Jonathan and Beth Frieder are serving as regional and national chairs of the 2008-09 National Winter Family Mission to Israel of United Jewish Communities.
Photo by Marilyn Silverstein
August 12, 2008
A Princeton Township couple has been named to lead the United Jewish Communities’ 2008-09 National Winter Family Mission to Israel.
Jonathan and Beth Frieder, longtime volunteers with the United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks, are also chairing the PMB contingent of the family mission, which is scheduled to run from Dec. 25 through Jan. 2.
The UJC is the umbrella organization of some 156 Jewish federations and 400 independent Jewish communities across North America.
“It sort of morphed from the local mission to the national mission,” said Jon, a member of the federation’s executive committee and general board, as he sat with his wife in their kitchen. Peering out at them from adjacent walls were portraits of Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, George Gershwin, and other famous Jews — original prints from Andy Warhol’s famous series of silk screens, “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.”
Of the 97 participants who have signed up for the national mission, including 51 children and teens, 73 are from the PMB region, according to the Frieders.
‘We’re excited to bring the Princeton Mercer Bucks Jewish community to Israel.’
“We got so many people, we became the largest group sending people on this mission,” said Beth, who serves on federation’s Women’s Campaign board. “Since we were the majority of the group, they asked us to be national chairs.”
Among the local participants will be a number of the Frieders’ fellow congregants at The Jewish Center in Princeton. Also attending will be Rabbi Annie Tucker of The Jewish Center; Ophir Busel, marketing and communications director of the PMB federation; and the Frieders’ three daughters — twins Alison and Jessica, 15, and Elizabeth, 13.
“We’re excited to bring the Princeton Mercer Bucks Jewish community to Israel,” Jon said. “Many will be visiting for the first time. So, for Beth and me, it gives us great pleasure to lead our friends on a mission to Israel.”
It is especially exciting to build on their experience as participants in a previous UJC mission, said Beth.
“Jon and I were part of a UJC mission in March of 2005,” she said, which included attendance at the opening of Yad Vashem’s new Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem. “We came back from that mission extremely energized and excited to bring our friends to see what we had just seen.”
Although the plans for the winter mission are still tentative, the Frieders have set an active agenda. Participants will see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum, visit the underground caves at Beit Guvrin, and get a briefing on Israeli politics from a political analyst at The Hebrew University.
“We’re going to go on an archeological dig and on a jeep ride through the desert,” Jon said. “We’re going to swim in the Dead Sea and climb to the top of Masada.”
“It’s very hands-on,” Beth said. “We’re going to share Shabbat dinner with ‘lone’ Israeli soldiers, and we’re going to light Hanukka candles with Ethiopian Jews from an absorption center.
“Many of these things we’ve done before,” Jon added, “but there’s always a new dimension each time we go.”
The mission will also give them an opportunity to transmit to their children the powerful lessons of the Holocaust History Museum, Beth said. “Our kids were too young to see it the last time we were there.”
“I’m excited to give them the opportunity to see it,” Jon said. “It’s an architecturally spectacular building, and the message is one every Jew on planet Earth needs to know.”
For more information about the national winter mission, go to the PMB federation’s website, www.ujfpmb.org.
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