders and partners, thank you for recognizing that our greatest opportunities are best addressed together.
Kehilah is not something we simply join. It is something we create.
We create it when we welcome someone, learn another person’s story, choose partnership, show up for someone who needs us, and recognize that our lives and futures are connected.
We create it b’yachad, together.
May the Tucson J continue to be a kehilah kedoshah, rooted in Jewish values and open to all. May we spread a sukkat shalom, a shelter of peace, over all who enter our doors. May we continue to walk beside one another.
And may we never forget that sacred community can only be built the way community has always been built:
B’yachad. Together.
Cochenu b’Achduteynu | כחינו באחדותינו | Our strength is in our unity.
Am Yisrael Chai | עם ישראל חי
Todd Rockoff
President + CEO, Tucson J
