Jason Holtzman’s entire career has been centered around Jewish communal work, starting with the Zionist Organization of America before moving through several positions at the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and Hillel International.
For the last six years, Holtzman’s work has been with the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, where he earned a promotion from director to chief of the organization in March.
Holtzman lives in New Jersey and is a member of Beth El Synagogue in East Windsor.
How did you get involved with the JCRC?
I love doing Jewish communal work. I definitely got my start in this because of my love and my passion for Israel and Zionism, and that was really my core. Those were my core issues for the start of my career. I’ve also always had a passion for community building, coalition building, interfaith work, and so, during the early part of my career, I was always looking to do a bit more than just Israel advocacy and Israel education.
So, when I found out about the Jewish Community Relations Council system, the JCRC system, I was really intrigued. I was really intrigued by the vision of the director at that time, to be doing Israel education and also to be out building relationships outside of the Jewish community, really focusing on bridge building and bridge building with other communities.
How has your professional role changed over the years at the JCRC?
When I first started at JCRC, my focus was really on public programming for the organization. Once I became director, my responsibilities increased from just programming much more broadly to building up the JCRC, making sure that all the different volunteer and professional committees the JCRC is offering were functioning well, that we had the right people on committees, that we were moving in a direction that was nonpartisan, that we had people from both sides of the aisle involved with us, that we were working with both sides. Once Oct. 7 happened, my work was really put under the spotlight.
What was different for you after Oct. 7?
Over the last couple of years, we’ve really had to respond in a strategic way. We’ve had to really come up with a community response to antisemitism hitting several different sectors, whether it’s the university campus space, K-12 school space, private businesses, working with elected officials, helping elected officials understand the complexity of what was happening in Israel and in Gaza.
Since being promoted into a chief, my responsibility is to become more than just the JCRC, more than just our center to combat antisemitism, which is something we started after Oct. 7, but it’s really taking a look across the entire organization, working with colleagues and other departments and being part of the Federation’s executive management team to help work on the culture here, to help the organization understand what was going on in the community, where the community is right now, where the community has been during these last couple of really traumatic years, and helping keep social cohesion in the community during a really awful time.
What is it like being a young professional working in such a high-profile role for the community?
It’s been extremely meaningful to me as a young professional to have this role, especially during the time we’re living in right now. It’s been an incredibly challenging time to be doing this work and to be in a leadership role, but it’s a very historic time, and a time of opportunity. So, for me to be on the executive team, doing the work that I’m doing right now, during such a historic moment, it has meant a great deal to me.
How has your Jewish identity impacted you?
I’m a descendant of Holocaust survivors, and that’s really been something that I’ve carried with me for my entire life. So when antisemitism is happening, when there’s Jews under attack, whether it’s physical attack, verbal assaults, the intergenerational trauma in my bones, inside of my body, it really comes out.
And I feel the need as a descendant of Holocaust survivors to act and to make sure that we’re leaving the world in a better place than where we found it at today. I also have a 16-month-old son, and he’s a major motivation for me to be doing this work.
Knowing that I’m raising a Jewish child who grew up in the world, I want to leave the world in a better place for him than where it was left for me. And so, it’s really important for me to have a strong Jewish identity and to lead forward with my Jewish identity and my Zionist identity, and to not be scared.
