Federation Annual Meeting - April 18, 2010
Join us for the Jewish Federation of Southern Illinois, Southeast Missouri and Western Kentucky's 68th Annual Meeting on Sunday, April 18, 2010 at 11:00am.
Luncheon and Meeting to be held at Agudas Achim Beth Israel Temple, 225 North High Street at C Street, Belleville, Illinois.
Our Program will feature Todd Gindy and our new Camp Director Rick Kodner.
Please RSVP to the federation office at (618) 235-1614 or (877) 714-6103 or debra@simokyfed.com
$20.00 per person, $5.00 for childen 13 and under.
Dietary Laws Observed.
Todd Gindy
He grew up in a very Reform family in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Most everyone he knew was Jewish yet they were neither active in the community nor observant at home. He had a Bar Mitzvah and then they quit the Temple. Fast-forward 25 years. He had many friends who were quite active in the Federation yet he couldn’t figure out how they had so much time for all this Jewish stuff. Because of his business, he met a lot of people and many of them are active in the Federation. As such, he received multiple invitations to many events and every invitation had the names of his friends and people he did business with (or try to) on the backs of these invitations. So one day he said to his wife we should get involved because we can’t continue to take from the community and not give something back in return. Keep in mind that he didn’t grow up in a family that practiced any regular philanthropy so he was somewhat on his own following the lead of his friends.
They went to a couple of events and had a few inspirational moments that he can’t tell you about and he joined a Federation peer group that met once a month. He attended these breakfast meetings for about a year and half and from such learned about many community wide activities that he participated in with his family. He referred to his involvement as a passive participant. He was showing up to events but in his mind he was not in anyway engaged.
So one day he called his friend Carol Koransky, the executive director of his Valley Alliance and asked her to meet with him and find him something to do - anything except join a committee.
The events that followed this meeting changed his life forever. What seemed at the time to be a chance encounter was truly a crossroad. His story is of a 40 year old married man with two kids who was looking for something outside himself to feed his soul. His friend Carol opened a door to a remarkable journey and he quickly walked through it.
He'd like to tell you more but his life continues to be a work in progress. Ihe feels a tremendous responsibility to share his gift of inspiring others to discover within themselves something money can not buy. That is that the gift is not in what you give but the endless gifts you receive when you give.
He will stop here and hope that this enough to entice those within our broader community to invite him into theirs. He promise they will not be disappointed.