Good Shabbos KC, a new Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City program, hopes to be a hospitable way to bring Jews together for a monthly Shabbat dinner while raising awareness about its mission: To sustain and enhance Jewish life at home and around the world. {mprestriction ids="1,3"}Once a month on the first Friday of the month, beginning Feb. 6 (the Shabbat before Super Sunday) through and including Jan. 1, 2016, members of the Jewish community will invite people to their homes for a Shabbat dinner through this effort coordinated by Jewish Federation.
It is hoped that a minimum of 10 different community members will be recruited each month to host Shabbat dinners in their homes or elsewhere. Each host will invite the guests of their choosing and conduct Shabbat in whatever manner is halachically meaningful to them. This equates to 120 different hosts, and assuming each host invites a minimum of four people to Shabbat dinner, more than 700 people in our community will participate in Jewish Federation “hosted” Shabbats over the course of a year.
The evening will begin with the giving of tzedakah — a custom many observe before lighting their Shabbat candles — using a specially-designed Jewish Federation tzedakah box as the depository. The evening will continue with both spiritual and physical sustenance. Before dessert, the host will read a brief story, written by local writer Victor Wishna, about a program that is funded by the Jewish Federation in Kansas City, one of its overseas partner communities or anywhere in the world.
Each host will receive a Good Shabbos KC “Shabbbox” containing candle sticks, the special Jewish Federation tzedakah box, a challah, a laminated sheet with various blessings that can be used and a copy of that month’s Jewish Federation story.
While Tracy Shafton, the chair of the Jewish Federation’s engagement and leadership committee, is credited with this idea, she quickly points to a slew of other volunteers and staff members who worked to turn the idea into a ready-to-launch program.
This new program, and possibly others down the road, came about because the engagement and leadership committee has been charged with looking at all the programming that Jewish Federation does.
“Is it effective, does it need to be changed, do we need to be doing something different? So we’ve been evaluating existing programs and brainstorming new things,” Shafton said.
A Jew by choice, Shafton had often heard of the iconic JNF blue tzedakah boxes that many people grew up with and longed to do a project with tzedakah that had a similar impact on people.
“One of the things that bubbled to the top in the brainstorming was doing some sort of Shabbat dinner initiative because we know lots of people in the community are getting together for Shabbat and it’s happening organically. But the question was: How can Federation capitalize on that and be part of that and help in that community building?” she said.
Shafton knew she had two parts of a plan — to give tzedakah while enjoying a Shabbat dinner with other people in the community. The last piece of the puzzle that fell into the place, according to Shafton, was when Rae Ringel, a certified executive coach and founding President of The Ringel Group, met with Federation leaders in May 2014 for a session on storytelling to help them recognize and fine-tune the many compelling stories that illustrate the value of Jewish Federation. This idea, and the stories about Jewish Federation she was hearing, fascinated Shafton.
“Market research tells us the vast majority of the community understands our mission, our tag line, our five areas of service but the question that kept nagging in the back of my mind is do they know these stories?” Shafton wondered.
To Shafton, the opportunity to tell these stories at Good Shabbos KC dinners is the centerpiece that really makes this a Jewish Federation Shabbat. Shafton, who has been a Jewish Federation volunteer for many years, gets very emotional about these stories.
One story she retells is a story from Shari Stimetz, who recently retired as Jewish Federation’s assistant executive director, about an abused wife who came to Jewish Federation for help with nothing but the clothes on her back. Jewish Federation arranged for her to get emergency funding, connected her with partner agency Jewish Family Services and started the ball rolling for the woman to be able to support herself and her children.
“The stories go on and on. We have them about people who have gotten a job through Jewish Employment Services, the people we feed from the JFS Food Pantry, the kids who couldn’t afford camp, the scholarships available for Jewish education,” she said, not to mention those they help in Israel and in Eastern Europe and all over the world. “I think those are all compelling stories and I just want people to hear them.”
“I think we do God’s work every day,” she continued.
Shafton said the main goal of Good Shabbos KC is to build community and to bring people together. The storytelling component plays a role here as well.
“It’s the human stories that compel people to want to be involved in our work,” Shafton said.
Jewish Federation’s Financial Resource Development Director Derek Gale agreed with Shafton that there are “a lot of great stories about the good and important work that is going on in Kansas City and around the world that not a lot of our community know, either through lack of opportunity or the fact that we haven’t done a good job of getting the information out there.
“These stories really highlight the work of all the agencies in the community and that we work with around the world,” he continued.
The Jewish Federation will be sharing these stories — there will be at least two about each of the five areas of service: Safety net services, youth and family services, senior adult services, Jewish identity and education and Israel and overseas — through social media for the benefit of those who are not attending a Good Shabbos KC dinner that month.
Gale said these dinners will be hosted by Jewish Federation and its partner agencies’ board members and volunteers.
“We hope those who are invited will be those who are not as familiar with Jewish Federation and the partner agencies and we open up our arms and our homes and invite people in who are maybe looking to connect or maybe haven’t found their niche in the community,” Gale explained.
However, Jewish Federation will not be telling hosts who they should invite.
“I think if we communicate that we hope this will be a community-building program that some of the attendees will be new faces and people who have either come to the community recently or who have maybe been here but haven’t connected,” Gale reiterated.
Alyssa Dinberg, Jewish Federation’s outreach and engagement associate, said a big reason the Good Shabbos KC concept appeals to her is because “one of the beauties of Shabbat is that it breaks down the barriers.”
“It makes it okay to go to a stranger’s house for dinner, so inviting people who are not engaged really encourages people to learn what Jewish Federation does at an informal level,” Dinberg said.
As Gale continued to explain, Jewish Federation hopes this program will expand awareness of what the agency is, what it does and who it helps.
“We believe that given the right number of hosts and guests, we can reach hundreds of new and additional people,” he said, noting that he hopes the attendees will “have their interest piqued enough to attend a Jewish Federation program whether it’s something communitywide like a holiday celebration or something targeted to a particular demographic group.”
Jewish Federation will follow up with people who attend Good Shabbos KC and make sure they receive invitations to events “and opportunities to be philanthropic,” Gale said.
“We hope that through the giving on tzedakah we’ll raise additional funds to help us fulfill our mission to sustain and enhance Jewish life at home and around the world,” he said.
The current plan is to coordinate the program for one year. Gale said it will be evaluated throughout the year and it’s possible it could be extended.
“We hope that the program will be a complete success,” Gale said. “There’s a lot of potential to extend the program, to establish strategic partnerships and to strengthen it.
“We are not doing this to compete with any other programs. We hope it will raise awareness of the good work happening in our community and it will be a community builder and any way that we can work with others on that and other goals that will impact the community positively, we are happy to do it.”
Dinberg pointed out that this effort will target all age groups, including those considered next gen.{/mprestriction}
