Entering the University of Delaware, Melanie Schaeffer set out to do something that mattered and made a difference.

She decided she wanted to be an educator and taught fourth and fifth grade briefly during the pandemic.

“But then I really kept remembering where I felt the most at home, which is in the Jewish community, and decided I wanted to do that professionally,” Schaeffer said.

She made that happen, first as a community manager at GatherDC and currently as the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s associate director of northern Virginia community outreach.

“Throughout my life, [Jewish community] has been the thread that’s tied into all of my experiences — all my favorite experiences, all my favorite people — and where I feel like I’ve learned the most and where I really felt like I was going to make a difference,” the Arlington resident said. “I wanted to do something relevant, aligned with who I am and aligned with the needs going on in the world.”

Schaeffer grew up in Gaithersburg, where she gained what she called a “baseline Jewish education” from Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School for kindergarten through fifth grade.

“It was an amazing experience for me,” she said of learning Hebrew, Jewish tradition and Torah from a young age. “I really felt like the instruction was so kind and thorough and really got me to love being Jewish.”

Schaeffer became a bat mitzvah at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville. She had moved to northern Virginia and begun a role with GatherDC when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“It shook the entire community and it was very hard,” she said. “But I was glad that I was there to support people and to get through that challenging time.”

The young professional described Oct. 7 as a “big driver of Jewish engagement,” especially in the months following the attack.

“It really shook people to their core,” Schaeffer said. “It shook their lives in a way that brought them back to wanting to support the Jewish community and wanting to feel like they’re doing something that makes a difference.”

As the Jewish community collectively navigates heightened security measures and increased caution, she said the key is not to stray from these Jewish spaces. Schaeffer practices what she preaches through the local Federation.

“I feel like the foundational piece of all of this work is relationships,” she said. “It’s huge here [at the Federation]; it was huge to Gather[DC] — getting to know people deeply and understanding who they are and where they come from and their own experience and their experiences more broadly that shape who they are. That is really the foundation of all the work that we’re doing.”

Schaeffer’s focus is leadership development. The Federation is running its third iteration of the Northern Virginia Leadership Cohort.

“It’s to build Jewish lay leaders in the northern Virginia Jewish community,” Schaeffer said. “The basis of all of that is relationships and connectivity, and that’s the thing that I love to do the most.”

Connection is the piece of the puzzle that people require, according to Schaeffer.

“People need that on-ramp into community, which is what we’re trying to provide and build out of lay leaders who can then go into other areas of the northern Virginia Jewish community — and the community at large — and be that for other people: be that relationship-builder, that leader in the community,” she said. “We need it to be a ripple effect, and as some of the older leaders age, having new ones come in and take over is the best way for the Jewish ecosystem to continue to thrive.”

One challenge for Schaeffer, a northern Virginian herself, is the population’s constant “ebb and flow.”

“People come here for government or they come here for specific roles, and there is a sort of natural flow in that way,” she noted. “But I’ve actually found that a lot of people I’m meeting and connecting with are staying.”

She feels that this could be due to the pleasant nature of northern Virginians.

“The [NoVa] Jewish community is very approachable and welcoming, and people feel like they don’t have to prove how Jewish they are. They can just come into the space as themselves,” Schaeffer said.

Her goal remains to increase the visibility of northern Virginia’s Jewish community.

“It’s not as ‘in-your-face’ as some other areas, so it can be a little bit tricky for people who are trying to get involved to figure out where to start, but that’s why I’m out in the community,” Schaeffer said. “There’s so much thriving, amazing Jewish life in northern Virginia that I have been able to access, so I want to help everybody access it.”

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com