Eddie Feves grew up in Torrance, California, one of the beach cities in Los Angeles County. With its surfer culture and hometown feel, Torrance is the kind of community that many families never leave. In fact, in elementary school, some of Feves’s teachers had taught the parents of their current students—and their grandparents. It was, Feves admits, an idyllic place to spend a childhood. It was also, he says, “insular” and a bit of a “bubble.”
When it came time for Feves to pick a college, an older cousin gave him some advice.
“Put a pin on a map to mark where you live and then draw a circle that includes the area your parents could drive to visit you at college without telling you they are coming,” his cousin told him. “Then choose a college outside that circle.”
That’s exactly what Feves did when he headed to Arizona State University (ASU).
That desire for independence and pursuit of self-sufficiency has now brought Feves to Colorado for his new role as Associate Director of JEWISHcolorado’s Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) where he will report directly to Senior Director Brandon Rattiner. Feves sees his new position as the continuation of his commitment to work in the Jewish world—from summer camp to Hillel to Alpha Epsilon Pi to political service for Jewish elected officials.
“Government work can be half-an-inch deep and a mile wide,” Feves says. “I saw this new position as the opportunity to be involved in work that really matters. I wanted to be able to shepherd a project from start to finish.”
‘The thing that connected all of us’
Feves describes his Jewish upbringing as “beach conservative—kind of halfway between the reform and conservative movement in Judaism.” His was a multi-faith family, with an Irish Catholic mother and Jewish father. Both parents supported Feves and his sister in their pursuit of a Jewish identity, and five years ago, his mother converted to Judaism.
Feves was very involved in his local synagogue, but like so many young people, he found his Jewishness at summer camp. From age 7 to 17, he spent his summers at camp, and when the call came for applications for summer counselors, he was the first to apply because, he says, “I wanted to give future Jewish kids the same or similar experience that I had at camp.”
Before camp, his Jewish life was in a synagogue. At camp, he found a “Jewish community that was not centered on religion.”
“For me, camp meant being surrounded by Jews from all walks of life with different practices,” he says. “In the beach cities, our Jewish community was small, but camp pulled from different states and countries. The thing that connected all of us was being Jewish and having Jewish values.”
At camp, Feves developed programming for young archers based on his own experience as a high school and college archer in a pre-Olympic pipeline.
“Archery is like therapy for me,” he says. “It is so calming with the mind and body working together until you release your arrow. And then you start all over again.”
At ASU, Feves loved Hillel which, he says, “became a second home throughout college.” The Hillel rabbi remains his mentor to this day. He arrived at college with zero interest in getting involved in Greek life, but Greek life found him when a few friends invited him out for drinks. Within a week, he found himself joining Alpha Epsilon Pi, and he remained with the fraternity throughout his college years, serving as the Chief Administrative Officer.
“I thought I would have been fine going to college without being in a fraternity,” he says. “But if I was going to be in Greek life, it was going to be a Jewish fraternity, and now I cannot imagine my college life without it.”
‘We are dealing with issues that matter’
Feves graduated from ASU in three years with a major in Political Science, but that is not the direction he was headed at the outset of his college career.
“I thought I should be a good Jew and study International Business and make a name for myself in business,” he says. “But I realized, ‘I am not good at this,’ and I also was not as invested as I should have been.”
With the guidance of the Hillel rabbi, who was a former community organizer, Feves changed direction. In Political Science, he found his passion.
After graduating from ASU, he once again went outside the large circle he had drawn around Torrance and headed to Issaquah, Washington, where he worked as a Field Organizer on the victorious congressional campaign of Dr. Kim Schrier.
“I didn’t know anyone when I arrived, but I got really connected to a community with active Jewish adults,” he says. “I met politically engaged people and learned so much from great mentors who showed me what making change in a community looks like.”
Feves’s next stop sent him back to California, where he turned an internship into a job as District Representative for Senator Ben Allen of the California State Senate. Allen is one of the founding members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.
“The district has one of California’s most diverse Jewish communities,” Feves says. “We had a sizeable Persian Jewish community, Ashkenazi and Orthodox Jews, and we also represented Hollywood. The Jewish experience in Los Angeles all centered in our district.”
Sen. Allen is term limited in 2026, so Feves was on the lookout for a new opportunity when he saw the posting for the JCRC position and immediately felt drawn to the mission.
“The JCRC. is dealing with issues that matter and driving meaningful change in that space,” he says. “That includes antisemitism, how we teach the Holocaust, how we teach about Israel, and a whole host of other issues.”
Again, Feves decided it was time to go outside the geographical circle he once drew for a job in a new state, where, he believes, he will have “the flexibility to learn and work on a diverse range of topics and the chance to bear down on issues that are pressing in the Jewish community.”