Building What We Needed

Just days after the murder of George Floyd, I sat through a long, well-intentioned training program about diversity, equity, and inclusion only to find out that Jews were not considered part of the training. While I realized that being included in a slide deck was not the same as being seen, protected, or valued in an organization, I understood I had to do something. At the time, I had already helped create a small, informal space for my Jewish colleagues and I to meet and talk over drinks. Yet, what started as a mere social gathering now felt like something much larger—the seed of a deeply needed community. Determined to help it grow, I set about transforming it into a global Jewish staff network within the multinational company I was working for.

The process was not straightforward. Hitting repeated roadblocks and goalposts that seemed to move every time we made progress, we were told by our non-Jewish colleagues that the way we define ourselves was completely wrong. Repeatedly told that our burgeoning group was “just a religion,” that our existence as Jews represented “too small a minority to support,” and that our effort to create a workplace community was “redefining what it means to have a formal group,” each response revealed something deeper than mere resistance. Instead, each one exposed how easily Jewish identity can be minimized when it asks to be recognized on its own terms.

At the same time, my colleagues and I were encountering real anti-Semitism in the workplace. Blood libel was free to be shared on our internal Wiki site, and some corners of our instant messaging system were filled with anti-Zionist and often outright anti-Semitic rhetoric. The company was unprepared to deal with it. Soon becoming the go-to person for the Jewish experience at work, I suddenly found myself trying to do more than simply build community. Fighting for our safety, our dignity, and our right to belong without having to constantly justify our existence, I came to realize that the harder I pushed against the system, the more I understood why this work mattered. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jewish colleagues who needed that community in order to thrive at work, and I had become the person willing to keep pushing that vision forward. I wasn’t simply announcing that I was that guy. I was saying “Hineni.” 

The call I had made was soon answered thousands of miles from my home in London, England. While spending Chanukah in Seattle, Washington, I decided to host an impromptu coffee-and-donut meetup for the “local” Jews I worked with. After talking with the wife of one of the attendees who worked for a similarly large technology company whose Jewish employees were struggling in much the same way that we were, I decided to start what would become JewishERGs—the community for Jewish Employee Resource Group (ERG) leaders around the world. 

Quickly growing to represent the Jewish ERG Leaders of around 30 companies—each of us strugglingly in unique yet strikingly similar ways—our global community began meeting monthly, with many of us staying in touch in between sessions and supporting one another as we charted out the course for the Jewish communities within our organizations. Then came October 7, 2023.

More than just a metaphorical wake-up call, I was awakened from my sleep by the sound of sirens and distant rocket interceptions. Though I have always felt deeply connected to Israel, being in the country that day made the horror immediate and personal. The scale of the violence, the fear, the grief, and the collective shock were overwhelming. But beyond the pain, something else crystallized for me. The world had shifted, and the Jewish people would need more than sympathy. We would need leadership, structure, courage, and people willing to stand in the gap. The stakes had never been clearer: my work creating Jewish communities within non-Jewish institutions was no longer abstract or symbolic. It was personal, urgent, and necessary. 

This necessity was rapidly being reflected in my inbox, with email upon email from Jews looking to build community, support other Jews at work, and find ways to develop their resilience. After a long day of work as a cybersecurity expert, I would come home to work another six hours on building community.

In March 2024, I returned to Israel. Driven by grief, responsibility, and a need to be present for and with our people in their time of need, when people asked why I came back during a war, all I could really answer was “Because I needed to.” 

Touring southern Israel, seeing with my own eyes the devastation of the October 7 massacre, and visiting wounded soldiers at Sheba Hospital, I began to realize that I could not remain on the edge of this work. Having carried it alongside my career for some time, doing so no longer felt sufficient. The moment was too serious, and the need too great. Upon my return home, I made the decision to leave my job in tech and focus on my passion full time.

That decision was not easy. I had spent years building a stable, respectable, and financially secure career in a field I knew well. Yet, stepping away from that work into uncertainty, I thought about Rabbi Tarfon’s teaching in Pirkei Avot. It was not my duty to finish the work, but neither was I at liberty to neglect it. I had found my calling because, when the moment came, I had said Hineni. 

What I have built since then has grown beyond anything I could ever have imagined. What started as a small community of Jews at my own workplace has evolved into a global network bringing together Jews across dozens of organizations. Responding to the needs of the moment, people were hungry for connection, leadership, honesty, and for Jewish spaces where they could be their full selves. More than a response to a crisis, they wanted infrastructure. They wanted a community that could hold people through fear, pride, uncertainty, and action. I wanted to build one for them. 

I did not set out to leave my career and start a movement. I had set out to solve a problem. But the more I saw, the more I understood that the problem was larger than one workplace, one network, or one organization. It was part of a wider pattern of Jewish invisibility and Jewish vulnerability. The work became bigger because the need was greater.

And so, here I am. Not because I have all the answers, but because I could not remain an observer. Because the Jewish people deserve leaders in the non-Jewish workplace. Because the moment asked for more than concern, and I chose to answer. Because sometimes, the most Jewish thing you can do is build what is missing, stand where others have stepped back, and say plainly that the work is not done, and neither am I at liberty to neglect it.

Here I am.

Hineni.