Laurie Davis
El Paso, Texas
How is your Hero working to make the world a better place?
Laurie Davis intentionally does not pursue full-time employment so she has time to do what is needed for her community and family. She not only makes visible major differences in organizations (e.g., playing transformational roles on the board for the city's Jewish day school), but has also done so through quiet individual acts of kindness and vision, including: being quick to volunteer to offer (kosher) meals for those who are ailing or mourning, doing behind-the-scenes work to maximize availability of kosher food in El Paso that stores sell or that is made in the Conservative synagogue kitchen whose (re)kashering by the Houston Kashrut Association was organized by Laurie, setting the example of sponsoring annual public learning to honor a deceased relative, speaking at Yom Limmud, guest-teaching at the day school or for the synagogue's Talmud Torah, being on-call as a resource on kashrut and ritual for many members of the community, reducing El Paso's geographic isolation by building bridges with communities and educators from other cities, initiating a women's tefillah group to chant Psalms, etc. With no non-Haredi traditional Judaism for hundreds of miles, Laurie stepped up three years ago and founded Jewish Education El Paso (JEEP), a partner agency of the Jewish Federation of El Paso, which has recently brought El Paso dynamic nationally-renowned speakers/authors including Rabbis Tzvi Gluckin (of Boston), Shmuel Geller (rosh yeshiva of Ohr Yaakov in Israel), Yerachmiel Fried and Bentzi Epstein (both of Dallas), with the next visiting educator to be Lori Palatnik. Laurie is truly an oasis of Yiddishkeit for this isolated desert community.
How has your Hero impacted your life and inspired you?
Since 1997, I have been blessed to be Laurie's b'shert. I grew up with a more cultural and passive Judaism, but being with Laurie has helped me go beyond stereotypes and discover what multi-dimensional wisdom and beauty Jewish ritual and tradition actually has. She has inspired me to teach Jewish classes to a variety of adult and youth audiences, write a journal article on Judaism and mathematics, write and perform Jewish songs, write a regular column for El Paso's Jewish paper, and help lead events for JEEP that bring together people from the full tapestry of Judaism.