Shownotes
Judaism has changed a lot over the last few decades. Jewish families look a lot different than they have in the past. Interfaith families are growing and many people find it hard to fit into the traditional synagogue model. Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker saw an opportunity in this to create a community that is founded on support, acceptance, and love. They call this non-profit organization as JTown. With congregations being spread out, they offer a place where people can easily get together and inspire one another. They share what it means to be in a community and how they foster relationships and help those in need.
Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker: Creating A Community For Interfaith Families With JTown
We are incredibly fortunate. We have with us, Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker, Cofounders and Codirectors of JTown. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to visit with us.
Thank you for having us.
Tell me a little bit about JTown, what it’s all about, who you serve and why you started it?
JTown is a nonprofit organization that we created to offer opportunities for people to create connections and community with other Jewish people. The people we say to people who share their lives. We have a lot of interfaith families and so we want the interfaith person to be as comfortable as the Jewish person. We created this place, there isn’t a place, it’s a metaphoric place. We don’t have a building. We say JTown is wherever we are together.
We have a lot of social things that we do for fun. We do a lot of community service. That’s a huge part of our mission. We offer a lot of team programming. Then we do some alternative worship services, which means that we do a Shabbat service once a month. We do High Holidays services and Passover and they’re all lay-led. We are leading them but we encourage everyone to participate. We typically will have five or six people come out from the community and take part in the service each time we do it.
As you were talking about why you did this since you we wanted to form a community, was there not a community available for these folks?
Judaism has changed a lot over the last few decades. Jewish families look a lot different than they have in the past. The research is showing that there are more interfaith families now than Jews married to Jews in the in the generations that are coming up. A lot of people don’t fit into that traditional synagogue model anymore. Also, we’re very spread out. It didn’t use to be like that. We used to all congregate in one little neighborhood or a part of the city. Denver has it sprawling, so our Jewish people and their families can become a little isolated and not have a place to be Jewish.
Amy and I worked together for about ten years at a traditional synagogue. We both left it at about the same time a month apart and spent a few months each of us looking for another job. It was hard because at our previous job, we had so much passion. We cared so much and we loved the people so much that we couldn’t find anything to replace that feeling in a work environment.
With your other job, what was it that you guys were in-charge of?
We did the administration of a synagogue. I was the Executive Director for some time. I have also been the Assistant Exec, Program Director, Preschool Director. Cindy was the Communication and Marketing Director. She had also worked with our religious school as the Assistant Director. We both had various roles over a long period of time. One thing that we were always passionate about was the relationships that we created with people.
You knew everybody. One way or another, you’ve been a director and what you did as well. There wasn’t anybody who walked through the door that you didn’t know, didn’t know their kids or didn’t know the family.
It’s a pretty large congregation and Amy was there for 23 years. She was a kid when she started.
Before we forget for the folks, we do have fruit drinks on board. We have the JTinis on board.
Everything has a J in front of it that you’re sitting in J headquarters. We have a J-dog. Then we both have mothers who are very supportive so they’re J-mamas and Cindy created this wonderful cocktail called the JTini.
People are going to want to know, what are the ingredient secrets?
Life would be better for just about everyone if they would make themselves a JTini.
It’s not they think it is.
A little trivia. This drink started out as the Amytini, which was a party for Amy’s retirement party. I wanted to create a signature drink for her. It started as an Amytini. Then when we started JTown, we made it our official drink. It’s a Deep Eddy’s Ruby Red Grapefruit Vodka. You can make it with soda. This is a loquat, a grapefruit-like club soda, a little lime and that’s it.
You’ve got to get your daily fruit.
Then I get my exercise going up and down the stairs.
Supporting people is not really about what you say; it's how you make people feel.
You’re lifting those heavy bottles.
You have to drink it with a certain attitude like you’re going to conquer things.
You both have history, you had success and a community. Then you retired and you guys were out there searching for the next thing. Take me to the time where you guys were looking at each other and saying, “Do you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to form JTown.”
It was down here. We got together and were talking. It was hard to leave jobs that we were out for so long. We had a staff that was very close and was like our work family. It was hard leaving for a lot of reasons. We were getting together talking and it was like, “We have such this unique skill set. What can we do with this?” She was like, “We should do something together.” I was like, “No. I want to do something different.” She started to talk about creating what we were missing most about where we came from, about the relationships, the people and the importance of offering these opportunities for our community.
When you formed this, you went through the drill. You read your 501(c)(3) application and you got squared away. What did you do?
This is such an important piece is that we sought support from people we knew. People who knew us and could help us, could be resources for us, and who also would be honest with us if they didn’t think what we were thinking would resonate. We had some wonderful support. Those people have basically become our board. They helped us apply for our 501(c)(3). They’ve helped us with our mission and have continued. We’re blessed by that. That’s what helped us get our start too.
You’ve got some positive feedback from the folks, your advisory board. You’ve got that and you go, “Maybe there’s a need.” Because I’m assuming that you responded. When you went out for your first marketing effort to see if people were wanting to take and participate with JTown, what reaction did you have?
Some good and some not so good. Part of it is that it’s a little hard to explain what JTown is. A lot of people thought we were trying to open another synagogue. That’s not at all what we are trying to do. The people who are still around and especially people on our board loved the idea. We were pretty far along and we went fast. I think it was 90 days from conception to our announcement and commencing the business. We didn’t get our 501(c)(3) that fast.
After six months we had our 501(c)(3), which was pretty miraculous.
It didn’t sound fast but compared to fourteen months to two years, it’s fast.
We were lucky they accepted it the first time.
We have some good advice. Amy and a couple of people on the board worked very hard.
Do you guys keep track of the members in JTown?
Creating A Community: It’s very important to seek the support of people who could help and be resources to you that would tell you honestly what does not work.
We’re not a membership organization. We have something we call a JTowner fee that offers discounts and tickets to our High Holidays, which is our most important set of worship services during the year. People can receive those tickets and discounts. If they don’t, they can still participate equally. They’re not seen any different, but they don’t get the same frequent flyer miles as we put it. It’s worked well. We do have over 100 households now who are JTowners or pay that fee, plus probably another 50 or 60 households who participate in what we do. It’s growing all the time.
The reasoning behind that is we don’t want people to feel like they have to pay to be a part of a community. If you come, you’re a part of what’s happening and each thing we do is a community thing. You don’t have to make a financial commitment or any membership commitment. We think that that model is very different. It’s taking a while for people to understand that. Hopefully, I think that it is getting to be more well-known.
This is what you are doing between the two of you pretty much all the time.
Full-time plus.
When you look over from the start and you go, “I wish I’d known that when I first started.” Have you had any of those moments?
If anything, I wish I would have known the reaction that’s been so positive when we started. There were times at the beginning where you’re considering, “Are we doing this the right way? Are we taking the right approach?” What we’ve found out is that all the things, all the way we set up our mission and our goals is resonating with people. It’s not any doubt that we’re going to make it, which is exciting. We used to do percentages.
In the beginning, I was a little skeptical. I was like, “We have a 10% chance of making this work.” Then she checks in with me every now and then, “Where are we at?” In a year, we got from 10% to 100%. It was scary and it was risky. If we could have known a little earlier that it would work.
Creating the culture of welcoming is not just about welcoming somebody as they come in. It's also about saying goodbye and knowing they’ll come back.
We don’t have any regrets from day one until now. It’s been fulfilling for us as the staff people are fulfilling for us as participants in the community. Our families have engaged with it, our husbands have supported it and been not only our biggest fans but have worked it with us in many ways. My teens are involved. Cindy’s kids are so supportive and one plays on our softball team. That means something when you have that support, not to mention our mothers and our parents. We’ve been very fortunate very blessed to have that.
Looking out to the future. How do you see the organization changing, morphing or going into the future?
I think that it’s going to be the people who come. We want the people who come and participate to be the ones that plan the future. We try to facilitate that. We always have our fillers out for what people are saying and what people are wanting. Then we think through whether we can make it happen successfully or not. It’s why we started slow and added things slowly because we want to know that we can do it and do it right. Let’s say we have a bunch of young families who want to start something together, that’s for young families in particular, which what we are starting to do. Then we’ll go that direction with them.
When you first started out and you said, “We’re going to provide this particular thing for our community.” What was that?
It was a hard time because I’ve been a member at where I worked since I was six years old. I didn’t know anything else as far as the Jewish community. The High Holidays were very closely coming up. My dad had been very sick in the last few years of his life. He couldn’t sit in services. It just was too much and it was too hard. There were several years where our little family would take chairs and we’d go to a park. We’d sit in a circle, we’d go through the book together and we’d do our little service. It was like, “Maybe we could do something like that and maybe there are other people that don’t necessarily have somewhere to go. Let’s see what happens if we have 50 people. We are going to be thrilled.”
We have 230 of our three services.
You over-succeeded.
Our first set of services, a man walked in that I had known and looked at me and said, “I’m lost.” It directed us many times back to why we’re here. I looked at him and said, “No, not anymore.” Who knew at that moment where we would be that man has been to every event that we’ve had with his beautiful wife. It has motivated us in such a way. We support the people that come in so many different ways. The saying about it, “It’s not what you say it’s how you make people feel,” that’s what Cindy and I focus on. We could have the most amazing program that is spectacular, perfectly directed and presented or we could have the worst. If people have a good feeling when they’re there, they feel accepted, welcomed and included, that’s what they’re going to remember. In addition to some of the other details, but we believe that no matter what you do. If people feel good about being there, they’ll be back. They keep telling us, “We’ve never had this feeling before,” which is unusual.
For the folks out there going like, “What do I do to create that feeling?” We hear that and you go, “That’s nice. I would like to do that.” What did you guys do specifically to start trying to create the atmosphere or a culture of welcoming?
Creating A Community: No matter what you do, if people feel good about being there, they’ll be back.
Initially, it’s part of both of our personalities in general. A lot of people say this but we don’t judge. We believe that everybody is on their own journey. Everybody has their own Jewish identity. It’s all fluid and so we accept people where they’re at. It doesn’t matter who they’re married to, where they live, what they look like or how much money they have. None of it matters. You’re welcome here. We try to be accepting of people for who they are and be friendly. We always make a point to remind people that this is our community so please make sure you introduce yourself to people that you don’t know because it’s not just our responsibility, it’s everyone’s responsibility to make this feeling. It just can’t be for Amy and I.
When you say that to them, do you see them behave differently? Do you see them introduce themselves around?
We do. We give them hints and expectations. When we start a worship service we say, “You have only one job to do and that is to introduce yourself to other people.” When you’re in line at dinner or you sit down at the table, meet each other. This is what makes the community work and they do. It’s like, “Thanks for the direction.” Then they’re off and running. It makes it much easier for Cindy and I work our way around the room. We also try and be very aware of everybody. We look around the room and when somebody’s not sitting with someone else, we will sit with them. We are out to make everybody feel good.
Do you guys have the gift of when you walk in a room by the time you’re done, you know everybody in there?
It depends on the room and the vibe. Cindy talks about the vibe a lot.
Your vibe attracts your tribe and I didn’t make that up, I actually heard that and I loved it. It was a couple of months in and I’m like, “That’s exactly our mission is to create that vibe.” We are tracking this tribe of people. We usually have 50 or 60 people at our Shabbat dinners, which we have once a month. We have one long table always. It’s one community and we’re all together and it’s different people. Some people come every time. We usually have at least a few new people every time and so it’s a mix.
You go to various meetings and the people that know each other and they always take and go hang out with the people they know. That’s the biggest problem. That’s not my nature. I’m not going to know everybody in the room. By and large, I’ll go stand off to the side. This lady came up and said, “I saw you standing over here by yourself. I always made a point to find the one person standing by themselves and go talk to them.” Since that time, I’ll go to the place and I’ll look for that one person.
Is that hard for you?
It’s out of my comfort zone.
It is for me as well because it’s not in my comfort zone to go walk around the room, schmooze and introduce myself. It’s getting easier and I am doing it over and over again. I’m usually the one in the corner.
Not anymore. Also, we’ve also found that it’s not just about welcoming somebody as they come in, it’s also saying goodbye as they leave. It’s being aware that they’re leaving and asking them to come back. We would love to see them again. That’s as important as anything we do.
Sometimes your best thoughts come in the most unusual places.
It’s like welcoming them into your home. That’s quite the mission for you to come out of where you’re at and say we’re going to take in. I think about you’re trying to solve a pain point effectively. If you guys felt it, heard it, there was a need, somehow or another you felt moved to point to solve the pain point. Either we think it’s there then you execute and the board must have thought so.
We spent a lot of time, weeks, talking about what we called our whys. I know that’s not our original idea. We watched something that talked about how important it is to do that first. It’s not a natural way because usually, you want to
