At the JEWISHcolorado Annual Meeting on August 21, Jonathan Perlmutter will be honored as Volunteer of the Year for his work as the Chair of the Board’s Safety & Security Committee. Perlmutter is a Principal of Jordon Perlmutter & Co. and has been in the real estate development industry for more than 30 years. In addition, he serves as the Safety & Security liaison with his congregation, The Denver Kehillah, and he also serves on the Colorado AIPAC Council. He has served on several boards and committees in the community, including Denver Jewish Day School, DAT Minyan, The Hebrew Educational Alliance, Adams County Economic Development, and the Adams 12 Five Star Education Foundation.
Recently, JEWISHcolorado talked with Perlmutter about his commitment to JEWISHcolorado’s Safety & Security Initiative and to the community.
You joined the JEWISHcolorado Board of Directors several years ago. What prompted you to become involved?
I am actively passionate about my Jewish community and the community-at-large, and I wanted to make a difference for the people I care about.
That passion for the Jewish community—where did that originate in your lived experience?
I was born and raised here, and my parents and grandparents have deep roots here. They set an example for me showing the importance of being good stewards in the Jewish community. I live for my family, my friends, my work, and my community. The welfare of the Jewish people and the state of Israel is in my personal fiber, and I want to play my small part in this endeavor.
Growing up here, did you participate in Federation-sponsored activities?
I went on the Joyce Zeff Israel Study Tour (IST) when I was 17 years old—that would have been the summer of 1987. I made friends, and the trip was an important part of my youth. But it was only one ingredient in my love of Judaism and Israel.
The other ingredients were the influence of my parents and grandparents. My dad was not Orthodox, but before I headed off to public school in the morning, I would see him putting on tefillin. My grandparents came from the region that was then Russia and Poland, and the stories they told me had an impact. My grandfather came to this country when he was 15 on a ship by himself. He worked as a construction laborer in New York, found his way to Denver, and was one of a group of people who founded the Hebrew Educational Alliance.
As I grew older, I was exposed to great and inspiring Jewish minds. I was able to meet Yitzhak Rabin and his wife when they visited Denver. I have a cousin in the Israeli Philharmonic, and I met the violinist Itzhak Perlman backstage. My parents were active in the community, so I absorbed the thinking of influential people who spoke on the merits of Zionism and the importance of Jewish identity.
Perlmutter (foreground) with his siblings and Yitzhak and Leah Rabin in the mid 1970s
So, all these different ingredients led you to become active in JEWISHcolorado.
My family put too much effort into the welfare of our Jewish community for me, as the next generation, to sit back and take that for granted. It has to be maintained, improved upon, and carried forward.
You are serving as the Chair of JEWISHcolorado’s Safety & Security Committee. Why did this particular niche appeal to you?
I remember encountering antisemitic incidents as a young teenager in middle school. Moreover, when I was 15, Alan Berg, the Jewish radio host, was killed by members of a white supremacist group, and I never forgot that. I had no personal connection to him, but it was a shock for me—and for most Jews in Denver—because it hit so close to home.
Of course, today, safety is on our minds because of the national and local threats we hear about every day.
As chair, what do you believe is the mission of JEWISHcolorado’s Safety & Security initiative?
We are doing everything we can to educate the community and raise the level of consciousness about the importance of people stepping up, being active, and not letting antisemites win. They will win if we don’t go to our Jewish day schools or our synagogues. We are not going to let their voices dominate. We are doing whatever we can to mitigate their leverage. We cannot let fear take over our daily lives as Jews.
You certainly have support in this mission from JEWISHcolorado.
Yes, I am grateful for the leadership from [President and CEO] Renée Rockford and [Chair of the Board] Ben Lusher. As laypersons, we are guided by the expertise and experience of professionals from the Secure Community Network (SCN), including Regional Director Phil Niedringhaus and Regional Security Advisor Kevin Farrington. Also, we now anticipate hiring a third security professional because of the need.
Being able to rely on professionals brings a sense of confidence and reminds us that we must stand up for ourselves. We are truly blessed to have Phil and Kevin. They are working nonstop. They are the ultimate professionals—calm yet candid. The community has welcomed them, and they have embraced our community.
You also have nourished community support through your committee.
We stay in constant communication with active players in this mission including the leadership of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), leadership of Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab (CELL), and the Rose Community Foundation. We show that we are supporting them, and we know that they are supporting us.
Doing this work means a substantial investment of your personal time.
I am Modern Orthodox, but since October 7, I have started carrying my phone on Shabbat. I don’t use it unless there is an emergency. In the current environment, it was clear that I needed to have a phone. I am not the person making frontline decisions—that is up to the professionals. But I can convene our committee if needed. Pikuach nefesh—to save a life—that is why I now keep a phone on my person.
Everything really did change after October 7, didn’t it?
After October 7, we accelerated the importance of safety and security and the need for people to stay involved in the institutions they love. We can fight this environment of heightened threats by becoming educated, developing situational awareness and staying active, whatever niche within the community a person chooses. I felt a strong sense of responsibility in this role to stand up against hate, but many people throughout the whole community have embraced the need for safety and security with courage. Long before October 7, I was taught that we as Jews should not wait for an emergency to come together. It’s important to build community before a crisis ever happens.
Congratulations on being named Volunteer of the Year by JEWISHcolorado!
I don’t feel I deserve this honor, but I am proud to receive it. I accept it as an opportunity to impress upon people that we can come together and watch out for each other. We must be vigilant as we go about our days. But we are not going to let our dignity be stripped by bad actors. We are going to exchange ideas and figure out how to solve problems. The work will never be finished.