Judaism has changed a lot over the last few decades. Jewish families look a lot different than they have in the past. Interfaith families are growing and many people find it hard to fit into the traditional synagogue model. Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker saw an opportunity in this to create a community that is founded on support, acceptance, and love. They call this non-profit organization as JTown. With congregations being spread out, they offer a place where people can easily get together and inspire one another. They share what it means to be in a community and how they foster relationships and help those in need.

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Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker: Creating A Community For Interfaith Families With JTown

We are incredibly fortunate. We have with us, Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker, Cofounders and Codirectors of https://jtownco.org/ (JTown). Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to visit with us.

Thank you for having us.

Tell me a little bit about JTown, what it’s all about, who you serve and why you started it?

JTown is a nonprofit organization that we created to offer opportunities for people to create connections and community with other Jewish people. The people we say to people who share their lives. We have a lot of interfaith families and so we want the interfaith person to be as comfortable as the Jewish person. We created this place, there isn’t a place, it’s a metaphoric place. We don’t have a building. We say JTown is wherever we are together.

We have a lot of social things that we do for fun. We do a lot of community service. That’s a huge part of our mission. We offer a lot of team programming. Then we do some alternative worship services, which means that we do a Shabbat service once a month. We do High Holidays services and Passover and they’re all lay-led. We are leading them but we encourage everyone to participate. We typically will have five or six people come out from the community and take part in the service each time we do it.

As you were talking about why you did this since you we wanted to form a community, was there not a community available for these folks?

Judaism has changed a lot over the last few decades. Jewish families look a lot different than they have in the past. The research is showing that there are more interfaith families now than Jews married to Jews in the in the generations that are coming up. A lot of people don’t fit into that traditional synagogue model anymore. Also, we’re very spread out. It didn’t use to be like that. We used to all congregate in one little neighborhood or a part of the city. Denver has it sprawling, so our Jewish people and their families can become a little isolated and not have a place to be Jewish.

Amy and I worked together for about ten years at a traditional synagogue. We both left it at about the same time a month apart and spent a few months each of us looking for another job. It was hard because at our previous job, we had so much passion. We cared so much and we loved the people so much that we couldn’t find anything to replace that feeling in a work environment.

With your other job, what was it that you guys were in-charge of?

We did the administration of a synagogue. I was the Executive Director for some time. I have also been the Assistant Exec, Program Director, Preschool Director. Cindy was the Communication and Marketing Director. She had also worked with our religious school as the Assistant Director. We both had various roles over a long period of time. One thing that we were always passionate about was the relationships that we created with people.

You knew everybody. One way or another, you’ve been a director and what you did as well. There wasn’t anybody who walked through the door that you didn’t know,