NJJN Online MetroWest feature

Federation pays tribute to outgoing president

Morton Cohen, left, congratulates Donald Leibowitz
Morton Cohen, left, congratulates Donald Leibowitz as he receives a plaque
honoring him for his work as federation president. Photo by Marilyn Silvertein

by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB
07.24.07

Sidebar: Changing of the guard

The United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks observed its traditional changing of the guard on June 20 as some 65 community members turned out for the agency's annual meeting at Adath Israel Congregation in Lawrenceville.

The centerpiece of the evening was the election of officers and the induction of new members of the federation's board of directors and executive committee.

Daniel Brent of Princeton, who was out of the country at the time, was installed as president of the federation, and Lisa Smukler of Princeton became vice president in charge of the annual campaign.

Darlene Paszamant of Skillman is the new president of Women's Campaign, and Stacey Wasserman of Princeton Junction is Women's Campaign chair.

But even as the federation looked forward to new leadership, it looked back in appreciation for the drive and dedication of its outgoing officers — in particular, Donald Leibowitz of West Windsor, who served for two years as president.

"Don Leibowitz was one of the finest partners I have ever had in my professional career," said Andrew Frank, executive director of the federation, as he stood in the synagogue's community room before the meeting got under way.

Frank praised Leibowitz for his boundless energy in leading the federation as it worked to develop new leadership and financial resources, and to involve the community in its Hurricane Katrina relief and Israel Emergency Fund campaigns.

"His vision was inspirational," Frank said, "and his work ethic was absolutely astonishing."

Morton Cohen of Lawrenceville, incoming vice president for the proposed new Jewish community campus, also praised Leibowitz for serving the federation "extraordinarily well."

"Never in my volunteer life have I seen anyone who served by example as well as you do," Cohen told Leibowitz in his tribute.

"Most notably, I saw your passion when it came to the JCC," Cohen said. He was referring to the crisis that confronted the Jewish Community Center of the Delaware Valley last year as it grappled with the problems of declining membership and an aging facility.

"When the JCC was on life support, there was Don Leibowitz saying we just can't let that happen," said Cohen. "You just wouldn't let it die."

The JCC's facility in Ewing has been sold and plans are going forward for the proposed new Jewish Community Campus of Princeton Mercer Bucks, which will house the JCC, the federation, and other prominent communal agencies, Cohen noted. More than 300 young campers are currently participating in the JCC's summer camping sessions on the Rider University campus in Lawrenceville.

"It's just remarkable," Cohen said. "Of the campers, more than 40 percent are people who have never attended the JCC before. And all of this is thanks to your inspiration in not letting the JCC die."

In response, Leibowitz called the past two years "a wonderful experience."

"It's been a privilege to work with such a talented and dedicated group of leaders," he said.

The federation's challenge will be to maintain and grow the annual campaign, Leibowitz told the gathering. He suggested that one way to revitalize the campaign is to communicate a vision of communal philanthropy.

"I believe federation's strength as the premier Jewish fund-raising agency is guided by a commitment to community building," he said.

In a separate interview, Leibowitz said his work to shore up the JCC was the most rewarding accomplishment of his tenure as federation president.

"The federation leadership and the JCC leadership worked together to help it survive — to build and strengthen the JCC and enable it to move forward with the campus," he said. "Federation had a huge role in helping to make that possible.

"The other thing I've been happy with is leadership development," he said. "It's been very important to me to develop a program that will ensure strong leaders, so people will aspire to take leadership roles in the community. It's a tremendous challenge for organizations and something we struggle with all the time."

Leibowitz added that it pleased him to see the federation making inroads in that struggle during his presidency.

"To me, that's very important — to be a catalyst for change in the organization, and for people to see federation in a new way," he said.

In addition to Cohen, incoming federation vice presidents are Seth Josephson of Princeton Junction, administration and personnel; Howard Cohen of Lawrenceville, domestic agencies and allocations; Rysia de Ravel of Princeton, Israel and overseas; and Mark Merkovitz of Princeton Junction, membership and leadership development.

Andrea Dedrick of Bridgewater is the federation's new treasurer, and Karen Anderson of Princeton took office as the new secretary.

Changing of the guard

A realist envisions three-way growth for Greenwood House

Richard PollockFor Richard Pollock, becoming president of the board of Greenwood House Home for the Jewish Aged in Ewing is all about coming home. A native of Trenton, the 59-year-old Pollock can't remember a time when he didn't have Greenwood House in his heart.

"Since I was a kid, I've had family members who lived there," Pollock said as he relaxed in his offices at the Vanguard Title Agency in Pennington — one of four title agencies and three law offices in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Florida where he serves as CEO.

"When I was young, Greenwood House was the basic Jewish philanthropy in this area," he said. "Every store you went into had a canister by the register for Greenwood House…. If you were going to give to charity, you gave to Greenwood House.

"It's a charity," he said. "That's what I'm trying to stress to everybody. It's an honor to serve the Greenwood House — at least, that's how I was raised — and charity means money. You have to raise funds because Greenwood House runs on the community."

A graduate of Ewing High School and the University of Miami School of Law, Pollock brings to his new leadership role the expertise of an attorney who specializes in real estate and finance. For 25 years, he was based in Coral Gables, Fla., serving as a real estate broker, a consultant to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and an arbitration magistrate for HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. On the side, he practiced entertainment law as a partner in Silver Screen Partners Co.

But although the boy was out of Trenton, Trenton was never out of the boy. In 1995, Pollock decided to semi-retire back on his old stomping grounds. He and his partner, Eric Risberg, a financial consultant who serves on the board of the Greenwood House Foundation, live at Grace Hill (the home Pollock named in memory of his mother) in Solebury, Pa. They are members of Har Sinai Temple.

After Pollock returned to the area, it wasn't long before he began volunteering his time with Greenwood House. By 2003, he was a member of the board, and in 2005, he was made first vice president. The following year, he served as cochair of the Greenwood House Gala.

"My best friends are on the board, and we work well together," Pollock said. "We're there for a purpose. It's nice when you can serve with people you grew up with and you've known for your whole life. That's what makes a community, and that's what this is about. This is about community."

As he leads Greenwood House into the near future, Pollock's vision is one of expansion — the physical expansion of the agency's facilities, the financial expansion of its fund-raising efforts, and the cultural expansion of its presence in the consciousness of the community.

"I want to maintain and expand the existing facilities, and I want to begin to search for other avenues of expansion into other programs — not just for the Jewish community, but for the community at large," Pollock said. He noted that construction is under way to expand the dining facilities and to add six to 10 beds to the 132-bed Robert and Natalie Marcus Home for the Jewish Aged and five apartments to the 20-bed Abrams Residence, an assisted-living facility.

Pollock added that he is particularly interested in expanding Greenwood House's nonsectarian hospice program and in developing educational and social service programs for the community.

Although discussions are under way about the possibility of moving Greenwood House onto the new Jewish Community Campus of Princeton Mercer Bucks being planned in West Windsor, Pollock said he is concentrating on the needs at hand.

"I have to face what needs to be faced now," he said. "Greenwood House needs a new roof. It needs an updating of the interior. We need sun umbrellas so people can sit outside. And what about the boiler? There's an old, old boiler there. It's things like that. I'm talking about what I need now, not what I need in 10 years.

"So while the community at large likes to dream their wish list," he said, "the board has to face the realities of what's necessary at Greenwood House on a day-to-day basis."

As Pollock faces those realities, he sees fund-raising and outreach as his greatest challenges.

"We're going to have a telephone campaign to contact people, person-to-person, to bring people in to see Greenwood House so they'll understand how we function and why their participation is so important to the community," he said. "And we're going to reactivate Women of Greenwood House.

"We need expansion into another generation," he said. "The Women of Greenwood House is the strength and the backbone of Greenwood House. There's work to be done and everybody's got to step up and do their part."

All in all, Pollock said, he feels good about coming home to his leadership role at Greenwood House. "I think we have a bright future and a great challenge ahead of us."

A leader's mission to raise
the visibility of federation

Daniel BrentFor years, said Daniel Brent, his mantra has been a single question, posed again and again: "Why federation?"

"I think it's important to ask and answer the question — why federation?" said Brent, who took office in late June as president of the United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks. "In my opinion, there is no more essential organization for establishing and enriching a community."

The synagogue is the most important single Jewish institution, he said, but the federation — an umbrella philanthropy that raises money for Israel and local Jewish institutions — creates a larger community that connects affiliated and unaffiliated Jews and fulfills collective needs that individual synagogues alone cannot provide.

"The very existence of federation is the foundation of our Jewish community," Brent said in an interview at his Princeton Township home. "I have a vision that people will react viscerally, in a positive way, to the fact that federation makes an enormous difference in our community. We have to enhance its profile in order to enhance its ability to do good."

A native New Yorker who grew up in Hackensack and Englewood, Brent brings to his new responsibilities his analytical skills as an arbitrator and mediator. A graduate of Oberlin College and the Hofstra University School of Law, he runs a private law practice in Princeton specializing in the arbitration of labor-management disputes. He and his wife, Sally Steinberg-Brent, an attorney who specializes in divorce mediation and family and immigration law, have three grown children.

The couple is active at The Jewish Center in Princeton, where Brent is a former longtime board member, trustee, and vice president for religious affairs, and his wife is a former president.

Six years ago, just as he was completing his stint as a congregational vice president, he was asked to join the federation board.

"It was a mission I strongly believed in," he said, "so I was happy to accept the nomination to the board and then to become more deeply involved."

One measure of that deepening involvement was Brent's service as vice president for long-range planning. In that role, he guided the committee that just completed a two-year process of evaluating and revising the federation's governance structure in order to make it more inclusive.

Under the newly adopted guidelines, federation's executive committee now consists of seven vice presidents. Each has a specific portfolio, and each chairs a committee comprised of board members and volunteers in the community.

The idea, said Brent, is not only to create greater ease of access for newcomers who want to become involved in federation, but also to share the work and streamline the functioning of the organization.

"The new governance structure will allow us to divide the work that needs to be done into more manageable pieces," he said. "We're initiating a campaign to invite people who may not have previously been involved to participate directly on board committees. By volunteering to serve on committees, these individuals can be of great service to the Jewish community and, in some cases, commence a pathway to increased involvement as officers in the future."

Brent has several goals in mind — planning more federation events, communicating federation's story more often and more creatively, acknowledging donors more tangibly, and reaching out to the unaffiliated. He wants to invite people to donate their energy and expertise to the small jobs that need to be done, and to help people to recognize the enormous impact they can have by donating to federation.

"I think our first task is to communicate effectively the role federation plays as the organizing umbrella for the local Jewish community," he said. "Our major institutions could not flourish without the funding federation raises. We need to state our case more clearly, thank people more effusively, and share the excitement and satisfaction that motivates those of us most closely involved in federation.

"The more people know about federation, the more they'll be involved, and the more involved they are, the prouder they're going to be of their donation of time and money."

Brent said he hopes to make federation more visible in the community by asking federation officers to take on speaking engagements and by appointing a liaison in each synagogue to serve as a federation ambassador. And he hopes to communicate his own personal joy in serving the community through federation.

"It's good to feel connected," Brent said. "Simply interacting with people and working for the common good of the community has added a dimension to my life, and I believe will add a satisfying dimension to the lives of those who volunteer.

"The goal is to coordinate all the good works being done so that there's a synergy of satisfaction in being part of this vibrant community," he said. "If we can have people feel that federation is what defines the Jewish community — where they can have an impact by giving time and money and where they are fulfilling our communal Jewish obligation to care for those in need — then we will all be better off. That's the primary goal I intend to address in my time as president.

"Ultimately," he added, "I want everyone in the community to look in the mirror and feel good because they have supported federation and all we represent."

Helping the JCC see the big picture

Bob WeberLike an airliner swooping over a country terrain, the virtual camera in Bob Weber's computer swept across a three-dimensional depiction of the 80-acre site for the proposed new Jewish Community Campus of Princeton Mercer Bucks.

Offering a bird's-eye view of the tree-lined site bordering Clarksville-Grovers Mills Road in the Princeton Junction section of West Windsor Township, the camera flew over campgrounds, playing fields, tennis courts, an amphitheater, and an outdoor swimming pool.

It then hovered over the heart of the campus — a 75,000 square-foot, multi-use community center that will one day be the central address of the region's Jewish community.

"What I'm really hoping we can do is to take all the feasibility studies and turn them into reality," Weber told the 25 community members who had assembled at Adath Israel Congregation in Lawrenceville on June 11 for the 97th annual meeting of the Jewish Community Center of the Delaware Valley.

"I want to take you through my vision of what the JCC could look like in 2009, when we're scheduled to open," he said. He guided everyone's attention to the proposed fitness center, kosher cafe, art gallery, educational center, and library — as well as the offices of the United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks, the Jewish Community Foundation, the Jewish Family and Children's Service of Greater Mercer County, and the JCC.

"That's just a quick flyby — a three-dimensional view as to what the campus could look like," Weber said. "If we work as a group, we can really make this thing happen. We would really be doing our Jewish community a marvelous mitzva."

Since the evening of June 11, Weber has been one of the central figures working toward the fulfillment of that mitzva in his new role as president of the JCC.

Working with him are the other new JCC officers who were installed that evening — Marc Shegoski, vice president for finance; Richard Bergman, vice president for administration; Emily Josephson, vice president for outreach; Brian Chevlin, vice president for marketing; Jerri Blitzer, vice president for programming; Rabbi Vicki Tuckman, vice president for education; Carol Pollard, secretary; and Howard Cohen and Allen Porter, immediate past copresidents.

"We've picked out a really terrific set of officers, and I think my job is to work with them to set the objectives and to do anything I can to help them meet those objectives," the 52-year-old Weber said during a recent interview in the Princeton Junction offices of Weblications, his Internet marketing business.

"I'm really going to be the head cheerleader — really helping to sell what the Jewish community campus will have to offer once it's completed."

A native of Hendersonville, NC, Weber holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's degree in computer engineering from Northwestern University. Since he landed in the Princeton area in 1976, he has been active with The Jewish Center, where he is a member of the board and a past president. He also serves on the executive committee and board of the federation. Weber and his wife, Linda, a marriage counselor in private practice, live in Princeton Junction with their two sons, Michael, 21, and Sam, 17.

Weber first became involved with the JCC about a year ago, serving on the steering committee that guided the agency over rough shoals as it came to the decision to close and sell its aging facility on Lower Ferry Road in Ewing. At the time, the entire JCC board agreed to resign to make room for new leadership, Weber recalled. And he decided to step up to the plate.

"I'm just very excited and really honored to do this," he said. "The whole idea of being able to create a new institution for our community — I'm just really excited about it. When the campus is completed, it's going to be a wonderful place for the Jewish community. That's really why I did it."

Many of the former JCC board members stayed on as interim board members, including Howard Cohen, who, along with Allen Porter, served as interim copresident, until the installation of new officers at the June 11 meeting.

Weber predicted three major challenges ahead — getting the word out about the new campus to the community, making sure the region's congregations understand the benefits that will flow from the new campus, and raising the funds that will make the campus a reality.

"Those are probably the biggest challenges — getting the synagogues on board, getting the community on board, and raising the money," he said.

In that regard, outreach and marketing will be two of the most important activities for the new JCC board, in Weber's view. "All of the board members are ambassadors," he said. "We all need to be selling the Jewish community campus and what it can do for the community."

One thing the new campus may be able to do for the community is to provide day care in a Jewish setting, complementing the early childhood programs sponsored by the synagogues, according to Weber.

"What we really want to do," he said, "is to work with the synagogues and the community to come up with a community organization that satisfies everybody's needs. I really think the Jewish community campus will be a good thing for our community. It will be a way people can meet, learn, play, shmooze, and eat together. It's about enjoying the company of our Jewish friends and family."

Weber also envisions the campus as a place that can serve as a venue for community-wide services, athletic events, synagogue programs, and regional youth group programs.

"I think it's going to enrich the Jewish community as a whole," he said. "It can be a wonderful organization for the community.

"The JCC has been around for 97 years," Weber added. "In its heyday, it was the real center of Jewish life, and it can be again."

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