Dinner raises $233,000 for federation’s annual campaign

Norm Oshrin

THE ANNUAL fund-raising dinner at the Hollywood Golf Club in Deal was originally meant to focus on the needs of Jews in Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. But with Israel engaged in combat in Lebanon, the Hollywood planning committee quickly shifted focus.

According to event cochair Maddy Seeman of Holmdel, Mideast analyst Micah Halpern was a last-minute substitute for Doron Krakow, vice president for Israel & Overseas at United Jewish Communities, the umbrella organization for federations in North America. His department coordinates Operation Promise, which is aimed at bringing the remaining Jews out of Ethiopia and helping meet the needs of Jews who remain in the former Soviet Union.

Operation Promise was addressed in a show-and-tell presentation by event cochair David Portman, and his wife, Vicki, who shared memories of their visit with the Jews in Ethiopia and showed a film on their experiences in the African nation.

David Portman said the Monmouth federation’s share of the targeted $160 million nationwide for the initiative is $500,000 — and appealed for help from the almost 100 attendees who paid $75 each for the event, which included a buffet dinner.

The Portmans were followed by Mazi Melesa, a 27-year-old Ethiopian who immigrated to Israel with her family during Operation Solomon in 1991.

“[Israel] is the country that saved my life,” said Melesa, who represents the Ethiopian community through the offices of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry and UJC.

In appealing for immediate financial support of Israel, Halpern emphasized how “the first thing that suffers [during wartime] is social service programs. That’s where you come in,” he told his July 20 audience.

The response was positive, according to federation executive director Howard Gases. The dinner attendees “pledged more than $233,000 for the 2006 annual campaign [as well as] $55,000 for Operation Promise and $3,000 for the Israel Emergency Campaign.”

Cochairs Seeman and Portman were also pleased with the response to the evening program. “The timing was such that it sparked an interest,” Seeman said. “It went over very well.”

“I felt pretty good about it,” said Portman. “It was a little bit different from what we normally do. We took a real social issue with respect to Ethiopians to get some community involvement,” he explained.

The purpose of the presentation, he suggested, was to show “there’s not just bad things going on from a social perspective.”