Jill Cooper oversaw a lot of growth at Beth David Reform Congregation in the past 20 years. The temple expanded to add a chapel and classrooms, hired two long-term clergy members (Rabbi Beth Kalisch and Cantor Lauren Goodlev), revived the Gladwyne Jewish Memorial Cemetery and introduced “shema groups” to serve specific subsets of its congregation (suburban singles dining out, people exploring Judaism, etc.).
The Gladwyne synagogue is also in the process of opening a preschool and on the verge of announcing a grant to add solar panels to its roof.
Cooper has overseen all of this institutional growth as executive director. Now, as she nears her 20th year in the post, Cooper is also retiring.
The congregation honored her years of service with a party on the evening of Nov. 22 and a morning devoted to dog charities on Nov. 23. Cooper used to bring her dog, Ziva, to work every day.
“Truly our ‘Jill of All Trades,’ her unwavering no-job-is-too-big-or-too-small attitude has been central to our day-to-day operations, and her steady presence for two decades has been excellent for Beth David through these years,” said Jane Horwitz, Beth David’s current president.
Cooper is stepping away for a couple of reasons. She wants to spend more time with her Brooklyn-based granddaughter. She’s also stressed from thinking about security all the time in this post-Tree of Life, post-Oct. 7 environment.
“I will miss the people; I will not miss the stress,” she said.
The 66-year-old never saw herself as an executive director. She was a teacher, and in the early 2000s, she was serving as a youth advisor at Shir Ami in Newtown. It was that Reform synagogue’s executive director, Hilary Leboff, who told Cooper that she’d make a great one herself.
Leboff said that because another Reform shul in the Philadelphia suburbs, Beth David, had an opening.
“I said, ‘I don’t know how to do financial stuff.’ She said, ‘You have a personality; you know how a synagogue works; you know how to work with a board. The rest of it, I can teach you,’” Cooper recalled.
In her interview with Beth David leaders, she told them what she wasn’t: an accountant.
“If you’re looking for someone who’s willing to learn, I’m your candidate,” she said.
They were sold. And Cooper kept her promise.
“I had my personal accountant teach me what I needed to learn. Accountants on the executive committee also taught me,” she said.
Cooper, of course, got the job because, on a visceral level, she understood what it was really about. An executive director runs an organization, she explained. But it’s an organization with a deeper meaning to people.
“Really, it’s about members,” Cooper said. “I’m here for the highs, and I’m here for the lows. I think people remember that I don’t just, quote, ‘run this building,’ which is how people introduce me.”
The executive director’s door was always open, and her phone was always on. And when people reached out, they knew she would listen. They also knew that, as Cooper put it, she had the answer, would figure it out or knew somebody who would.
In her 20 years, she figured out a lot, but one accomplishment stands out: restoring the cemetery. To Cooper, helping someone who can’t help you in return is the highest mitzvah in Judaism.
The “six-acre property just off Greaves Lane,” as gladwynejewishcemetery.org describes it, is home to countless Jewish emigres who were buried there between 1890 and 1945. After the last burial in 1945, though, it suffered from neglect. Headstones were broken; pieces were all over the field; grass was overgrown.
Beth David took over control of the abandoned property in 1999, according to a 2015 Philadelphia Inquirer article. Then, in 2015, Cooper helped launch the effort to save it, which culminated this past June in the unveiling of the cemetery’s “monument to lost souls.”
Carved by Greg Jehanian, a non-Jewish West Chester resident who saw the story on the news, the monument recognizes those whose names have been lost due to the disrepair. Rabbi Kalisch led a yizkor service at the unveiling.
“It’s sacred ground,” Cooper said.
As Cooper prepares to step away, she’s excited to “sleep, sleep, sleep,” she said.
Her replacement, Daniel Ricken, starts on Dec. 15. Soon enough, the job of maintaining this Reform synagogue that opened in 1943 in Philadelphia’s Wynnefield section will be his.
Cooper plans to teach him accounting. But another lesson will be more important.
“There were days when I said, ‘I’m not going to make it back tomorrow.’ But when I say that, something happens, someone calls, and I drop everything. This is why I love my job; people need me.”
Cooper applied that lesson herself, according to Kalisch.
“On paper, Jill’s job is about administration: overseeing the office, the building, the finances. But everyone who knows Jill knows that her role is so much more than that — she pours her heart into this community with so much dedication, warmth, and humor. Her leadership and her spirit have helped to make Beth David the welcoming and joyful place it is today,” the rabbi said.
VERY WONDERFUL WOMAN.