Faygie Holt

When her grandmother turned 90, Sarah Green of northern Virginia packed up her two young boys, one of whom is a baby, and headed to New Jersey to help her celebrate.

“It’s what you do,” she said. “To me, personally, Judaism means family, and I think that it’s through Judaism that my family is close. It’s that Jewish values that have connected all of us.”

Though Green was talking about her own family, the senior director of financial resources development at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington could just as easily have been talking about the Jewish people as a whole.

“Jewish life is really an in-person business,” Green said. “Right now, that means we are coming together in ways that are defeating the difficulties we find in modern life, like the loneliness of kids being bullied for being Jewish or getting the heck off our phones and social media and talking to other human beings.

“I see all of that as critical to Jewish life.”

Green grew up in Randolph, New Jersey, a former farm town some 40 miles west of New York. She attended a Conservative synagogue, Adath Israel, where she attended Hebrew school. She continued on to a supplemental, community Hebrew high school program as a teen. “I was there every Tuesday night when I wasn’t in sports” at school, she said. Green’s summers were spent at NJY Jewish sleepaway camps.

With Judaism deeply ingrained in her, Green made fundraising for nonprofits her professional career. Her job at the Federation, which began more than six years ago, is her first in the Jewish communal sector and she admits that it is a “nonprofit sector in and of itself.”

As a director involved in fundraising for an entity that raises tens of millions of dollars annually — this year its goal is to raise more than $62 million — Green said that after the Hamas-led terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, it has been easier to raise money.

“It’s called ‘the surge’ in the federation industry,” she said, adding “People want to be part of institutional Judaism.”

The challenge, however, is building relationships to sustain that involvement.

“I’m seeing more and more people say they are interested in the Jewish community, and there’s an expectation that someone will come and knock on their door and make getting involved totally frictionless and easy, but sometimes that’s not the case,” Green said. “I would encourage people to do their own door-knocking to find their place and not wait around for someone to do it for them.”

Green added that there is a definite need for people, especially young people, to step up as lay leaders for Jewish organizations.

When not at work, Green is home with her husband Zach, who works in government contracting, and their two boys — ages 3 and 6 months. She also runs a moms’ group in her local neighborhood, loves to run, admitting that “occasionally, I’ll sneak on the Peloton and go for a run after bedtime,” and is involved with her son’s preschool.

Her family has not yet settled on a synagogue, but she said there are any number for them to choose from when the time is right. As a young mother and one who is involved Jewish communal professional, Green acknowledges a truth that her peers know all too well, things that Jews would have taken for granted 30 years ago no longer work.

Back then, “would anyone have second-guessed wearing a Star of David?” she asks, adding it isn’t just the growth of antisemitism that is impacting Jewish life. “With family life getting so much busier, making sure everyone is home on Friday night to light Shabbat candles and have dinner is going to be much more challenging because of kids’ schedules and work.”

She added, “Carving out the time, not just for the observance of, but the recreation of, Judaism is really challenging for families.”

But it may just be that family is the reason to make it happen.

“We’re about to celebrate our Federation’s centennial in 2027-28, and if I think about all these Jewish institutions that we know were established around the same time in the 20th century, they really built the Jewish life that we now know and that we grew up in,” said Green. “I feel like, being a millennial, that it’s my responsibility to what my grandparents and [their generation] built, not just for it to continue, but to bring it into the 21st century with its new challenges, new relationships and new populations in terms of what the Jewish community wants and needs.”

Faygie Holt is a freelance writer.