Q: Your organization has a new name. Congratulations! Seemed like a long labor.

A: It took two and a half years, but we finally have a name that states our mission: JEWISH MILESTONES.

Artwork by Nicholas Wilton

• 200+ callers were helped through our information and referral call center
• 24 participants attended a workshop we conducted for ritual facilitators and other professionals in Denver at the invitation of the Rose Community Foundation
• 12 participants enrolled in the second cohort of our intensive seminar series: The Facilitator Peer Group
• 2 newspaper articles were written about JM (one was a cover story--see image above)
• 1 radio interview held with JM's Rachel Brodie(to listen, click on link below)
• 2007 (first quarter) is the timing of the official re-launch of our website. For now, please stop by our temporary headquarters: www.JewishMilestones.org
• 37 people have been interviewed (thus far) in our strategic planning process
• 3,2,1 = The number of consecutive years of funding from our major grantors:
  The Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund (third year!), The Walter & Elise Haas Fund (second year!) and The Andrea & Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (first year!)
• 0 Offices (we do however, have a well-appointed P.O. Box and three lovely home offices filled to the brim. We also have an eye out for a great space in North Berkeley).

“You could call it an East-Meets-West relationship except in this case, I was the one from the East—having grown up in New York—and Mimi was the western one—having grown up in California.” The reason this elicits a laugh is that Tamir is an American Jew of Ashkenazi descent and Mimi grew up as an American Catholic of Korean descent.

Over the course of their relationship Mimi made the decision to become a Jew. When she and Tamir decided to get married, Mimi had yet to complete the conversion process. They knew that theirs would be a Jewish family, but they learned that, despite her commitment to living as a Jew and his family’s membership in a synagogue, until her conversion was complete, the rabbi was not allowed to perform the wedding. While they understood the policy dictated by the rabbi’s denomination, Mimi and Tamir felt strongly about having a Jewish ceremony and, as Tamir said, “for both of us it was enough that she was on her way.”

After a consultation with Jewish Milestones, they were referred to an officiant, Maggid Jhos Singer. After a thorough exploration of Mimi's commitment, Jhos agreed to officiate at their wedding. Jhos’s work with them “made us able to be truly present in the experience. It worked on all levels: practical, spiritual and personal, in the sense that issues that were particular to our family situation were resolved in creative and thoughtful ways.”

Two years later, when Mimi was pregnant with a boy, she and Tamir called Jewish Milestones to discuss their many questions and complex feelings about ritual circumcision.

“Through our discussions with Jhos and Rachel [Brodie], we were able to articulate our concerns and process our feelings with two people who had thought a lot about these issues.” JM also referred them to articles on the subject, gave them the names of a variety of people who perform circumcisions (from pediatricians to traditional mohelim) and the names of other clients who had similar struggles. “They weren’t judgmental. They didn’t have an agenda. It felt safe, and ultimately, the process enabled us to make a decision that we could live with.”

Take an eclectic assortment of Jews, fifty-eight in all; stir in one broad but infinitely compelling (at least to them) topic: Jewish in America; place out of cell-phone range; and shake hard for forty-eight hours. The result? An intense, mind-altering experience known as The Conversation.

Convened by Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The Jewish Week (N.Y.), The Conversation 2006 was held at the end of October in Wye River, Maryland. JM's Rachel Brodie attended.

The Conversation makes use of a conferencing method called “open space technology.” Developed in the business world and based on research showing that, for many participants, the most valuable parts of a conference are the conversations they have in the hallways between sessions, open space conferences are all “hallway” all the time. With no panels or plenaries, participants connect around topics of mutual interest. Conversations can last minutes or hours, and take place sitting on the floor of a meeting room, around a table, on a walk. Participants move in and out, based solely on the level of their interest. This potent mix of freedom and opportunity is designed to free the mind, allowing it to soar and skid, plunge and backtrack.

JM's Rachel Brodie attended. She had this to say: “I was inspired by the people I met, their commitment to making Judaism—in all its various guises—vital and vibrant in our time. Most of all, I was grateful for the opportunity to talk about the purpose and activities of Jewish Milestones without having to condense it into an elevator pitch. It was also very gratifying to see how much excitement was generated by the work we are doing."

We made it into Slingshot ’06! That makes two years in a row that our organization has been selected by the folks at 21/64 (a division of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies) as one of the fifty best Jewish organizations in the country! We were chosen for our “ability to be innovative, demonstrate an impact, show leadership and organizational effectiveness.”