By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Name: Jessica Hoffman
Age: 29
City: Seattle
Occupation: NCSY Seattle co-director, founder of the Seattle Gemach, board member of Torah Day School
Jessica Hoffman has spent more than half her life in NCSY. The Seattle native started in the Orthodox movement’s youth group, the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, when she was 14. Now, at 29, she’s dedicated her life to the organization and to instilling Judaism into the region’s Jewish teen population. And then some.
“The best opportunities are the ones that fall in your lap,” Jessica says. “I’d just moved home. I was 8 months pregnant with my first child.”
And she just so happened upon an NCSY event, some kids selling brownies as a fundraiser.
“‘Do you guys have a director, an advisor?’” she asked them. “They said, ‘Nope, we have nobody this year. The best we can do is sell brownies.’”
So she volunteered. And then became a paid staffer. And then her husband Ari joined up. Six years later, Seattle NCSY is no longer just a social club. Almost immediately the Hoffmans began injecting more of an educational focus into the programming, and doing more of what had attracted Jessica to NCSY when she was a teenager.
“I was more excited to go on a Shabbaton or a Saturday movie night than hang out with my friends in another scenario,” she says. “It wasn’t just a movie night, but a movie night with other great stuff.”
Now she can do much of the same thing, and build one-on-one relationships with all of the teens at the same time. It’s the end result that makes her do what she does: “When you see a teenager that’s 20 now, and they’re living a Jewish life, and when they were 14 they were considering Buddhism, that’s inspirational to me.”
Jessica was recently nominated for NCSY’s Ben Zakkai Honor Society, and will travel to New York next month to receive her honors. A major facet of the society is fundraising for NCSY summer programs, much of which will go toward Seattle NCSY members.
“This year we’re trying to focus on taking kids from the level of just simply attending programs locally to getting them off to summer programs,” she says. “To actually spend the entire summer with Jewish teens in Israel or Europe or the East Coast…they’re taking themselves to a new level of involvement in the Jewish community.”
Jessica and Ari are officially NCSY’s co-directors, but intertwined are the Jewish Student Union, a club on high school campuses around the region that she compares to a younger Hillel; and Torah High, which just merged with the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle’s Hebrew High to create a larger, more diverse supplementary education.
Then there’s Shabbat. Once the sun goes down, their home in the Seward Park neighborhood has become a magnet.
“Immediately after dinner, the teenagers start flowing in,” Jessica says. “The kids know if the door’s unlocked, come on in.”
The teens hang out, sing, play with the Hoffmans’ kids, and stay in a place where their parents know where they are, often until the stroke of midnight.
“They just have a good time, it’s a safe environment,” Jessica says.
But the teens are just one part of the lifecycle in which Jessica is involved. She is also in her first year on the board of the Torah Day School of Seattle.
“What we’re working on is boosting the image of Torah Day School and cementing ourselves financially and really becoming a part of the community at large,” she says.
She also started and maintains the Seattle Gemach, in which she stores and loans out modest wedding gowns — primarily to Orthodox brides and bridesmaids, but really to anyone who needs it — for women who can’t afford their dream dress.
“Every day it grows,” Jessica says. “I get e-mails weekly from people to drop stuff off.”
She’s the only Seattle resource listed on a Web site, donatemydress.org, that takes donations for wedding and prom dresses, so much of what she receives is not necessarily from the Jewish community.
Julie Greene, activities director at Congregation Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath, said of Jessica in an e-mail: “Jessica is the essence of what every Jewish mother dreams of when it comes to finding a true gem to have her daughter admire and emulate.”
With her fingers dipped in so many pots — plus three small children, the youngest of which is just 3 months old — you may think Jessica is wearing herself out. But growing up, her mother would always juggle at least five or six different volunteer projects.
“To me, doing three things doesn’t feel like a lot,” Jessica says. “To me it feels like I’m doing a minimal amount.”
For more information on NCSY or donating a dress, contact 206-295-3726 or hoffjessica@aol.com.