By Mark Silberman

As we took our seats in the living room surrounded by our four children and their spouses just one year ago, a mixture of trepidation and excitement filled the air. My wife and I began the conversation.

“We plan to leave at least 75% of our charitable donations to Jewish causes – as a part of the Jewish Future Pledge.”

This conversation, one that I had rehearsed in my head for weeks was, in reality, decades in the making. We remember our daughter, as a child, coming home from school shortly after we had moved from New York to Atlanta. “Mommy,” she said, “I don’t want to be Jewish anymore.”

And why would she? At that point in our lives we were on the periphery of the Jewish community. To our young daughter living within a predominantly non-Jewish framework, Judaism may very well have seemed to be only something that separated her from her friends. A reason she didn’t celebrate holiday X and a reason why certain times a year she had to stay home to celebrate holiday Y. At that point we realized that we needed to make a change – we needed a way to truly demonstrate the beauty and richness of the Jewish tradition. We needed to get more involved.

I like to joke that I decided to stick my toe in the Jewish communal waters and immediately found myself deep sea fishing. The last twenty years of deep engagement in Jewish leadership have been among the most meaningful of my life. When I look out at the wider Jewish landscape I’m concerned that people aren’t as well connected and interested in their Jewish identities. We need to focus, not just on the cultural and communal aspects of Jewish identity, but also on the core values that animate our tradition.

At every stage of Jewish history, innovation has given rise to new approaches, ideas, and communities. We come from a long tradition of creativity and adaptability – with each generation providing the raw materials and subsequent scaffolding for the next to continue building. I don’t know exactly what innovative ideas and programing will come to transform the community next – but I am certain that they will arise. And when they do, I want to ensure that they have the financial backing to be the success that they deserve to be.

That conversation with our children exceeded our greatest hopes. Not only were my children and their spouses receptive and overjoyed that I had found something worth supporting – but they wanted to join in on this philanthropic mission and one day, perhaps, sit down their own children for a similar conversation. This was especially meaningful as our children’s spouses are not Jewish but were able to understand both the importance of this pledge and that they and their children are included under its umbrella and mission. The Jewish Future Pledge is for everyone that is a part of the Jewish community – regardless of family make-up.

The Jewish Future Pledge is not just a way to ensure the stability and growth of the Jewish community of tomorrow. It isn’t just a medium to practice one of the most central Jewish values, the value of giving. And it isn’t just a commitment to secure a warm and welcoming Jewish community for generations to come. The Jewish Future Pledge gave me and my wife the tools to sit down with our children and begin a conversation about giving, about the future, about what is important in life, allowing us – in our own way – to write the next chapter in our family’s Jewish story that goes back thousands of years.

Mark Silberman is the Chairman of the Jewish Future Pledge Board of Directors.