Make your voice heard

By Joel Pittelman, Jewish Community Relations Council Chair

The Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) is charged by the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples with maintaining and advancing relations between the Jewish community and the Greater Naples community. It is an ongoing effort, as we attempt to reach out to gain the broad community’s support, respect and understanding of our needs. We strive to build coalitions so that we may more readily gain support when needed. In turn, we offer support and assistance to groups and individuals, who can benefit from our experience and our resources.

Gaining broad community support for our concerns requires that we can identify broadly accepted Jewish positions on specific matters. This is not an easy task. The often-heard phrase: “Two Jews, three opinions,” says much. However, simple phrases aside, our community does hold longstanding, broadly accepted beliefs that need to be protected and clearly expressed. Should the general community misunderstand what we believe, it would be difficult to win their support.

The JCRC attempts to represent all elements of our Jewish community. Our membership is drawn from a broad range of Jewish organizations and at-large members, all of whom wish to have their viewpoints represented as we identify our Jewish community position on emerging issues.

Just as we encourage open discussion, we encourage open membership to expand our thinking in consideration of these important and often very timely issues. If you want your perspective heard, consider joining the discussion. I suspect that some people feel that certain perspectives are underrepresented in our deliberations. For the JCRC to claim that we set forth broadly accepted Jewish positions, we must include the broad perspective of our community. If you are concerned that your views are not being heard, I urge you to take part in our effort.

If you are interested, and you are a member in good standing of the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples, you qualify. Please email Reneé, Program Director at rbialek@jewishnaples.org

A friendly reminder from your JCRC Committee

The deadline to register online to vote is Monday, October 5, 2020. Please - “YOUR VOTE IS YOUR VOICE.” https://www.colliervotes.com/

And, don’t forget to complete your census form. Each person represents $1400 for schools, roads etc. https://my2020census.gov/