Jennie Litvack, a World Bank executive in Washington, made her voice heard blowing the shofar, the extremely resistant ram’s horn that is sounded on the Jewish New Year.
An economist by training, Jennie traveled the globe for two decades for the World Bank, helping to fight poverty and improve living standards as a lead economist of human development for Latin America, lead economist for Morocco, and country economist for Vietnam, among other positions.
After her retirement from the Bank in 2010, Jennie shifted focus from the highly technical to the deeply spiritual. She joined the board of Adas Israel Congregation and led the lay effort to establish its Jewish Mindfulness Center of Washington, a project that won two national awards for innovative Jewish programming. She also helped bring mindfulness and religious pluralism to Israel through her work as a board member of Or Halev, the Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation.
Born in Montreal, Canada, Litvack earned her MA and Ph.D. from the prestigious Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. An economist devoted to the welfare of the world’s marginalized and disenfranchised, she served the World Bank for two decades in its mission to raise the living standards, health, and wellbeing of millions. She held the positions of lead economist of human development for Latin America, lead economist for Morocco, and country economist for Vietnam. Additionally, in work across the African continent, she and her colleagues drew inspiration and new practices from Litvack’s doctoral research on pharmaceutical pricing in rural health centers in northern Cameroon. Her innovations have been credited with saving millions of lives.
In 2010, Litvack took the rare and bold decision to depart an outstanding career for an altogether different realm of work. She devoted herself to the cause of Jewish religious pluralism and the deepening of Jewish spiritual life. Her efforts yielded, inter alia, the establishment of the award-winning Jewish Mindfulness Center in Washington, and the development of Or Halev (“Light of the Heart”), a center for Jewish spirituality and meditation in Israel. At Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, Litvack also achieved renown as a preeminent blower of the Shofar — a ram’s horn used to herald the advent of the new year in Jewish congregational worship. Performing on the Shofar was also a kind of lateral move for Litvack, a Jazz trumpeter to boot, whom late Jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie befriended and designated as his goddaughter.
Among her extended loving family, Litvack is survived by three sons and her husband, Robert Satloff, the long-serving executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
May the living God grant comfort and solace to Litvack’s family, and may lovers of peace and progress draw inspiration from her living memory.
