|
Greetings Park Plaza Residents and Families,
As I have begun getting to know many of you, I have lately found myself frequently attempting, with limited success, to spin the shortest and most coherent possible yarn of my journey from being born in Chicago to casting off to the West Coast as a young child, and ultimately returning by way of Tampa, Chicago, New York City, Chicago again (yes, this is my fourth tour of duty here in the Windy City), Albuquerque, the Los Angeles area, and Hershey, Pennsylvania. These conversations have led me to reflect on the role that change plays in our lives and the fact that how we process change evolves as we navigate the various stages of life.
To experience and adjust to change is fundamental to both the Jewish experience and the human one. Indeed, the ability to adapt and to harvest opportunity from change has proven critical to the survival and advancement of the Jewish people throughout our extraordinary history.
Change, for some of us, is the current that sculpts the character and narrative of our lives, and thus we tend to embrace and thrive in it. For others, change induces anxiety and trepidation, and like diving into cold water, it is at first intimidating and uncomfortable, but with time becomes not only palatable, but, in many cases, exhilarating.
When I was two-years-old, a job transfer for my dad brought us from Chicago to the Los Angeles area, where we remained for 11 years. Shortly before my Bar Mitzvah, we migrated east to Tampa, Florida, where my dad joined his father, Albert Benjamin z”l, in ownership of a small, local building supply company. From Tampa, I returned to the Chicagoland area to attend Northwestern, then earned a master’s degree in New York before settling again in Chicago, where I enjoyed a 10-year career in overseas business development with two of the world’s largest trade associations.
Shortly after my wife and I married, a desire to live a more impactful Jewish life compelled me to embark on a second career as an executive in the Jewish communal professions, a line of work that often requires frequent relocation for those early in their careers seeking to grow into progressively more dynamic leadership roles. After serving Jewish communities in New Mexico, Southern California, and Central Pennsylvania, my wife and I—now with an eight-year-old daughter, Zoe, born in Albuquerque and herself already an experienced nomad—decided that we had reached a stage of life where stability had become more important to us than mobility. This past April, beshert came knocking in the form of a timely phone call from a Jewish-world recruiter whom I have known for more than a decade. That call led to a professional "shidduch" with Park Plaza, and ultimately to our return to my hometown, where we are blessed to finally anchor ourselves among friends and relatives as part of the fourth generation of my family to put down its roots in Chicago.
While frequent change has enhanced my family’s and my lives, I am nonetheless acutely aware that change is also often trying and challenging, especially as we age. Indeed, here at Park Plaza, we are undergoing an era of evolution that will enrich our physical spaces as well as the social, emotional, physical, and Jewish experience that we seek to provide for our residents and their families. However, in order to achieve success in stewarding our community upward, it is imperative that those of us with the privilege to serve in leadership roles do so with compassion, that we communicate judiciously, and that we exercise radical empathy as we position Park Plaza to be the best version of itself for those we serve today, as well as for those whom we will serve in the years and generations to come.
All of us at Park Plaza wish you and yours a restorative, peaceful Shabbos and a pleasant week ahead.
L'shalom,
| 
