Dear Friends,
On Monday I had the honor of speaking at the State House in front of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism for the Commission’s seventh hearing. I was privileged to represent the JCC alongside Kevin Stanton, Executive Director of the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security Office (EOPSS) of Grants and Research, and Jeremy Yamin, Vice President, Security and Operations at CJP, to advocate in support of the crucial grants that fund safety policies and infrastructure at Jewish nonprofits such as the JCC and many others. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to lend my voice to such an important cause. The support provided by the Non-Profit Security Grants has enabled us to focus on our mission and core work of building and strengthening the social fabric of our Jewish community in a safe and secure way. Every organization deserves the same.
The following is what I shared with the Commission:
Senator Velis, Representative Cataldo, members of the Commission, thank you for having me today. I am Dr. Lily Rabinoff-Goldman, President and CEO of JCC Greater Boston. The JCC is one of the largest educational, cultural, and community-building organizations in our region. Every year, we serve about 50,000 people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, through our early childhood centers, summer camps, fitness and aquatics programs, and our regional engagement opportunities. In addition to our Leventhal-Sidman Center in Newton, we have three satellite locations around Greater Boston. I am grateful to be here today to represent both the JCC community and, especially, our amazing and dedicated staff team.
I want to start by saying that the JCC is not a security organization, and we are not an organization that is driven by fear. We are a place that is guided by our mission to build an expansive and thriving Jewish future. Our goals are about identity development and creating connection and belonging, and I hope that next time I have the opportunity to meet with you, we will be talking about both the impact and the joy that are at the heart of the JCC experience. It is the case, however, that a pre-requisite to our capacity to meet our goals is that we are able to do so in a safe and secure way.
I am not a security expert. I am an educator. Even so, I take incredibly seriously the fact that if, god forbid, there was a security breach at the JCC, not only would it be on my watch, but I would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t think we had done everything we could to prevent it. As a result, my colleagues and I, along with our lay leaders, are incredibly grateful for the support we receive from colleagues like Jeremy and his team at CJP, as well as our local law enforcement in all of the towns we work, whose guidance is crucial to our planning and responsiveness.
As in any non-profit doing direct service work, every year, our budgets are razor thin, and I cannot overstate how important the support we have received from the Non-Profit Security Grants, both for capital improvements and for personnel, have been in our ability to do our work safely and well. Over the last several years with the support of NSGP, we have been able to harden ourselves as a target by increasing access control, the ability to monitor what is happening on our sites and our ability to communicate and respond quickly in an emergency. We are so thankful for this infrastructure support. Security costs however have only gone up for us. The amount we have to spend on security is a hidden cost that hinders our ability to offer additional scholarships to campers, to invest in innovative programs that would serve our community, or to significantly raise wages for our employees in ways we would like to do. We are so grateful for the ongoing consideration that the NSGPs offer us in helping offset some of those costs so that we can remain focused on our core work, which is building community, doing the jobs families need done, and strengthening the social fabric for the Jewish community and beyond.
Thank you.
