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The Charlotte Jewish News- October 2026- Page 8 Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte
Remembering Susan Stafford
By Jessica Goldfarb
For more than 30 years, Susan Stafford was a familiar and steady presence at Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte( JFGC). For colleagues and community members who came to know her during those years, Susan was someone who paid attention, cared deeply, worked hard, and brought a sense of humor that was distinctly her own.
Susan, a lifelong resident of the Charlotte area, passed away August 16, 2026.
Susan’ s career at Federation was devoted to the Annual Campaign, where she came to know generations of families throughout Jewish Charlotte. To Susan, they were never simply names on a campaign report. She knew the people behind them and remembered their families, stories, and the details that mattered to them. Before joining Federation, Susan worked at The Levine JCC for five years.
“ Susan had an extraordinary institutional memory and seemed to know every donor as if they were a close friend,” said Sam Bernstein, chief development and marketing offficer of JFGC.“ But what really made Susan so special was the dedication, warmth, and wonderful sense of humor she brought to her work. She made an enormous contribution to Federation and our community, and her impact will be felt for years to come.”
That ability to know people and care about the details was not limited to Susan’ s work. Her family remembers someone who was curious, creative, and deeply attentive to the people she loved. Susan was a mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, and friend. She enjoyed art and making things by hand, loved to read and travel, cared deeply for animals, and had a sense of humor all her own. She could create an impromptu rhyme for nearly any occasion and appreciated the people who could make her laugh.
JFGC extends its deepest condolences to Susan’ s family and loved ones. We are grateful to have known Susan, to have shared so many years with her, and to count her as part of the history of Federation and Jewish Charlotte. She will be deeply missed.
Susan Stafford
The Power of Words: Tov – And it Was Good
By Jessica Goldfarb
Few Hebrew words are as familiar as tov. It is one of the first words many Hebrew learners pick up and one of the most versatile.
Boker tov wishes someone a good morning. Mazel tov celebrates a joyful moment. We use tov casually and often, but behind this simple three-letter word is a much bigger Jewish idea about what it means for something to truly be“ good.”
Tov comes from the Hebrew root tet-vav-bet( ט-ו-ב), a root connected to goodness, well-being, and that which is beneficial or worthy. The idea of tov appears almost immediately in the Torah.
God repeatedly looks at what has been created and sees that it is tov – good. Light is tov. The land and seas are tov. The plants, stars, animals, and other elements of creation are each recognized as good. When creation is complete, the description changes: it is tov me’ od – very good.
That repeated phrase suggests something important about the Jewish understanding of goodness. Tov is also something that
An Ancient Text for a New Beginning
By Tobias Siegal
There are few places where the distance between past and present feels as short as it does in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, home to the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered near Qumran in 1947. Marking its 60th anniversary
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this year, the museum is currently displaying the Great Isaiah Scroll in its entirety for the first time since 1968. Stretching more than seven meters, it is the oldest known manuscript of a complete biblical book and one of the best preserved Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran.
Standing before it is not quite
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like looking at an ancient artifact behind glass. It feels more like listening to a voice that has somehow traveled across two thousand years and arrived intact. And it is a voice with surprisingly contemporary questions.
Isaiah speaks repeatedly about the gap between ritual and responsibility, between saying the right things and building a society shaped by justice, compassion and care for the vulnerable. His words challenge the comfortable assumption that reflection alone is enough. What matters is what follows it.
That idea feels particularly resonant in Israel today. It also feels difficult to ignore as the country moves toward another national election. Elections inevitably ask us to choose between leaders, parties and competing visions for the future. But beneath those choices lies a more fundamental question: What kind of society are we choosing to build together?
At a moment when political disagreement can so easily become personal, and when divisions increasingly shape not only our politics but our relationships with one another, Isaiah’ s insistence that public life cannot be separated from responsibility feels especially timely.
The past few years have left
Israelis carrying grief, anger, exhaustion and uncertainty. Public debate is often loud and unforgiving. Families disagree, communities feel strained and the country continues to grapple with questions that do not offer easy answers. The High Holidays, now behind us, offered their annual invitation to pause, take stock and imagine the possibility of renewal. But perhaps the more difficult question begins afterward: What do we do with that reflection once ordinary life resumes?
That may be why the scroll’ s survival feels so powerful. Its parchment is marked by age, repairs and the hands of scribes whose names we will never know. Yet the text endured, hidden in the Judean Desert for centuries before being rediscovered and eventually preserved here in Jerusalem.
Jewish history is often described through survival, but survival alone is not the full story. The scroll survived because generations believed that words matter and that memory carries responsibility. Preserving a text is meaningful only if we remain willing to listen to what it demands from us.
For Jews in Israel and in communities such as Charlotte, that conversation crosses geography as easily as it crosses centuries. emerges as individual pieces come together. Each part of creation has value on its own; together, they form something greater.
For Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte( JFGC), creating tov in a community can mean celebrating together, caring for someone during a difficult moment, helping a family find a place to belong, investing in Jewish education, strengthening security, supporting Israel, or ensuring that Jewish life has the resources to thrive.
JFGC brings people and resources together so that individual acts of good can become part of something larger, strengthening Jewish Charlotte in countless ways.
Tov can be found in a child discovering a new Jewish tradition, a volunteer giving their time, a neighbor reaching out to someone who needs support, a gathering that creates a new friendship, or a gift that helps make an opportunity possible for someone else. Together, these moments create a community in which people can find connection, meaning, support, and belonging.
Perhaps that is part of the power contained in such a small word. Tov reminds us to recognize the good already around us while also asking what we can do to add to it. When each of us contributes our own piece, the result has the potential to become something more: tov me’ od.
We may speak different languages, live thousands of miles apart and experience Israel from very different vantage points, but many of the questions remain shared.
What kind of society do we want to build? What do we owe one another? Which divisions have become too comfortable, and which relationships need repairing?
Those questions do not belong only to 10 days on the Jewish calendar. Nor do they belong only to an election campaign. If anything, their real importance lies in what happens afterward, when the slogans fade and the harder work of living together continues.
The Great Isaiah Scroll cannot answer those questions for us. Ancient texts rarely offer simple instructions for modern life. What they can do is remind us that our most urgent debates are part of a much longer conversation and that every generation must decide how it will take part.
More than two thousand years after these words were written, an ancient yet familiar voice is speaking again in Jerusalem. The question is not simply whether we can hear it but what we choose to do after listening.