UJA

Four months before Hadassah was to kick off a major fund-raising campaign for an emergency medical center in Jerusalem, at the beginning of 2002, 9-11 happened. The American economy crashed. Americans donated their shrinking amount of charity dollars to the terrorist attack's relief effort.
"We were scared to death," says Joyce Rabin, Hadassah's coordinator of development. Maybe the drive for the new hospital would fail.

Still reeling from the shocking deaths of their rabbi and his wife in a fierce house fire last Friday night, the congregants of Young Israel of Scarsdale this week were gathering photos and videos of the couple from their own family albums — taken at simchas and other gatherings — to share with the four Rubenstein children.

In a synagogue library in northern Westchester, a dozen senior citizens sit around a long table discussing current events. In a temple conference room on the Upper West Side, a young family talks about the tensions raised by a child’s serious illness. In the meeting room of a Long Island JCC, a group of recent widows share photographs and memories of their late husbands.


Elana Minkove decided a few months ago that she wanted to use her graduate degree in social work to do some good works in her spare time.
Niti Minkove, her mother-in-law and the director of volunteers at the Bronx Jewish Community Council, suggested Elana perform those virtuous deeds in Co-op City. That Bronx area is where Betty Katz lives.

On a Friday in January 1973, Jesse Perlstein retired from his job as a district manager for the Robert Hall men’s clothing chain.
The following Monday morning he walked to the Samuel Field Y, a few minutes from his home in Little Neck, Queens, and signed up as a volunteer.
The next morning he walked to the Marathon Jewish Community Center, his synagogue a few minutes away, again to volunteer.
Thirty years later, Perlstein is still donating his time.

In a synagogue library in northern Westchester, a dozen senior citizens sit around a long table discussing current events. In a temple conference room on the Upper West Side, a young family talks about the tensions raised by a child’s serious illness. In the meeting room of a Long Island JCC, a group of recent widows share photographs and memories of their late husbands.

Some Jewish federation leaders measure success by the numbers — dollars raised, allocations granted, etc. But Susan Stern, the immediate past chair of UJA-Federation of New York, measures success by the smiles from people whose lives she has touched through her 25 years of volunteer work with the organization. 

“We need to see the faces at the end of the dollars,” said Stern, known to most people as Susie, during a recent interview. She officially stepped down from the chairmanship July 1, completing a three-year term.

James Tisch this month completed the first year of his three-year term as president of UJA-Federation. He recently reflected on his tenure in a conversation with The Jewish Week.
Jewish Week: Has this year been fulfilling?

When Charles and Andrea Bronfman formed their sizeable philanthropic foundation 15 years ago, there were some who feared it would destroy the Jewish Agency for Israel by working outside the Jewish federation network.

None of the 45 people in the kosher Chinese restaurant on Flatbush Avenue had ever been to Zembrov, a town in northeast Poland, and some even had trouble spelling it. But all had relatives who came from there, and they gathered two weeks ago to keep their memories alive.