Fund-raisers roll up their sleeves for a hands-on Mitzva Day

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Michael Antiles looked longingly into a makeshift kennel that enclosed a litter of three-week-old puppies near the entrance to the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany, and then gave his mother, Jeanette, a pleading look.

“We have one dog at home” in South Orange, she said. “I don’t think we are ready for a second pet — but I think it’s a great idea.”

So did Sarabeth Wizen, director of the Women’s Department at United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, as she sat on the lawn a few feet away, bonding with a mixed-breed chow and German shepherd named Gryphon.

“There is a passage in the Torah that says we are responsible for taking care of all creatures,” she said.

Assisting in the adoption of stray dogs and cats was one phase of the Mitzva Day program that captivated many workers and visitors at the community campus on July 21. Employees of the Jewish philanthropy fanned out across the region, having dropped plans for an annual outing and opting instead to spend the day away from their desks performing good deeds and community service works.

The idea was the brainchild of Shannel Roberts, an executive secretary at the UJA Campaign who had never heard the word “mitzva” until she came to work at the federation two years ago.

Roberts said she was disappointed at the 2004 outing, “where people stayed in little cliques.” So, at a staff meeting, she suggested a model in which employees “organized in teams and came up with our own community service projects and did it as a staff in lieu of an outing. They loved the idea.” Roberts said she was inspired by her own community’s volunteer efforts at the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Newark.

Roberts contacted organizations in and outside the Jewish community, then forged links with fellow employees, who added their own interests and expertise to the project.

One was Anat Becker, the UJC Foundation director, who as a child in Israel delighted in bringing home the stray cats she rescued from construction sites.

Becker directed the MetroWest pet adoption program, enlisting veterinarians and a van from Animal Haven, a sanctuary in Flushing, Queens, whose staff members were taking applications and checking out the qualifications of potential adoptees.

Helane Ullman, who serves as administrative assistant at UJC MetroWest’s planning and allocations department, supervised 15 volunteers who bought the ingredients for, prepared, and served lunch in the Community Soup Kitchen of Morristown at the Church of the Redeemer.

“It was much better than sitting around a picnic table,” said Ullman.

Between noon and 1 p.m., the volunteers had served 147 guests with a meal of black bean and rice chicken soup, hot dogs, and potato salad.

“It was what I was brought up to do,” said Ullman. “It was a lot of work, but afterward, it is a warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside. It’s nice.”

Beneath an open-air tent on the grounds of JCC MetroWest’s Camp Deeny Riback in Flanders, campers and counselors joined project coordinator Jill Tekel in boxing tubes of toothpaste, vials of deodorant, and tins of shaving cream into care packages for members of the American armed forces serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Regardless of how one feels about the war, it is important that all of us show we care about the men and women serving their country,” said Tekel, who serves as the UJC coordinator of leadership development. “We are doing a good deed.”

Rather than report to their offices, UJA Campaign director Jeff Korbman, facilities director Frank Korczukowski, and marketing and communications productions manager Tony Barragato turned up in work clothes at a group residence in West Caldwell operated by the Jewish Service for the Developmentally Disabled.

Armed with brushes and rollers, they redecorated faded off-white walls with colorful green paint. “We’re doing a mitzva,” said Korczukowski as he gently applied trim to a closet wall.

In East Orange, Fran Weiss, senior writer in the marketing and communications department, assisted clients of the Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest in a literacy project and an English-as-a-second-language class.

As a team of volunteers led by Faina Pasichenko, a native of Moscow who handles accounts receivable in the UJA Campaign’s finance department, set up chess pieces and shuffled cards in the second-floor game room at the Lester Jewish Senior Housing Complex in Whippany, her young daughter, Marsha, sat down at the piano and played Scott Joplin’s ragtime piece “The Entertainer.”

Within moments, she had lured resident Lee Hochheiser over to join her on the bench, then listened while Hochheiser entertained a growing audience with the song “Sunrise, Sunset.”

To Marsha’s mother, the day was a chance “to do something and enjoy the process. It is really so nice to do something for this community.”

Her daughter, young enough to be Hochheiser’s great-grandchild, agreed.

“It makes people feel good about themselves,” she said.

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.