Main Event cochairs Wendy Rosenberg, left, and Adina Ziegler welcomed the large turnout for the annual Women’s Campaign gala.
Photos by Elaine Durbach
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May 14, 2009
To the surprise and delight of organizers, despite waist-cinched budgets and swine flu fears, the Main Event of the Women’s Campaign of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey attracted a larger crowd than last year’s. The May 5 gala drew 256 people to Crystal Plaza in Livingston, the third-highest turnout in recent years.
What is more, those attending pledged $57,000, bringing the total raised in connection with the event to almost $82,000.
Depending on who was speaking, the explanations for that success varied. The two honorees, Woman of Valor Award recipient Eleanor Rubin and Rhoda Rosenbach Young Leadership Award recipient Shari Bloomberg each had large contingents of fans — family members, friends, and colleagues — who said they came specially to honor them. And the keynote speaker, Israeli television reporter Leah Stern, attracted a fan following of her own.
Event cochairs Adina Ziegler and Wendy Rosenberg attributed the event’s success to an awareness of the need to pull together in these tough times. “Together we can make a difference,” Ziegler said. “Together we can change lives.”
Commenting later, Rosenberg said, “I think the economic climate really made a difference. It’s made everyone aware of how many people are facing hardship — even neighbors, people they know.” She said she was honored to have cochaired such a gathering: “It was inspiring to be with the women in that room. Not just the speakers — all those women; they are all role models in their own way.”
The abundant turnout, however, did not obscure the reality facing the federation and those dependent on it for assistance. Women’s Campaign chair Maxine Schwartz said, “This is one of the worst economic situations in our lifetime. But as tough as it is for us, it’s nothing like what Jews around the world and right here in this community are going through.”
To back up her request for increased contributions to the Annual Campaign — for “a sacrifice” — she described a recent visit to Sarajevo, the war-scarred capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was the first visit by an organized Jewish group in 20 years, and the local Jewish community — with its dwindling membership of 731 — welcomed them with grateful enthusiasm. Even non-Jewish leaders were delighted they had come. The group was invited to visit with the Bosnian president and to meet with the American ambassador.
What moved Schwartz most, she said, was an encounter with a teenager who told the visitors that her single mother was unable to afford the $300 fee to send her to Jewish summer camp. The two-week experience has proved a great favorite with local youngsters and a highly effective way to engage the new generation in Jewish identity.
Shari Bloomberg, left, and Eleanor Rubin were honored for their community service at the Main Event.
Spontaneously and unanimously, the 30 members of the group — and their Israeli security guard — each decided to chip in $50. The money added up to enough to send six local kids to the camp. “It was so easy I was embarrassed — so easy, and so important,” Schwartz said.
Rubin, a past president of the federation and current cochair of the Ness Allocations Committee, admitted to being nervous before the dinner, unaccustomed to having the focus on her rather than the issues she champions. But she expressed her gratitude for all that the federation has brought into her life, from a greater knowledge of Judaism and the wider Jewish community to encounters with world leaders. “These are experiences I could only have had with the imprimatur of the federation,” she said. “There is no better way to become more than your own small someone.”
Bloomberg, a social worker with Jewish Family Service of Central New Jersey and the recipient of a number of awards for her work, is current Super Sunday cochair and a member of the Women’s Campaign Cabinet. As a member of the Orthodox community, she praised the federation for its broad inclusiveness, its “unity,” adding, “But it is so much more than that.”
She said that as a professional in the community and a lay volunteer with federation, she sees both sides of the philanthropic connection. “When you give your money, I see what happens afterward. I see parents who can send their child to sleep-away camp and the elderly person whose face lights up when they see the kosher meals-on-wheels truck pull up, not just because they are getting a warm, kosher meal, but because someone is coming to visit them.”
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