Honors

The S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation is recognizing Gale Mondry, Abra Annes Sills and Dana Corvin as winners of three leadership awards for 2017. All three are active as volunteers for Jewish community organizations. Mondry received a women’s leadership award, Sills was honored with an award for young leadership and Corvin was recognized with an award for distinguished leadership.

Ben Bendor, who was born and raised in Stanford and went to middle school at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, has been selected as one of three Shatil Social Justice Fellows by the New Israel Fund for 2017-18. The fellows spend 10 months working in Israel for nongovernmental organizations. Bendor graduated from American University with a major in international studies and a minor in Arabic.

Six people from the Bay Area are among the more than 150 who have been invited to attend this year’s ROI Summit in Jerusalem. Etai Freedman, Maayan Ivgi, Sharon Savariego, Joe Vasquez and Julia Winston of San Francisco, as well as Samantha Stein of Palo Alto, will be among the entrepreneurs, techies, artists, filmmakers and cultural leaders from 31 countries who will be meeting July 2-6. The ROI Community is an initiative of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

Happenings

More than $300,000 was raised when some 280 parents, friends and community leaders gathered in early May for the Contra Costa Jewish Day School’s “Postcards from Israel” gala. The evening was dedicated to three people connected with CCJDS who had passed away in the last year or so — Len Cohn, Mildred Hauer and Rob Ruby.

San Francisco’s Jewish Community Library held a tribute to director Howard Freedman for his 25 years of service — and he’s not retiring. The event, which included klezmer music, was on June 8. Freedman writes a monthly book review column for J., “Off the Shelf.” At the tribute he thanked J. for giving him the opportunity to bring the library’s message to a larger audience through that column.

Seventh-grade students at Gideon Hausner raised more than $50,000 this school year for nonprofits and charities. The avodah la’olam (work of the world) program, which takes place annually at Hausner during students’ bar/bat mitzvah year, gave donations to 25 nonprofits at a May 24 ceremony.

Comings & Goings

After working as a rabbinic intern at Peninsula Sinai Congregation in Foster City for the past few years, Rebecca Schatz has been hired as assistant rabbi/education director by the synagogue and will begin her new position in July after moving to the Bay Area from Southern California. Along with Rabbi Corey Helfand and Cantor Doron Shapira, Peninsula Sinai will have three clergy members for the first time as it marks its 50th anniversary this year.

Rabbi Samantha Orshan Kahn is taking over as director of InterfaithFamily/Bay Area, replacing Rabbi Mychal Copeland. Kahn had served for the past six years as the assistant rabbi of Congregation Emanu El in Houston. Copeland is leaving InterfaithFamily, where interfaith couples and families learn to connect to Jewish life, after three years to become the rabbi at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco.

Yoav Schlesinger, executive director of The Kitchen, an independent Jewish community in San Francisco, will be moving in early July to the Omidyar Network to focus on developing projects around technology, ethics and society.

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