Toni Goodman is chief executive officer of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington.
The center, located in Montgomery County, offers fitness and continuing education classes, and serves as a preschool and camp open to all children. The center served more than 25,000 hot lunches to the poor last year.
How long have you been on the job?
I’ve been in this job for a little more than two years, but I started at the JCC in 1972. I was a nursery school teacher.
Where are you from?
If I keep talking, you’ll hear it. I grew up in Brooklyn.
Are you glad you chose the JCC as a career?
Oh, my God, yes.
Why?
You know, how often do you have a chance to get up every day and make a difference in people’s lives? Every day this place touches people in a different way, whether it’s feeding seniors or seeing a special-needs child … or just people coming in to be part of a community.
How big is the Jewish community in the Washington area?
What did the last survey say? I believe it was about 210,000. The largest community is in Montgomery County, but I guess the fastest-growing is in Northern Virginia.
What do you attribute that to?
The population is just spreading. This center is getting ready to celebrate its 95th birthday. It started with a group of teenage boys saying, “Let’s form a club.” It just continued to grow. After World War II, it really began the spread.
Washington is an anomaly. People comefrom all over. We have a really large Israeli community, we have a really large Russian [Jewish] community, but they’re very well-integrated.
Do you guys offer Yiddish lessons?
We do. We even do a seder in Yiddish that runs about, oh, I don’t know, about 65, 70 people. And then once a month, we do something called Club K and that is also a program in Yiddish. Sometimes it’s a movie, sometimes it’s a play or music.
