As a native New Yorker — where there are Jews and Judaism everywhere you turn — Ellen Kort wasn’t much interested in Jewish community. After the Lawrence Jewish Community Center welcomed her with open arms in 1976, her eyes were opened to just how important such a community really is.
That Jewish community — and then ours in Greater Kansas City — has been benefitting ever since. From volunteer to executive director of KU Hillel, to the Jewish Community Center and now the Jewish Heritage Foundation, Kort has been serving the Jewish community in one form or another for more than 35 years. That’s about to change as Kort has announced her intentions to retire as the Jewish Heritage Foundation’s executive director, a position she has held since May of 2005, in the very near future.
Once she retires, Kort plans to spend more time with family — including her grandchildren here in the area and another one “on the way” in New York. She hopes to exercise her body for health and keep her mind in shape by volunteering with several organizations, including continuing to mentor BBYO Director Annie Rifkin, a mission she lovingly took on earlier this year, and to serve on the board of directors of the International Center for Music at Park University.
FROM MUSICIAN TO EXECUTIVE
Kort’s volunteer work with the music department at Park as well with another organization that will help bring music into the lives of young people living in Kansas City’s Northeast neighborhood brings her back to her musical roots while allowing her to use the skills she has honed over the years in the Jewish community.
In fact, music was Kort’s very first love. She explained that she became immersed in piano music when she was just 9 years old. When it came time for her parents to decide whether she should devote her time to training at Julliard or studying for a Bat Mitzvah, they chose Julliard.
Over the years she studied hard, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the State University of New York, graduating with highest honors, and a Master’s of Music degree in piano performance from the University of North Carolina.
But as she taught piano at both the university level and privately, Kort said she began thinking music wasn’t the career for her because it is simply too isolated.
“You really need to be practicing four or five hours a day, by yourself. It just felt wrong for my personality,” she said during a recent interview in her office at the Jewish Community Campus.
She enjoyed being with people, so while she was teaching at Baker University in Baldwin, Kan., and her husband Stephen was teaching at the University of Kansas, she pursued a Master’s of Science degree in post-secondary counseling from KU.
Lawrence was the place she decided to change career path, and felt the need to be Jewish for the first time in her life.
“My only experience with Judaism growing up was going to services on occasion and certainly observing the holidays, and being with other Jews,” said Kort, whose father was a Holocaust survivor.
Kort and her husband decided to attend services at the Lawrence Jewish Community Center, now known as the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation, and, Kort explained, the group of people “immediately took us in.” It was 1976 and she remembers the person on the bimah, Jack Winerock, was wearing blue jeans.
“I fell in love with the place because you didn’t have to get dressed up … all my previous associations with Judaism was everybody showing off and what I called New York Jewish,” she said.
It wasn’t only the dress code that appealed to her.
“If you didn’t come to services, they missed you,” she said, noting that they got involved with the whole chevra of young faculty people and she took her first Hebrew lessons there.
Her association with the LJCC led to her first job in the Jewish community as executive director of KU Hillel in 1979.
“Frances Horowitz (now president emerita of City University of New York) and a group of other people went to the Federation and asked for $14,000 to start a Hillel,” Kort said, explaining most of that budget went to her salary, which was small but competitive for the job at the time.
“It was great. At that time there were no Jewish fraternities or sororities at KU. So Hillel was a gathering point, and my social work background was a big help here. I learned Jewish things along with the kids.” At Hillel she was even “Yente the Matchmaker,” facilitating introductions that resulted in a couple of marriages. Those couples, and their children, are now active members of the local Jewish community.
GOING TO KANSAS CITY, KANSAS CITY HERE I COME
When Stephen Kort landed a job as an attorney in Kansas City in 1984, ironically he decided to change careers in Lawrence also, Ellen Kort left Hillel and moved here with her young family. She became the Jewish Community Center’s cultural arts director, which gave her the opportunity to mesh her love and knowledge of music and culture arts with her work in the Jewish community. By the time the Jewish Community Campus opened in 1988, she was the program director and planning cultural arts events. Eventually she was promoted to assistant director, all the while continuing to work as program director.
Then in 1992 JCC Executive Director Dave Belzer passed away. As assistant director, Kort filled in as interim executive director. During the search process, Kort decided to throw her hat in the ring. It was a decision that wasn’t universally cheered. In fact, she said, the search committee chair told her as candidates were ranked, she sunk to the bottom of the barrel.
“But the search committee took so long doing their job, I had the opportunity to show what I could do.”
She was hired as the first, and so far only, female executive director of the JCC and held that position until 2004.
“Bob Gast (former executive director of the Jewish Federation) always said, ‘Stay in a position 10 years, then it’s time to go.’ I don’t think I’ve followed his lead necessarily, but that was about as long as it was and I felt I was leaving at a good point. The Center was in good financial shape, we were in good programmatic shape,” she said.
She laughs about it, but seriously notes that being the JCC director is difficult, and something you do 24/7. That’s because it’s hard to go anywhere without someone wanting to discuss an issue involving the organization.
“If my husband and I wanted to escape and really see a movie or just be by ourselves, we’d go to North Kansas City where we would know no one,” she recalled.
LEADING JEWISH HERITAGE FOUNDATION
As soon as Kort retired, she knew she wasn’t cut out to be “a lady of leisure.” So she set out to quietly to find a position, this time one where she didn’t have to fundraise.
“That’s one of the hardest things you do in a nonprofit,” she noted.
A few months later Steve Israelite, the first JHF executive director, decided to retire. Since joining JHF 10 years ago, she has overseen the JHF’s move from Missouri to Kansas as well as it becoming a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation. (See box, Page XX)
“It made a statement that we really are the ----JEWISH---- Heritage Foundation,” she said.
Under Kort’s watchful eye, JHF showed its Jewishness in another way as well.
“Our board made a clear decision that we were going to give two-thirds of our funds to the Jewish community and one-third of our funds to the general community,” she said.
At JHF Kort said that besides her role as an administrator, her main responsibility was to facilitate the work of the board. A part of the board’s agenda was having JHF take on a larger role in helping with issues involving the Jewish community — most notably assisting the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy and Village Shalom attain financial stability and undergo long-range strategic planning.
“The Funders Council felt it was important that someone from the Funders Council actually sit on those committees and work with them. HBHA was more than delighted to have me. They were wonderful to work with,” she said.
During her tenure, JHF became a leader in funding aging in place initiatives.
“We got it going, but we don’t do much in that arena now,” said Kort, noting that the Mid American Regional Council currently takes the lead in what is now called aging in community initiatives.
A COMMUNITY SHE LOVES
In the 35-plus years she’s worked with the Kansas City Jewish community, Kort has followed the philosophy that you have to live, eat and breathe in it in order to be successful.
“At least here, I think people that do not do that are not nearly as successful working in a social service agency.”
She has thoroughly enjoyed the relationships she has cultivated over the years with the lay leaders at JHF and the JCC.
“I don’t know if God was looking down on me … but I have had the most incredible run with presidents. For that I am so fortunate. My philosophy, which is not the same as a lot of my contemporaries, is that the lay people need to be committed to what they are doing and as the executive director your goal is to facilitate and empower them to do it.
“If you can get the people to take responsibility for what they are doing, then my life is smooth sailing,” she continued.….
Kort doesn’t really know when her last day at JHF will be.
“I absolutely love what I do,” she said. “This is a fabulous job. Working with the Jewish Community Foundation has been just a tremendous boon. The fact that Lauren (Hoopes, JCF’s executive director) and I can go into each other’s office and try to solve the world’s problems and come up with an idea maybe someone should try has been a real surprise, but a lovely one.”
If things can be coordinated properly, Kort will stay on long enough into 2015 to mentor the person hired to succeed her, and show him or her firsthand just why she thinks the job is so fabulous.