More than 400 well-wishers gathered to celebrate Colorado’s Jewish community and bestow honors at the Jewish Community Relations Council’s ninth annual luncheon last Thursday at the Four Seasons Hotel in Denver.

“The one unique thing about the JCRC is, it truly is the only single consensus voice for the Jewish community in representing our point of view to elected officials,” said JEWISHcolorado president Doug Seserman, welcoming the over-capacity crowd.

The council is a coalition of some 40 Jewish organizations and synagogues and counts members throughout the metro area with the intention of providing a single voice on issues concerning the Jewish community locally and worldwide.

The luncheon, dubbed a “leadership celebration,” included award presentations to Rabbi Joel Schwartzman, Denver City Councilwoman Peggy Lehmann, State Rep. Daniel Kagan, D-Cherry Hills Village, and businessman and philanthropist Bob Lembke.

Several speakers joked that the notion of representing a unified voice for the Jewish community sounded better in theory than in practice.

Referencing an observation made by Seserman, that if an alien landed, it would be hard to decide who is the leader of the Jewish community, Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia quipped, “That’s much like the Republican Party,” to chuckles and groans from the bipartisan audience. Garcia then read a proclamation from Gov. John Hickenlooper designating March 19 as Jewish Community Relations Council Day in the State of Colorado.

Taking the stage next, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, whose wife, Mary Louise Lee had just sung a spine-tingling version of the national anthem, praised the council for its work “help[ing] bridge the gaps of understanding with regard to issues of the Jewish community or Israel.” He continued, “This organization represents a coalition of organizations in this city that stand up and stand out when there are issues to be addressed and demonstrate the courage to lead.”

Saying he was trying to recall how a joke went, Brandon Rattiner, co-chair of the JCRC Advocacy Committee, took a stab: “We have 10 Jews in a room, you have however many opinions — I couldn’t remember if it is 12 opinions or 14 or 20 or 50 or 100. But the point of not remembering is that there’s a lot, and there’s not even any consensus about how many opinions there are, in that joke.” The joke, he said, demonstrates “the diversity of Jewish thought and Jewish opinion and Jewish politics every day.”

It’s been a tough time for Jews around the world, he said. “We’ve seen a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, we’ve seen unprecedented difficulties in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, and we’ve seen some people in our community, some of our leaders, say some things that have divided our community here.” That’s why, Rattiner concluded, “It’s a time when we need to stand united and show the world that our tent is broad, and the JCRC is the way we do that here in Colorado.”

The JCRC, he concluded, “engages all stripes of political, cultural and Jewish religion,” enabling the council to exhibit both the diversity and the unity of opinion. “Now is the time to show the world that we’re not monolithic in our thinking and our words. Now is the time to stand up to those both in our community and outside our community that are trying to peel apart the U.S.-Israeli relationship,” he said.

Given what’s happening across this country and across the world, JCRC “will play a more important role as time goes on,” said Jerry Silverman, president of the Jewish Federations of North America, a national coalition of local Jewish organizations around the continent.

Schwartzman was honored with the Volunteer Recognition Award and Lehmann received the Jewish Public Official Distinguished Service Award, presented by JCRC chair Jacki Cooper Melmed.

She next presented Kagan with the Legislative Appreciation Award.

“We as legislators have an obligation to engage in tikkun olam — healing the world, repairing the world,” Kagan said. “That is a value which I believe legislators must share, and it’s a value I know the Jewish Community Relations Council treasures.”

While the phrase might sound lofty, Kagan continued, “healing the world” isn’t a rosy, overly-optimistic view of reality. “It is an acknowledgement that the world is wounded, the world is injured, there are people suffering — and our job, as legislators, our job as people, as members of the human species is to help heal those wounds, to repair those injuries.”

That’s accomplished, he said, building relations and establishing trust within and between communities.

The Democratic lawmaker then recounted the gripping story that began with receiving a “panicked phone call” from the father of a teenage girl who was on her way to join ISIS in Syria. In the months prior, the girl had been exchanging thousands of text messages, emails and Facebook posts with an ISIS recruiter, and the girl’s father, Kagan said, had been reluctant to ask for help because he was terrified what might happen. The girl, it turned out, had joined two other teen girls and made their way toward Syria, with “ISIS [acting] as a virtual travel agent for this unfortunate teenager.”

The worried father collected information and passed it on to Kagan, who transmitted it to the FBI. “In the end, these three Colorado girls went from Denver International Airport to Chicago to John F. Kennedy International Airport and then on to Frankfurt, where they were recovered and brought home safely,” Kagan said, pointing to a complex web built on trust.

“And the reason was, there was trust, there was confidence in the Islamic community, from which the father of this girl came, and they had trust in us as representatives, and in the FBI, to do what was right and what was just. And three lives were saved, as a result of that. Leadership, legislative leadership, community relations, trust — these are the things that can heal wounds, prevent crises, make life a little better,” Kagan said. “These things matter, these things help us heal, these things help repair us and prepare us.”

Jewish Community Relations Council chair Jacki Cooper Melmed presents the Jewish Public Official Distinguished Service Award to Denver City Councilwoman Peggy Lehmann at the JCRC’s luncheon on March 19 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Denver.

Photos by Ernest Lungin/The Colorado Statesman

Melmed then presented the Community Leadership Award to Lembke, a former member of the Greenwood Village City Council and a founding board member of HCA Health One, the hospital conglomerate whose sale funded the $2 billion Colorado Health Foundation, among numerous other distinctions and accomplishments.

JCRC was honoring Lembke, currently the president of United Water and Sanitation District, “for his heart, for his caring, for his support for our mission,” she said.

Lembke began his remarks by recalling his participation in the 2011 Public Officials Mission to Israel, sponsored by JCRC.

“What Israel has achieved in 66 years, just slightly over three generations, is a miracle of energy, drive and courage,” he said. “Modern Israel has incubated a culture of innovation, of risk-taking, that can serve, in many cases, as the model for what could bring out the best in this country. You can feel, you can feel the energy of the economy, of the people, as you travel in Israel.” He urged anyone who hasn’t visited the country to make the trip. (JCRC is sponsoring another of the biennial trips this summer.)

It was a discovery Lembke made at a small kibbutz in the Negev Desert that could change the arid landscape in Colorado, he said. There, using sophisticated drip irrigation, Israelis “could actually have productive agriculture where agriculture had not existed.” Colorado faces its own water challenges, he noted, with projected population growth expected to increase to 7.7 million people in 2040. “And they all need water,” he added.

With that demand on limited water resources looming, Lembke said he was pleased to talk about the recently unveiled research facility that was launching on acreage he owns in Weld County, in partnership with Colorado State University to determine how to use subsurface drip irrigation in Colorado. CSU plans to test various crops to determine what water can be saved and what kinds of yields can be produced using the drip irrigation system.

The 25-year project will examine both agricultural and suburban use of the technology, he said, with hopes of leading to breakthroughs within a year or two. More efficient lawn irrigation, for instance, could reduce demand by tens of thousands of acre feet, he said, and could reduce demand for water far more effectively than low-flow toilets and other devices already in use.

“This research and the potential benefits for urban and agricultural sectors were all inspired by the work of JEWISHcolorado and the missions conducted by the JCRC,” Lembke said.

— Ernest@coloradostatesman.com