During the gloomiest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rabbi Jeff Glickman and his wife, Mindy, did something unprecedented. The Connecticut couple made a $100 charitable donation to every single United Way, NPR station and ACLU affiliate in the nation, including in Kansas City.
Then, they hit the road in their RV, Seymour. Their goal: to meet the people making a difference. They parked in people’s driveways. They stayed at Jewish summer camps and at rest stops. Everywhere, they learned about local communities, needs and creative solutions to problems.
Jeff and Mindy put it this way, “The world is so small, what happens far away really affects us all. We see that pollution knows no borders — and neither does a pandemic. We are all in this together.”
The couple has a special relationship to Missouri. In the 1970s, Rabbi Glickman worked at Temple Adath Joseph, the reform temple in St. Joseph, Missouri.
During their tour, the couple returned to St. Joseph for a special Shabbat.
Mindy described it like this, “[Jeff] returned after a quarter century and led Friday evening services on Zoom, in an empty sanctuary. It was a touching moment. The music from Rabbi Glickman’s Connecticut congregation filled the emptiness.”
Later, after the couple returned to Connecticut, they surprised three area nonprofits with incredibly generous additional donations: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affiliates in Kansas and Missouri, and the United Way of Greater Kansas City.
“We can’t stop telling Jeff and Mindy’s story,” said Nicole Rainey, development director of the ACLU of Missouri and a member at Kol Rinah in St. Louis. “They pay special attention to what isn’t normally seen — powerful work being done in small towns and Jewish communities across America. And then, by giving so generously, the Glickmans themselves become a part of that work.”
