Ira Jaffee, longtime Jewish Community Center leader, built bridges

Through his final days, Ira William Jaffee, the longtime chief executive officer of the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis, kept helping other people.

He was still taking calls to help former American Basketball Association athletes who need jobs, housing, transportation ― clients of the Dropping Dimes Foundation, where he took a retirement job as executive director.

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He overheard his wife of nearly 47 years, Cherri, say that she kept losing her phone and reading glasses when she moved about the house; the next day, an Amazon package arrived with an over-the-shoulder leather pouch that can hold those items.

"It was his last surprise gift to me that I will cherish forever," she said.

He died of cancer a few days after that, on Dec. 9, at the age of 74, surrounded by family at his home in Carmel.

Immediately, the notes started pouring in from people who received acts of kindness from Jaffee, some of which his family didn't know about: that he helped a Ukrainian refugee learn English, that he helped people find their first job or apartment, that he brought unlikely friends together through his late-life passion for pickleball.

"He would help anyone at any single time of the day," daughter Kira Shemesh said. "He’d go above and beyond."

The anecdotes are fitting for the man who friends and family describe as tirelessly caring, empathetic and humble. Jaffee was a social worker to the core, whose lasting legacy was vastly expanding the Jewish Community Center in size and scope ― tripling the center's footprint and expanding the budget from less than $1 million to $9 million by the time he retired in 2017.

Since being involved in his local JCC where he grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania, it was his dream to lead his own, he told WFYI upon his retirement. He came to Indiana to earn degrees in secondary education and counseling at Butler University, then taught history and math at St. Thomas Aquinas School in Indianapolis. His first job at the Indianapolis JCC was as youth director in 1978; he ascended the ranks to CEO in 1984.

Jaffee spent 33 years leading the center with compassion, optimism and an easy-going manner, colleagues said. Under his tenure, the center expanded physically with a $15 million renovation in the late 1990s, but it also grew into its title as a "community" center ― one that welcomes and appeals to people of all kinds of religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.

"He was a bridge builder," former board president Ronnie Katz said. "Many people think of the JCC as a center for people of the Jewish faith. We built bridges with people of all faiths. There may be more non-Jewish members than Jewish members today."

Behind the weighty legacy is a man who, though he might have come off as quiet or timid at first, had an unabashed and playful sense of humor.

His office at the JCC, son Ethan Jaffee recalled, said it all.

Hanging on the walls were comical paintings spinning off religious themes, such as Moses parting the water of a swimming pool lane so that an overweight Jewish man could race on foot to the finish and beat out competitive swimmers. He had a collection of a few dozen irreverent bobble-head dolls: one of himself, several of famous basketball players like Reggie Miller, and even one of "Buddy Christ", the winking Jesus Christ parody statue that appeared in the 1999 film "Dogma."

There was a cardboard cutout of John Wayne wearing the jersey of former Lakers player Metta Sandiford-Artest, as well as a blown-up poster image of Jaffee himself from the 1970s with his poofy, permed hair and bell-bottomed jeans.

"It was quite a shrine," Ethan Jaffee laughed.

The bobble-heads came home with his father when he retired. Some now reside with his grandson, Elijah Shemesh, in his dorm room at Indiana University. He said he'll miss watching sports with his grandfather.

Sports, both watching and playing them, was a lifelong passion for the elder Jaffee. Since former JCC board president John Abrams met Jaffee in the 1970s, they played on basketball, racketball and tennis teams together through the JCC. In the early 1990s, their summer tennis team took second place at national championship in Tucson.

Abrams went on to cofound Dropping Dimes and recruited Jaffee post-retirement, with his love of basketball and social work skillset, to work directly with the former ABA players.

"He was perfect for it," Abrams said. "He was a 'mensch' with a 'lev gadol'" ― in Yiddish and Hebrew, respectively, a good guy with a big heart.

Retirement spawned another sporting passion: pickleball. The game became part of Jaffee's daily routine, in and around spending time at the pool, helping Dropping Dimes clients and watching "Jeopardy" or Mafia-type movies. He was the pickleball "guru," Kira Shemesh said ― he'd start a text chain of several dozen people and organize games. Family members would play with him, too.

"It was a personality trait," granddaughter Ella Shemesh joked.

His passionate personality came out in other ways.

When Ella, 16, was featured in IndyStar last year after her soccer team won the regional final game, Jaffee bought several dozen copies and asked her to autograph one. When she expressed interest in going to the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, Jaffee bought a West Point sweatshirt.

He has a sizeable collection of hoodies representing various educational institutions where his kids and grandkids have matriculated, Ethan Jaffee said.

He enjoyed sending cards to loved ones for almost any occasion, Kira Shemesh said. He always signed them with the phrase, "My heart soars like a hawk."

And like he did during his final days, he always anticipated wife Cherri's needs throughout their long, happy marriage, she said. The two met When-Harry-Met-Sally style: when she was a sophomore and he a graduate student at Butler, a mutual friend introduced them because Cherri needed a ride home to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving. They spent 10 hours in the car together, then started dating.

"He became my way home for the rest of our lives together," she said.

Contact IndyStar transportation reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on Twitter @kayla_dwyer17. 

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Jewish Community Center CEO Ira Jaffee, 74, dies after life of service