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When Jewish Family & Children’s Services of the East Bay holds its ninth annual Art of Living gala this weekend, it will be saying goodbye to something it has used for a long, long time: its name.

JFCS will use the gala — scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 11 at the Rotunda Building in downtown Oakland — to publicly unveil its new name: Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay.

The Art of Living is the agency’s biggest event of the year, and JFCS anticipates raising around $100,000 to support its programs, which include services for Holocaust survivors, seniors and newly arrived refugees in the East Bay. About 300 people are expected to attend, according to Holly White, JFCS director of grants and communications.

Daniel Mendelsohn

This year’s gala will feature New Yorker critic and essayist Daniel Mendelsohn in conversation with Berkeley author Elizabeth Rosner. Mendelsohn will speak primarily about his best-selling 2006 book, “The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million,” which chronicled his search for the stories of six of his relatives who died in the Holocaust. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award.

“My book was not a Holocaust history,” Mendelsohn told J. last week. “It was a story of six ordinary people who were trapped in this event. Judging from reaction, it seems to have made it possible for people to connect to [the Holocaust] in a way [they] did not if they’re reading some abstract history book.”

Mendelsohn, who lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, teaches at Bard College and regularly contributes criticism to the New Yorker magazine, said his research for “The Lost,” which took him to a dozen countries on four continents, raised questions about how ordinary people change under the pressure of war and conflict.

“A lot of the killing in the Holocaust in Eastern Europe was not carried out by soldiers or the SS or even Germans; it was carried out by local people who were collaborating with the Germans,” Mendelsohn said. “You can’t work on a story like this and look at people on the street and not wonder: What does it take to turn an ordinary person into a killer? It’s hard not to stand on the subway platform and wonder: ‘Would you be a collaborator? Would you be a savior?’ ”

JFCS East Bay’s new logo

Mendelsohn worries that “never again” has become an “empty slogan,” since genocides have continued to occur around the world since the Holocaust ended. Still, he said, watching Germany open its doors to thousands of refugees from Syria in recent months suggests that some lessons of history have been absorbed.

In addition to showcasing Mendelsohn, the gala will mark an important transition in JFCS’ 138-year history as it changes its name to Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay. “Putting ‘community’ into our name is a dual message,” said Avi Rose, JFCS executive director. “It’s about our strong, long enduring roots in the Jewish community, and it is a statement that affirms our broader view of the community that we serve.”

Founded as Daughters of Israel Relief Society in 1877, JFCS offers a wide variety of services to both Jewish and non-Jewish East Bay residents. Rose said the organization has considered updating the name for years, partly because many of its services are aimed at seniors — which falls outside of “family and children.”

At the beginning of this year, JFCS decided to update its branding; along with a new name, in the next few months it is getting a new logo, a new website and a new tagline: “Compassion in action. Commitment to all.”

Rose noted that some other JFCS agencies, which operate independently but are affiliated with one another, have incorporated the word “community” into their names.

“We’re still JFCS,” Rose said. “It’s just that the C is different.”

Art of Living. JFCS East Bay fundraiser, 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11 at Rotunda Building, 300 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakland. $150; $75 for 35 and under. www.jfcs-eastbay.org