It is 1947, and Ted Comet is one year out of college, volunteering with the Joint Distribution Committee at a home for young Holocaust survivors in Versailles, France (among them Elie Weisel, who became a lifelong friend). 

A group of teenagers volunteer to join Operation Bricha — Jewish soldiers from prestate Israel who fought with the British during WWII, now trying to break the embargo to make aliyah — and Ted is in their ranks; but when word comes that the British navy has spied their boat, his group is rerouted to Rome. They tour the ancient Roman ruins and come to the Arch of Titus, which was built to celebrate the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in the year 70. The young Jews are told about coins that were minted for 25 years under Vespasian and his sons with the inscription, “Judaea Capta,” “Judea Conquered.” 

One of the boys takes a piece of chalk out of his pocket and writes on the arch, “Judaea Viva.” The People of Israel Live.

The countless Jewish communal professionals who had the joy of learning from Ted, who died on Wednesday at 100, may have heard him tell this story. I was fortunate to be among them because Ted was a longtime member of the Board of JPro and its predecessor organizations.

In May 2023, JPro had a small party to celebrate Ted’s 99th birthday. We made him a gift. Ted loved to say that we are all links in a golden chain of Jewish history. We gathered a collection of Ted’s wisdom — on resilience, Jewish history, living a good life, aging well — into a golden chain.

I’m from the tail end of Gen X. We came to political awareness between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. What is it to be a Jew in the world? What am I called to do here? The answers of my adolescence, the foundation of articulated and unconscious beliefs upon which I’ve shaped my adult life and career have, since Oct. 7, convulsed into shards of uncertainty with sharp edges of urgency. I’ve become consumed with the millennia of Jewish history and what we can learn from our ancestors over time and across the planet. Fewer than 20 of Ted’s lifetimes connect us to the fall of Jerusalem, and more than 200 of my children’s.

I like to think of Ted as the Forrest Gump of the North American Jewish communal sector. We could create a graduate course on the history of our field through the lens of Ted’s career. In his eulogy for Ted, John Ruskay, a mentee and lifelong friend of Ted and a longtime mentor and friend to so many of today’s Jewish communal leaders, said:

“For over 20 years, from the early 1970s until the late l990s, Ted directed the General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations. The GA was then the largest and most significant annual gathering of Jewish leadership. You simply had to be there! Every year, Ted carefully curated the GA program by identifying the most urgent issues facing world Jewry and ensuring that the most outstanding scholars and speakers brought different perspectives. He embedded in the GA our commitment to presenting speakers and scholars with conflicting views on major issues. It was a huge achievement and Ted was the recognized genius producer, choreographer and director. 

Two of Ted’s earlier creations during his years leading the American Zionist Youth Foundation have endured to this day. The Salute to Israel Parade on Fifth Avenue is now in its 61st year, and Ted was also the founding chair of the Israeli Folk Dance Festival, which will have its 73rd performance on March 30. Remarkable.” 

When 1,400 Jewish communal professionals gather in Baltimore for the largest cross-sectoral gathering of Jewish communal professionals in recent memory in just over five weeks, many of us will be thinking about Ted. Some will remember their days at the conferences that he crafted with vision, purpose, creativity, reverence for our past and optimism about our future, and love for Eretz Yisrael. Others, like me, will think about this conference as standing on the shoulders of those that Ted designed. Everyone in that plenary room will be engaging in the creative continuity of the Jewish people (Ted’s driving purpose).

What is it to be a Jewish communal professional or lay leader? For me, it is to see oneself as an actor in Jewish history. It is to live inside of the metaphor of Ted’s famous tour of his beloved Shoshana’s tapestries. We are at once the weavers and the yarn: The world was created for me. I am but dust and ashes.

After Rabbi Yosie Levine’s hesped (eulogy) and before an El Maalei prayer that opened our hearts and heaven’s gates, Cantor Chaim Dovid Berson led us in song: Am Yisrael Chai and Oseh Shalom. In the front row, Ted’s grandson-in-law held Ted’s great-great grandchild in his arms singing with the adoring eye contact between a young baby and a new zaidy. I was brought back to a moment with my dad, who died on Oct. 11, 2023. When his first grandchild was born, my dad said, “You have given us a little piece of eternity.”

Today’s Jewish communal leaders, professional and lay, are part of the golden chain that Ted and so many others saved from the shattering of their generation to build the foundation upon which we do our part to shape the next links.

Zichrono livracha. May his memory be a blessing.

Ilana Aisen is the chief community impact officer at Leading Edge.