Rabbi Josh Franklin: Leading by Example at Jewish Center of the Hamptons

Rabbi Josh Franklin has a big job — teaching young ones the importance of charity and serving one’s community. He’s starting with his 8- and 4-year-old daughters.

“Amelia is 4, so we’re just focusing on teaching her to share,” says the head of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton. While he may joke about his daughters, he is serious about his members serving the community at large

Franklin, who has led the synagogue for six years, believes in charitable works along with charitable giving. While Franklin and wife, Stephanie Whitehorn, work on Amelia and her sister, Lilah, Franklin also works with the membership to make a difference in the community, as well as locally and internationally. At the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, he and other rabbis traveled to Poland to help Ukrainians fleeing the conflict. The congregation had donated more than $120,000 to assist with the effort.

“As Jews, we feel a sense of responsibility to the community and the world around us,” Franklin explains. “If you have the opportunity to help, you have the obligation to help.”

Some of the synagogue’s projects have included volunteering at a farm and raising produce to donate to a food pantry, filling backpacks to give to school children in surrounding communities who are in need and helping the homeless.

“There are basic things kids need to be successful in school and it is important that we help with that,” Franklin says of his younger members lending a hand to those who may be the same age as them. “We want to raise a generation of Jews who give back and are active stewards of the community.”

Franklin explains that there are three common ways to give back: community service, charitable giving and to be philanthropic. Community service means giving of yourself, giving your time. Charitable giving often means sharing what you have the means to give. Lastly, philanthropic means giving in a wider sense, with a higher commitment that could mean taking on a larger project or need in the community or in the world on an ongoing basis that people can rely on.

While all types of giving are important, he says community service is something anyone can do because we all have time, and that time spent can make a real difference.

“All the different types go together to make a community,” Franklin says. “And, it isn’t about keeping track of how much you give or how often you volunteer. It should be part of the fabric of who you are. It should not feel like a chore. It is about identity and our responsibility to one another.”

For example, when Franklin and his wife give charitable donations to Lilah, she makes the decision about what charity to give to. Franklin says that the end goal is feeling good about who you are and that you identify your Jewish heritage with pride.

“One time I was leading teens in New York City,” Franklin relates. “This was before I came to the Hamptons. We were meeting homeless people on the street and giving them food, clothing and toiletries. I explained to the teens that the important thing to give the homeless was a sense of being seen, the feeling that you care.”

Franklin says that too many people go around the homeless or refuse to make eye contact for fear they’ll be asked for a donation. He didn’t want the teens to fall into that category.

“The second day we are out I see this group of kids straggling behind and I go back there to hurry them along and when I get back there, they’re actually talking with a homeless person,” he says. “I realized that they heard me, that they got it. It doesn’t matter how much you can give. Can you give of yourself?”

Todd Shapiro is an award-winning publicist and associated publisher of Dan’s Papers.