By , Special to JTNews
Every year since 2007, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle has given out the Pamela Waechter Jewish Communal Professional Award, which recognizes one of the many outstanding professionals who works to better Jewish life in our area. The award is named for Waechter, who died in the shooting at the Federation’s offices five years ago, but during her lifetime was well known for her professional and volunteer contributions to the greater Seattle Jewish community.
This year, two women will be presented with the award at the Federation’s annual meeting on June 22. Learn about their impact — in their own words.
Ilana Cone Kennedy
Ilana Cone Kennedy is the director of Education for the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, which provides materials and support for Holocaust education to teachers around the state. Since coming to the Holocaust Center eight years ago, the number and diversity of offerings has expanded exponentially and the list of teachers interested in teaching the subject has quadrupled.
“I feel like this award is really for the Holocaust Center. Everything that I do I couldn’t do without the support of Dee and Laurie and Janna, this amazing staff. We all work really hard together. I’m just a representative here for the center.”
“I have all these ideas and visions of things I’d like the Holocaust Center to do and to be and places for it to go. I feel really proud when I see some of those things happening.”
“An upcoming project we’re working on — it’s still in progress —it’s a new DVD for classrooms for studying the Holocaust and it will focus on local Holocaust survivor stories. It looks at the Holocaust but also recognizes that other genocides have taken place since then and continue to take place.”
“I’d love to see us do more programs — maybe sponsor a trip somewhere again. We did that before, but to do it again, maybe to Poland or even to Rwanda or someplace else, that focuses on genocide. I’d love to see the Holocaust Center, too, round out and incorporate more concepts of genocide within the [frame of] the Holocaust.”
“I knew Pam growing up. She was the president of our temple and knew my parents, and she was always someone I think many of us looked up to and admired.”
“I hope she’d be like, “Oh, I knew Ilana when she was 6,” and I hope she’d be proud to see what she’s contributed to the community and how she’s affected so many of us.”
Amee Sherer
Amee Sherer teaches 3rd grade Judaic studies at the Seattle Jewish Community School. Since returning from spending a year in Israel three years ago, she has used well-known philanthropy expert Danny Siegel’s model with her students on the best practices forgiving tzedakah and how to make the most of charitable giving.
“My first reaction was that it’s really wonderful to have a classroom teacher be given this honor.”
“It’s all of us together, so I feel like I’m accepting the award on behalf of all the wonderful teachers in our community.”
“I was able to be on the committee with my sister and several other fabulous educators to run the Repair the World conference, which will hopefully become a national model on how we bring all types of Jews together to do social action projects, and understand how it comes back to the text and how we teach.”
“It’s a lot of what I do with my teaching: Coordinate our all-school tzedakah efforts. We think about research and we think about overhead and how we best want to use tzedakah and try to figure out how we help people in our community, and in Israel and the rest of the world.”
“It’s really a learning and teaching process, and the kids have a lot of opportunity to offer their insights and do the things they’re passionate about, or things that touched their families.”
“It’s not about the amount, it’s about what’s done with it.”
“My memories of Pam were that she was an incredibly warm and gracious person. She always knew everybody’s name, and she had great attention to detail, was really able to allow people to have their own creative energy. Those were great signs of what a classroom teacher does. Those are the qualities I remember most about her.”
“I hope that she would be pleased. I hope that she would be happy that her good energy that she put out into the world comes back around.”