05/30/2025
Wishing You a Meaningful Shavuot from JPro Cleveland!
As Jewish nonprofit professionals, we don’t just mark the seasons of the Jewish year, we carry them, translate them, and hold them up for our communities in times of joy and in moments of sorrow. This week, as we prepare to celebrate Shavuot, we find ourselves holding both.
It is often said in our tradition that “we were all there at Sinai,” which is a reference to a midrash (interpretation of biblical text) often studied on Shavuot that presents the idea that all Jews; past, present, and future, stood at Mt. Sinai to receive the revelation of Torah collectively.
This holiday, which is meant to recall the awe and unity of Sinai, arrives alongside unspeakable tragedy. Several days ago, two young peacebuilders, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. while leaving an American Jewish Committee (AJC) event focused on humanitarian aid. While most of us did not know them personally, their work feels achingly familiar. They lived the kind of mission-driven, bridge-building lives that so many of us strive for in our own roles.
Sarah and Yaron dedicated their lives to peace. Not the easy kind of peace, the one we imagine in polished speeches, but the daily, difficult, often thankless work of creating dialogue where others see only division. They were planning a future together. Now, they will not see the peace they labored for, but we can, and we must, carry that mantle forward.
We’ve been thinking about the words from Pirkei Avot (2:16):“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” If there were ever a moment to lean into that teaching, it’s now.
As professionals in this field, we are asked, again and again, to hold heartbreak and hope in the same hands. To guide communities through grief, to build programs and partnerships, to model resilience when the world feels brittle. The work is rarely simple, and too often it goes unnoticed. But it matters. It mattered to Sarah and Yaron, and it matters to those we serve.
So, this Shavuot, as we stand together—physically or virtually—at the foot of Sinai, let’s carry their memory with us. Let’s dedicate our learning, our prayers, and our actions to them. And let’s recommit ourselves to this sacred, enduring work of building a world shaped by Torah’s call for justice, dignity, and peace.
May their memories be a blessing and may we all find strength for the work ahead.
