Weinblatt elected JFNA chair

As a young, newly ordained rabbi in the mid-1980s, the chance to try and save Ethiopian Jewry left a profound and lasting impact on Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt.

"We were presented with the opportunity to do something that the generation before us either couldn't or didn't do, and that was to try and rescue a Jewish community," says Weinblatt, now senior rabbi at Congregation B'nai Tzedek, a Conservative synagogue in Potomac. "I saw firsthand that the words of our sages came alive: All of Israel is responsible for one another."

While that experience helped to shape his understanding of the importance of Klal Israel, he says it also strengthened his belief in the importance of the work of the Rabbinic Cabinet of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).