By Sue Parker Gerson, Senior Associate Director of Jewish Community Engagement, ADL Central Division
Next month, I will celebrate twelve years with ADL. As I transition to a new role as Senior Associate Director of Jewish Community Engagement with ADL’s Central Division Team, I wanted to take the time to reflect on the past dozen years with an organization that continues to speak to my heart – perhaps even more strongly than it did when I walked into the Mountain States regional office in June 2013.
Growing up, I always had a strong Jewish identity. My grandparents were founding members of our synagogue (Beth El in South Orange, NJ) where I celebrated my bat mitzvah. I was active in United Synagogue Youth as Livington, NJ chapter president and HaGalil USY regional board member, while Chabad and Jewish Student Union were my homes away from home at Binghamton University. When the time came to pursue a graduate degree, I chose the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I earned an MA in Jewish History with a concentration in Jewish Education, became licensed as a teacher and principal with the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, and met my husband, the not-yet-rabbi Bernard Gerson. After five years in Trenton, NJ, we moved to Denver in 1993 and raised our family here.
As a career Jewish educator, leading synagogue religious schools as well as the Colorado Melton School as state and later regional director, and co-authoring Teaching Jewish History (Behrman House, 2006), I found myself thinking more and more about what it means to be a Jew in the 21st century. A historian by training, I, along with so many others, felt that Jews had arrived at a place in which we could finally relax a little. How wrong we were.
In 2013, when I joined the superlative Mountain States ADL team as Associate Regional Director, we logged nine antisemitic incidents. In 2024, according to the recently released Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, there were 357 anti-Jewish incidents of harassment, assault, vandalism and more, breaking all previous records and representing a 48% increase in just one year over the 2023 Audit data, itself an historic rise. Together with my talented and dedicated colleagues, I spent much of the past decade tracking and responding to such incidents – but this meteoric rise doesn’t just exist in the data. Particularly since the horrific massacre and mass kidnapping by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Jewish individuals and communities feel increasingly marginalized and under attack. ADL’s support, advocacy and world-class resources are needed now more than ever before.
Responding to antisemism is just one component of what it means for me to work with ADL to support Jewish communities in the Mountain States Region and now, throughout the seven regional offices and sixteen states that comprise ADL’s Central Division. Jewish communities want to focus not only on Jewish pain, but on Jewish joy. They want to connect with others from within and without the Jewish community and talk about shared experiences. Data from our Center on Antisemitism Research demonstrates that when talking about antisemitism with non-Jewish audiences, the picture that folks resonated with the most was not of a spraypainted swastika or a college encampment; it was an image of a Jewish family having Shabbat dinner. Borrowing from a popular column in US Weekly magazine, I think of this as the “Jews: They’re Just Like Us!” factor. Not everyone resonates with, or even understands, antisemitism and its impact, but they can feel the warmth and cultural transcendence of a family dinner.
Twelve years ago when I was applying for the position of Associate Regional Director, I was asked to provide a writing sample based on a prompt exploring the intersection of Jewish values and coalition building. What I wrote at that time still resonates today:
“Most people are familiar with the commandment to ‘love your neighbor as
yourself’ [Leviticus 19:18], but fewer know that in the previous verse, we are told ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall reason with your neighbor and not allow sin on his account.’ … In my opinion, there’s an empirical reason why the verse exhorting us not to hate our brother in our heart comes before the commandment to reason with our neighbor, and only afterwards are we commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s because when we work together, we see that everyone is worthy of the same rights, that our neighbor is our brother or sister.”
During my twelve years in the regional office, I’ve been so proud to be a part of programs such as the Governor’s Holocaust Remembrance Program and our flagship antisemitism education initiative, Words to Action, along with the absolute joy of mentoring our astonishingly bright and talented corps of interns. Now, I’m excited to carry the values and energy that I brought when I started my journey with ADL to communities throughout the Central US. Partnering with regional directors and teams not only to respond to the crisis in our communities and on our campuses, but to amplify our shared values, replicating the best of our programs and trainings to engage new audiences, is what I look forward to most in my continued work within ADL.
This reflection wouldn’t be complete without thanking the many board members, volunteers and especially past and current staff with whom I’ve worked since 2013, with a special shout-out to my fellow Senior Associate Regional Director, superstar and partner in the work Jeremy Shaver. Having had the pleasure and privilege of working with former Regional Director Scott Levin, I am thrilled that the Mountain States office is now guided by our new and supremely talented Regional Director Susan Rona. Under Susan’s direction, together with current and new staff and our board, I know that the Mountain States team will continue to shine and support the communities with whom it works so closely.
I am deeply proud of the Mountain States professional team and am energized to continue supporting them – along with the Southwest, Texoma, Austin, Midwest, Heartland and Michigan regional offices and my fellow Central Division colleagues – from my Denver office with its east facing view, which now seems poetic!
Sue can continue to be reached at the Mountain States regional office at mountainstates@adl.org. When not at work, you can usually find her with her family, enjoying the outdoors, or with her nose in a book – and sometimes all three.