Jeff & Rita Rayman
My husband and I are not religious people. In fact, we are a couple who strive to draw from the goodness of humanity, that includes pieces of many cultures and religious practice, which results in a beautiful mosaic of customs and traditions borrowed from all over the world.
Above all, we are strong believers that we can guide our children to be decent individuals and can only hope that our acts of kindness and good will have impacted them. But, ultimately, who and what they choose to be will be their own doing since we do not believe that doctrine is going to motivate them.
We aim to give our four children — Lindsay, Erik, Spencer and Brendan — a sense of who they are, where they come from, in the grand scheme of humanity. And part of that means adhering to certain Jewish values, such as being charitable, appreciating family and supporting a variety of causes as a volunteer, in the way the Jewish community supports so many organizations and, by extension, so many people with various needs. We feel that these qualities contribute positively to our world.
We both bring a large part of who we are to all our volunteer work. Jeff comes from a financial background and has sat on many boards and takes particular interest in the financial aspect of an organization. I am a multi-media artist and it helps me accomplish my hands-on work because I appreciate that to every person and situation there are many layers and reasons for who they are.
We travel extensively around the world, and are humbled when we are out of North America and Europe because the way of life elsewhere is so different. We do make every effort to engage the people native to the countries we visit because we believe that sharing our stories helps us connect to our essential humanness.
Spreading awareness allows for mutual understanding and our contribution to the Jewish Foundation is a way to achieve that. We believe that every human being needs to make some collective noise towards a better future.
