Remarks by Martin Goetz, Board Chair

As my first official act as AJAS chair I'd like to thank my immediate predecessor, Barbra Gold, chief executive officer of Maimonides Geriatric Center and Jewish Elder Care in beautiful Montreal, Canada. Barbra is a remarkable leader who brought tact, diplomacy, kindness and sensitivity – along with a wonderful sense of humor and a pretty fair golf game – to her leadership at AJAS. Barbra is a leader who can be counted upon, all of the time. Our association and its members owe her a great debt of gratitude her work on our behalf over these last two years.

I also want to thank our AJAS' staff here with us today, Monica Wolfe and Heather Gordon. These two ladies have been exceptional and we owe them a great debt of gratitude. I also want to wish Marla Gilson a "Refua Shleyma" as we all pray for her well being and success in meeting her challenges.

We are especially grateful to Carol Silver Elliott (Cedar Village, Cincinnati) and Rob Goldstein (Menorah Manor, St. Petersburg) and the 2011 AJAS Conference Planning Committee. Planning a conference is not easy work and we are very grateful. To those of our members who have not yet served on our conference committee, it's an ideal way to "dip your feet" into the association and meet many members. We also want to thank our host community, The Legacy at Willow Bend in Dallas. Michael Ellentuck, its president and CEO, is a past chair of our association and over these last days he and his community have been consummate hosts.

I want to thank my colleagues for the opportunity to chair AJAS over these next two years. Your confidence and faith in me to lead our association over these next years is the single highest honor I will ever receive. As Susan and I were packing for this conference, we began reminiscing about our first NAJHHA (North American Association of Jewish Homes & Housing) conference in 1982 at the Hotel del Coronado, outside of San Diego. In those days I was kind of young (also thinner and with more hair) and recall vividly being in awe of the leaders of this association – Herb Shore, Jacob Reingold, Nita Corre, Harvey Finkelstein and Ira Robbins along with others. These were the men and woman who literally created the field.

Many of us have heard Larry Minnix, president of LeadingAge (formally AAHSA), speak of our heritage, of our past leaders, and of our association's contributions to elder care and the field of aging. Larry will often mention the likes of Herb Shore and Jake Reingold along with the role our Jewish communities have played in advancing good, decent and thoughtful elder care programs in North America. Indeed, pictures of Herb and Jake are prominently displayed in the entryway of LeadingAge offices in Washington.

In 1995, at our 35th annual meeting in Miami, we rebranded NAJHHA as AJAS and moved our offices to Washington, D.C. We did it because we recognized that if we are to play a role in advancing good and decent public policy, then we had to have a seat at the table – and the reality is that the public policy table is set in Washington.

But AJAS is first and foremost a fraternal organization of high quality, mission driven Jewish communities – all of whom are inexorably tied to honoring the 5th Commandment. If AJAS is to have a future, if our association is to continue to evolve and survive, then we must be relevant and responsive to our members and to their needs. We are a small association with a large and ambitious portfolio. Ours is a participatory organization where everybody is a somebody, and where everyone's voice is needed.

AJAS is also the central address of Jewish elder care programs and services in North America. And AJAS is us. We are the "hands on providers" who are actually doing the work – and we do it day in and day out.

And so if AJAS is going to be relevant and responsive to its membership, then we have to be engaged with each other more than once a year when we gather for our annual conference. Because if all we are to each other is a fraternal group that meets once a year, we will have no future.

We are going to revise our website so that it's functional and user friendly – we want to make it better. A couple of years ago, Carol Silver Elliott led an AJAS workshop on Social Media. She and her staff discussed how they came to create a new website and more importantly its value to their community at Cedar Village. I attended that program and my community, River Garden, now has a new and robust website because Carol took the time and made the effort to share Cedar Village's journey into social media. I want to thank Carol because she has agreed to chair a small group that will work with staff in creating a new AJAS presence on the web.

We have an AJAS listserv for executives, development staff, and board leaders. And while participation is good, it is limited to only those among us who have chosen to register. And so following this conference we are going to move forward with registering every member CEO and administrator to our listserv. And we're going to encourage our development staffs and lay leadership to also join up so we can talk with and to each other.

Regarding public policy and advocacy: We need to help forge alliances, we need to piggy back and leverage wherever we can, trade on being the address of elder care policy and practice for the Jewish Community, be highly visible to a select audience of lawmakers/staff and regulators. We must be known as smart providers, with creative solutions, good public policy positions and reliable support. Thank you David Fuks and Dan Reingold for chairing PPLG and to all of the members of that committee.

Our membership committee will be more active, and whether our membership grows or shrinks still further, we will be in a position to respond, and respond quickly, to a member's request for assistance – be it from CEOs, or lay leaders. And AJAS will help – just as 20 and 30 years ago when we could call upon the likes of Herb Shore, Jake Reingold, Josh Gortler, or Nita Coree. David Ross (Lions Gate CCRC, New Jersey) will be chairing this committee and we are grateful to him.

Let me close with this thought. As AJAS moves forward into its 52nd year, we will work hard to build upon our strengths through innovative models of care and caring, recognizing that AJAS' primary developmental challenge is to strengthen bonds and add value for its own members – present and potential. We will access Web based tools and enhanced technologies, which will be helpful, but relationships are key! And so I ask that you join me as we become "us" in building relationships that will both nourish and affirm the value of AJAS and the future of our association.

Martin A. Goetz
AJAS Chair
March 29 2011
Dallas, Texas