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Horwitz ahorwitz@renmedia.us Partner: F. Kevin Browett kbrowett@renmedia.us Partner: Michael H. Steinhardt How to reach us, see page 10 T his is an extraordinarily difficult and unprece- dented time for Jewish Detroit. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, we are all thinking of the health and wellbeing of our loved ones — our children and spouses, parents and grandpar- ents and many others. We are also deeply concerned for the welfare of our Jewish commu- nity, whose schools and congre- gations, agencies and organiza- tions are all facing enormous pressure, even as the demand for services increases. Our most immediate concern is for the thousands of vulner- able individuals for whom this outbreak presents a grave threat, including our large population of older adults, families with financial needs, individuals with disabilities and others. As the steward of our com- munity, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit has been leading an urgent and coor- dinated response. Federation and its network of agencies and partners across the community are working in close collabora- tion to ensure that support is available to those in need, and to anticipate future needs that may arise — whether it be food and shelter, medicine and health supplies, mental health services or anything else of critical con- cern. We wanted to share some of the specific actions we have taken to date: • We have appointed Matt Lester, incoming Federation president, and Dennis Bernard, incoming United Jewish Foundation president, to lead a Task Force. The Task Force will oversee the COVID-19 Emergency Campaign, manage the allocation of resources and strategically address related con- cerns confronting our commu- nity agencies and organizations. The Emergency Campaign will secure the funds necessary to ensure that our agencies are able to continue providing essential services to our most vulnerable individuals. • Thanks to a strong Annual Campaign, the Jewish Federation and its fiduciary partner, the United Jewish Foundation, will be providing a contribution of $1.5 million in emergency funding to the effort. • From the very start of the crisis, Federation convened its leadership team and agency executives to identify critical needs and coordinate response efforts. Federation has also been assessing needs across the community to understand and anticipate the resources that may be required to preserve the immediate and long-term well- being of the community. • Federation has been pro- viding regular community-wide communications via email and social media to share informa- tion and identify important resources. We also deployed a community-wide Coronavirus Resource page at jewishdetroit. org/covid19resources with links to help, connection, online con- gregational services and other information. More information can be found on our Facebook page. • Our community engage- ment teams, including NEXTGen Detroit, Women’ s Philanthropy, Affinities and Israel and Overseas, have been moving programs online and developing new content that specifically address the emo- tional wellbeing of community members in light of the pro- found changes in our daily lives and interactions. You can find this and other programming on the resource page. Looking ahead, we recognize there is no roadmap for dealing with this crisis, no instruction manual to follow. Despite this, we know that together we will weather this storm, just as we have during times of crisis in Beverly Liss guest column Federation’s Message to Our Jewish Community Views Alan Jay Kaufman continued on page 10 05_DJN040220_POV Opinion Pages.indd 8 05_DJN040220_POV Opinion Pages.indd 8 3/30/20 11:48 AM 3/30/20 11:48 AM