Erin Dreyfuss is a true Jewish professional, with past roles at a local synagogue, Jewish community centers, a Jewish nonprofit and a Jewish day school.
So it may come as a surprise that she was raised Lutheran.
Growing up outside of Chicago, the major branch of Protestantism “didn’t make sense” to Dreyfuss. In middle and high school, she identified as agnostic, then in college, she began to think more deeply about her religious beliefs.
“I had this innate curiosity around the nature of God and the meaning of life and all the big questions that religion can help answer, and Christianity — even going back to it and trying different versions of it — still didn’t make a lot of sense to me,” the Fairfax resident said.
She took an “academic view” of her values and beliefs and found that much of it aligned with Judaism. Dreyfuss began attending a synagogue in her Illinois college town and “fell in love” with the music. She converted to Judaism in Nashville after moving there post-graduation.
“In every place that I’ve been, [the Jewish community has] been very welcoming,” said Dreyfuss, who attends Temple B’nai Shalom in Fairfax Station.
While living in Philadelphia, the leader of Dreyfuss’ Torah study group was away for a weekend and needed someone to fill in. Dreyfuss stepped up.
“I volunteer,” she explained. “That’s just who I am. I raise my hand for things and I love it. I just kept going from there. It’s important to me to get involved because that’s how you get to know people better. That’s how you shape the community that you’re in in a positive direction.”
She’s served on synagogue boards, led Torah study sessions and gotten involved in various committees.
“It’s always felt like home, like my people,” Dreyfuss said of the Jewish community.
“I really feel that one of the strengths of Judaism is the community and the peoplehood,” she added. “The best way to be part of the community, I think, is to be really active and engaged.”
Her identity as Jewish by choice further influenced her involvement.
“Especially coming from the outside, I didn’t want to be passive, because that felt like a way to not feel like a real part of the community,” Dreyfuss said. “I wanted to learn all that I could.”
As a fresh graduate, she was often the youngest synagogue volunteer by decades. “It felt like exactly the right time,” she said. “I had the time to give and the time to dedicate to the community in that way, and it just snowballed from there.”
Dreyfuss is the transformation manager for The Ronald S. Lauder Impact Initiative in Washington, D.C., which aims to strengthen and grow Jewish day schools nationally.
“When I saw the job, it just struck me as exactly the kind of big-picture research- and data-driven work that I hadn’t gotten to do yet in my career,” she said.
Dreyfuss began her career in 2011 with Maccabi USA, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that seeks to build Jewish pride through sports. She worked in customer service at the JCC in Birmingham, Alabama, then made the move to D.C.
Through George Washington University’s master’s in experiential education in Jewish cultural arts — as a member of the inaugural cohort — Dreyfuss landed a job with the Edlavitch DCJCC’s music and literature department. Before that, she served as a Jewish education fellow at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School.
She also had a six-year stint at Congregation Olam Tikvah in Fairfax before beginning in her current role, where her goal is to increase enrollment at Jewish day schools: “This job is about viewing the whole Jewish landscape.”
“Lauder is really taking a big step back and thinking about the view from 30,000 feet of Jewish education, the value of Jewish education and how Jewish day schools can help grow the next generation of Jewish leaders,” she said. “That being the case, how do we get more Jewish students into Jewish day schools?”
She said she enjoys Lauder Impact Initiative’s approach to this question, which is an engagement model — talking to families about their educational choices, engaging research firms and involving partner organizations.
Dreyfuss spends much of her time working directly with the staff of both Milton and Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School on how to use Lauder’s data and research to generate outreach-related ideas.
“If you want the next 200 families or massive transformative growth in enrollment, you can’t keep going back to the same well,” Dreyfuss said. “We’re looking at, ‘How can we engage families younger than the traditional admissions model?’ ‘How can we message differently?’ ‘How can we lean into other forms of communication or outreach to get Jewish day schools on the map for people more?’”
Now halfway through the three-year Lauder program, Dreyfuss is excited to see the results.
“I’m looking forward to those initial tests being completed and having us see the bigger picture,” she said.
