Editor’s Note: This is the 19th chapter in Volume 2 of Editor Emeritus Donald H. Harrison’s 2022 trilogy, “Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5.” All three books as well as others written by Harrison, may be purchased from Amazon.com. Harrison may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com.
Schlepping and Schmoozing Along the Interstate 5, Exit 28 B (La Jolla Village Drive): Lawrence Family JCC
From the northbound I-5, take Exit 28B (La Jolla Village Drive) and turn right (east) and follow to a left turn at Genesee Avenue. Make another left turn at Executive Drive. The Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs Family campus, at that corner, is at 4126 Executive Drive.
LA JOLLA, California — The Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), a forerunner organization of the Jewish Community Center Association of North America, was founded in April 1917, three days after the United States entered World War I. Its purpose was to provide services to Jewish members of the military, including the recruitment of rabbis to serve as Jewish chaplains. In 1921, after the war was over, the Jewish Welfare Board merged with the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA) and the Young Women’s Hebrew Association (YWHA) to form the Jewish Community Center Association of North America.
It took over 100 years before the JCC Association of North America chose someone from the U.S. West Coast to serve as its chairman. That person was Gary E. Jacobs of San Diego, a former president of the Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs Family Campus in La Jolla. As his four-year term was concluding, the JCC Association turned again to a San Diegan, David Wax, a retired executive with the San Diego-based, multistate Waxie Sanitary Supply company.
Wax served as JCC president in 2008 when the JCC Maccabi Games brought to San Diego approximately 1,500 teenage athletes and their families from all over the United States and Canada for Olympic-style competition. He was nominated to succeed Jacobs as the new head of the JCC Association of North America, which counts 170 Jewish Community Centers and Jewish Camps within its ranks. That assemblage sees 1.5 million visitors come through its collective doors every week. Wax’s term began in May 2022.
Both men came up through the ranks at Jewish Community Centers in San Diego. Wax began his association with the JCC as a preschooler; Jacobs became active as the father of a preschooler.
Wax related that his uncle Harry Wax was married to the former Ida Addleson, and that Ida’s sister Razel Addleson Mishne worked for the now defunct JCC on 54th Street. Her boss was Joseph Astor, who was then the local JCC’s executive director. It was only natural that Wax would be enrolled in the JCC’s preschool, which he described as his first of many touch points at the JCC. He later attended the JCC’s summer day camps; then participated in programs for tweens and teens. He played in the JCC’s basketball league, where he first came into contact with Michael Cohen, who then was the JCC’s assistant athletic director. Cohen would work his way up through the ranks to become the executive director of the Lawrence Family JCC. As a young adult, Wax accepted an invitation to serve on the 54th Street JCC’s board of directors.
After college (San Diego State and UCLA), Wax was sent by his family-owned Waxie Sanitary Supply to head its operations in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he also served on a JCC board. He later transferred to head Waxie operations in Los Angeles. By the time he returned to San Diego in 1994, work was underway under the direction of Gary Jacobs in concert with his parents Joan and Irwin Jacobs (co-founder of Qualcomm) to upgrade the Lawrence Family JCC in a $15 million capital campaign.
Years before, immediately after graduating from UC San Diego, Jacobs had accepted a seat on the JCC board. “I like to tell the story that at my first couple of board meetings, all they were interested in talking about was Over-30 basketball, which wasn’t one of my main interests to talk about. I was only 22. I actually left the board at that point. I joined the synagogue board at Congregation Beth El, and later when Adam (his oldest of four children) was ready for preschool, we wondered which one to put him in. It turned out that Beth El required him to be toilet trained and the J did not, so we ended up at the J. I started out as the assistant editor of the preschool newsletter and worked my way up the chain of leadership.”
He rose to editor of the newsletter the following year, and then went on to become the chair of the preschool committee and was elected in 1994 to serve as president of the Lawrence Family JCC.
Jacobs’ other children, in turn, attended the JCC preschool, among them his daughter Sara, who is 2020 was elected as a Democratic member of Congress representing San Diego. The other children are Beth and Dylan.
“I actually play ed Moses in the Passover lay for ten years,” Jacobs recalled. “I had a multi-colored shmata that I put on for a cloak that was left over from our bedroom drapes.” Noting that such a multi-colored cloak also could have been used as a costume for the biblical Joseph, Jacobs went on to reminisce that he also had the pleasure of taking bit parts in productions of the J*Company, the JCC’s theatre program for children. “In the Wizard of Oz, I played a tree and got to throw apples at Dorothy. And then I did a lot of stage work, moving scenery around and things like that. I enjoyed it.”
As president of the Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs was joined by his mother, Joan, in the fundraising campaign that had started with a goal of $8 million and was elevated under their leadership to $15 million. “I really think we were setting a new level in the Jewish community for building campaigns and giving,” Jacobs said.
As a result, “we actually got real classrooms for the preschool; our youngest one was able to go to preschool in a real building, so that was a major accomplishment. We brought over the library from 54th Street,” which was named for Joseph Astor’s parents, Samuel and Rebecca Astor. “We expanded our whole fitness facility and created a 500-set theatre. The swimming pool was already there but we did some renovations on it. We redid the locker room. We built out a teen lounge and executive offices.”
In recognition of the Jacobs’ family work and financial contributions to the building campaign, the Lawrence Family JCC designated itself as part of the Jacobs Family Campus. “I got to work with my mom in a lot of fundraising,” Jacobs reminisced. “She, Mike Cohen, and I would go out on a lot of fundraising calls. It was great to have the opportunity to work with her doing that.”
When Jacobs first accepted the job as president, “it was supposed to be a two-year term, but we wee in the middle of a building campaign. Fred Schenk (who we will meet in this book’s later chapter about the San Diego County Fair) was going to follow me, and I said, ‘Please wait’ so I could stay as president until the building was done. He kept agreeing so finally when we went to dedicate the building, I said, ‘and now let me introduce you to the new president of the JCC board,’ and I called Fred up and he took over at that point.
Under the stage of the JCC’s theatre “you’ll find a little inscription down there that says, ‘’It’s Fred’s problem now,” Jacobs chuckled.
Following his tenure as president of the JCC, Jacobs went on to become the campaign chair at the Jewish Federation of San Diego County for a couple of years, and then moved up to become chair of the Federation’s board. Among the first tasks he faced was to find a replacement for the long-serving chief executive officer, Steve Abramson, who was retiring. Additionally, aid Jacobs, “I really worked very hard on how do we create a more-community feeling [among the various Jewish agencies], rather than this very siloed approach of everybody doing things for themselves and no one thinking about the community as a whole. I tried to change that.”
Meanwhile, David Wax had returned to San Diego and had become involved in different JCC committees, including basketball, and then in the overall sports and fitness community. He joined the board, became a vice president, and in 2006 became the JCC’s president.
“I guess what you would call the ‘signature moment’ was the hosting of the JCC Maccabi Games in 2008, Wax told me. That involved the buildup of that whole program, the execution, the fundraising and the building out of the platform for community engagement,” he said. “Along with that, we were the first JCC that bundled hosting the games with a capital campaign to enhance the facility’s infrastructure. Overall, I think we raised $5.3 million. We built great community involvement with that, with something like 35 to 40 different committees and volunteer engagement. It was not just the idea of hosting some 1,500 athletes; it was also the families that came from across North America, Israel, and Mexico to see their kids compete. There was an economic impact to our San Diego community with all the visitors.”
The JCC Maccabi Games were slated to return to San Diego in July of 2020 but because of COVID, they were postponed to July 31-August 5, 2022. Dor v’ dor (Generation to generation), Jacobs’ son Adam was tabbed to serve as one of the three 20222 Maccabi Games co-chairs.
After serving on the board of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, Gary Jacobs was approached by Michael Cohen about the possibility of serving on the board of the JCC Association of North America. Wax also joined the board in 2004, even before he served as president of the Lawrence Family JCC, so the two future leaders began their service in close proximity.
As a major Qualcomm stockholder and owner of the Lake Elsinore Storm, a minor league affiliate of baseball’s San Diego Padres, Jacobs has devoted much of his life to philanthropy, including the founding with his wife Jerri-Ann of the High-Tech High Schools in San Diego County. Additionally, the couple created the Jacobs International Teen Leadership Initiative (JITLI) bringing together Jewish students from Israel and San Diego with young Palestinians to learn as a group about life and conditions in the U.S., Israel, and Spain. During its Golden Age, Spain was a place where Jews and Muslims had close bonds of cooperation.
Jacobs said that in 2004 the JCC Association of North America was holding its biennial meeting in Los Angeles. “I told them I could run up to L.S. for a board meeting but that was all I could stay for. So that is what I did. I went up to L.A. for the board meeting and then came back. They have the typical board gift that you give when you sit on some of these boards and so they handed me a pledge card, and I checked off $18,000, which I think was the highest number they had on it. Apparently, I had caused quite a stir because they couldn’t decide if I had misread it and thought that it was only $1,800 or something like that. Once again, I was trying to pick up the level of giving for our Jewish institutions.”
I asked him what he did after joining the board. “Well, they did not have an assistant editor of the newsletter position,” he quipped, “but I did serve as a board member for a couple of years and then I served on the executive committee. Eventually I was able and honored to become the chair of the board, and that was 2018.
Shades of his experience with the Jewish Federation of San Diego County! Prior to Jacobs beginning his term, Allan Finkelstein, the long-serving professional staff person of 24 years retired, so Jacobs was involved in the search for a new president and CEO. He ultimately found Doron Krakow, whose extensive Jewish communal experience included senior positions with American Associates of Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Jewish Federations of North America, and Young Judaea.
Of the 1.5 million people who visit JCC’s across the North American continent every week, approximately 1 million of them are Jews, and the other half million are “non-Jews, “who want to be part of the Jewish community through the JCC,” Jacobs estimated.
One of the things that we are working on a lot is how do we provide enough Jewish educators for the demand that is out there,” Jacobs said. “We have a working relationship with the Union for Reform Judaism and the Jewish Federations of North America and are working with them toward creating some kind of pipeline in education and training for early childhood educators.”
The COVID pandemic interrupted this and similar planning. Once the pandemic hit, “everyone’s focus turned toward survival,” Jacobs said. “One of the things that the Jewish Community Center Association of North America does is work well through these kinds of situations. We were able to provide support to all the local JCC’s. “One way we did this was “basically to stop the [association] dues for a while, so the JCC’s could have those funds available to them as they were trying to climb out of this COVID pandemic.” Additionally, the association shared information about communication strategies and best practices, Jacobs said.
A silver lining in the cloud of the pandemic was that “a lot of walls have been knocked down between agencies, both at the local and national levels,” Jacobs said. “People are actually willing and excited about working together … We don’t want to go back exactly to the way it was before the pandemic; we want a better way of working and helping the American Jewish and Canadian Jewish communities.”
As colleagues and friends, Jacobs and Wax prepared for the leadership transition of the JCC Association of North America. “I’ve gotten together with him and Jerri-Ann has gotten together with Sharon (David’s wife) about being the ‘First Lady’” Jacobs told me in January 2020. “It’s a great partnership.”
Wax describes Jacobs as a “wonderful person, calm, humble … he has done just an amazing job in leadership.”
Working his way up through the JCC Association, Wax served as sports chair and as a co-chair for the donor development and stewardship committee. He also was involved in the professional development committee. True to the organization’s roots, he engaged with the Jewish Chaplains Council of the Jewish Welfare Board.
“Coming out of the pandemic, there is this idea of refreshing, strengthening, enhancing, and growing the JCC brand, movement, and platform,” Wax said. “On the national or continental levels, there are various opportunities of collaboration to strengthen our efforts within the movement. Coming out of these strange days, you have to be forward thinking; you have to be optimistic.”
Betzy Lynch, executive director of the Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs Family campus, commented, “For years we have understood the special and meaningful qualities that have made San Diego the incredible Jewish community it has become. The culture of philanthropy and the commitment of passionate leadership has grown Jewish life in exponential ways. The continental landscape of Jewish life and especially the JCC Association is fully recognizing the powerful impact of leaders like Gary Jacobs and David Wax.
“Gary’s leadership of JCCA during the last four years has resulted in stronger bonds across the 170 JCCs on this continent but also strong bonds between JCCs, JCCA and global partners in building a stronger future for Jewish life even through a global pandemic,” Lynch added. “As David takes the role of JCC Association chair, his thoughtful, proactive and inspiring leadership will capture this moment where communities have embraced the work of JCC’s as essential to their communities and imperative in creating greater Jewish community for everyone. These special leaders have given so much of themselves to the JCC movement. As a long-time JCC professional, I am inspired by their deep commitment to the field and feel very privileged to be a partner in their work.”
Wax and Jacobs both relished the opportunity to visit Camp David and the Naval Academy at Annapolis in November 2021 as part of an event-packed weekend with Jewish Welfare Board’s Chaplains Council. The council is headed by Rabbi Irving Elson, who spent a portion of his career as a chaplain at Camp Pendleton.
The Jewish Welfare Board has a “Torahs for the Troops” program for which the Chase Family of Orange County, California, donated a Torah for use by Jewish personnel serving at Camp David, Maryland. That presidential retreat was the site in 1978 of the historic meetings among Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter that led to the historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. The Jacobs family in 2013 had sponsored another Torah. The San Diego Torah is issued to chaplains serving in the field. It was dedicated in 2014 at the JCC Association’s Biennial in San Diego in a ceremony aboard the USS Midway. Many of the JWB Chaplains were at the Biennial and were able to write a letter in the Torah. It was a memorable first-time experience for several chaplains.
“President [Joe] Biden wasn’t there but we presented the Torah at Camp David,” Wax recalled. He added that it “was amazing enough to get onto Camp David.” During the same weekend, he said, “we had an experience where we went to the Naval Academy. At the time we were there, there was a parade of all the brigades in front of the Marine Corps Commandant [David H. Berger]. That was on a Friday afternoon and Friday evening we did a Shabbat service at the Uriah Levy Chapel that was built a number of years ago, to which my brother Charles’ family and my family were donors, but we had never been there. It is an incredible, beautiful facility and there was a Shabbat service with the midshipmen and midshipwomen, and we had a Shabbat dinner with them.”
Jacobs commented that the JCC Association of North America has continued to work with the military since the organization’s beginnings in 1917. “The Jewish Welfare Board piece of it is certainly still a strong part of our mission.”
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Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com