Marking a meaningful and lasting contribution to the community, Jeremy Rudin, former President of KBI’s Board of Directors, shared some personal reflections with Communications and Marketing Committee member Suzan Zilahi.
1. Where did you grow up?
Although I was born in Montreal, I never actually lived there. We lived in a small town about 40 kilometres east of the city, on the Richelieu River, in a place called Beloeil. When we lived there, it was still a small rural community. After living in a number of other places, I moved to Ottawa in 1993 for work and have been here ever since.
2. How did you go to shul when you lived in Beloeil?
There was no synagogue in Beloeil – and there still isn’t. But we had many relatives in Montreal. Every Friday or Saturday, my father would drive my older brother and me to stay with our grandparents, and my grandfather would take us to Temple Emanuel.
That was our link to Jewish life. During the week, we didn’t know any other Jewish families besides our own, so in a sense, we were “Jewish on weekends.” Those trips played a big role in shaping my connection to Judaism.
3. What experience has most influenced how you approach service and community leadership?
I think my years in the federal public service have had the biggest influence on how I approach things. (Jeremy retired in 2021 after a distinguished career, serving most recently as Canada’s Superintendent of Financial Institutions.)
Working in government, especially on the federal budget, taught me how essential it is to build a broad base of support and maintain cohesion among people with different priorities. Governance, accountability, and transparency were central to my work, and those principles naturally influenced how I approached leadership at KBI.
As the only full-service Conservative synagogue in Ottawa, we serve a remarkably diverse membership. People come to KBI for many different reasons and bring different expectations. One of the most important responsibilities of our leadership is to keep that diversity connected and working together.
4. Is there a particular KBI service or life experience that is especially meaningful to you?
My wife and I adopted our daughter, our only child, from China when we were in our late 40s. When we first brought Shira home, I stayed home with her on Shabbos, but I missed going to shul. When she was around two years old, I decided to start taking her with me every week. We continued that tradition until she was 16, when the pandemic changed everything.
I confess to having had some small trepidation, and curiosity, as to how she would be received, but I didn’t need to be concerned. Shira instantly became a synagogue mascot – an engaging although shy child who was embraced warmly by the entire congregation. I stopped being “Jeremy” and became “Shira’s dad,” and that meant a great, great deal to me.
Becoming a father is the most significant experience of my adult life and the best decision I’ve ever made.
5. What’s something people might be surprised to learn about you?
I’m really very good at ironing shirts. I even bought myself an extremely fancy iron, because it’s the household chore that I’m best at and genuinely enjoy. I like household chores where you take something messy, and turn it into something neat and ordered. I also like polishing silver, although I don’t do it very often.
Life is inherently messy and impossible to keep perfectly ordered; even when you do manage it, things never stay that way for long. Perhaps that’s why ironing and polishing silver feel so satisfying; at least for a while, there’s a moment of calm in restoring order, before you have to do it again.
6. What’s your favourite movie?
The movie that’s had the biggest impact on my movie going experience was when I was six or seven. At that time children my age weren’t allowed in movie theatres in Montreal, but my grandfather snuck me into my first movie, How the West Was Won.
It was a massive Cinerama epic, the IMAX of its day, nearly three hours long and filled with sweeping landscapes, battles, dramatic scenes and elaborate dance numbers, et cetera, et cetera.