Dear Friends,
With Rosh Hashanah next week, I find myself thinking about the particular wisdom of this time of year.
The Days of Awe ask us to look inward. We reflect upon the year that has passed, upon the choices we have made, and inevitably upon those things we might have done differently or better. That process of teshuvah is fundamental to our tradition.
But this year, I have been thinking about another side of that reflection.
Perhaps we should spend a little less time asking what we got wrong and instead take some time to ask ourselves: What did we get right?
The past several years have tested Israel and the Jewish people in ways few of us could have imagined. Yet they have also reminded us why organizations like ours exist. When there was a need, our Foundation—and, more importantly, you, our members, donors, and friends—responded.
Together, we helped purchase two ambulances for Magen David Adom.
When families from the Gaza Envelope were displaced from their homes after October 7, we helped build a NATAN dental clinic near the Dead Sea so that those families could receive the care they needed.
We established the Dr. Allen Finkelstein Leadership Scholarship because we believe that our responsibility is not only to support dental education today, but also to identify, encourage, and prepare the leaders who will shape our profession tomorrow.
And we have continued one of the programs of which I am most proud, the Henry Schein/Alpha Omega Holocaust Survivors Oral Health Program, ensuring that survivors can receive the dental care they need with compassion, dignity, and respect.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair.”
I cannot think of a better description of what we have and continue to aspire.
Israel has now endured years of war, uncertainty, loss, and extraordinary sacrifice. Our dental colleagues have lived this reality not from a distance, but personally. Many have left their families and practices to serve as soldiers and reservists, only to return and resume their responsibilities as dentists, educators, caregivers, parents, and members of their communities. They have cared for others while carrying burdens of their own.
With our Renewing Minds Restoring Hope program, we are and will continue providing resilience programs for our colleagues in Israel—helping those who have spent years caring for others deal with the cumulative trauma and emotional consequences of war and military service. Supporting the people who provide care is itself an essential form of caring.
I am also particularly proud of our partnership with JNF in rebuilding the medical and dental clinic at Kibbutz Be’eri. Be’eri will forever be associated with the terrible events of October 7, but I know it will also become a symbol of something else, the determination to return, to rebuild, and to live with a new purpose in a more secure and normal world.
And on October 25, we will have the privilege of honoring a remarkable group of our professional colleagues at a very special Alpha Omega Gala.
The Alpha Omega Achievement Award will be presented to the Forensic Dental Unit of the Israel Police for its extraordinary work following October 7, 2023.
These dentists were called upon to perform work none of us would ever wish to face. Using their professional skills under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, they helped identify the victims of the massacre, providing answers to desperate families and restoring identity and dignity to those who had been murdered.
Their service came at an enormous personal and emotional cost. Honoring them is not simply recognition of professional excellence. It is recognition of courage, sacrifice, and the extraordinary ways in which the profession we share can serve humanity.
As I look back upon what we have accomplished, I feel something that we do not always allow ourselves to feel during the Days of Awe.
I feel proud.
I am proud of our Foundation. I am proud of Alpha Omega. And most of all, I am proud of the people who make this work possible. And I didn't even touch upon our continued support of our wonderful dental schools in Israel.
Perhaps part of the meaning of Rosh Hashanah is to not only look inward to catalogue our shortcomings, but also to recognize what we got right, to build upon our strengths and consider how to focus on the kind of world we wish to create.
So as we enter 5787, I hope we can take a moment to appreciate what we have accomplished together.
To each of you who has supported this Foundation, thank you. None of what I have described happens without you.
May the coming year bring you and your families health, fulfillment, and peace. And may it finally bring greater peace and security to Israel and to all those who have endured so much.
Shana Tova U’Metuka.
With Sincere Wishes,
