Every Friday at the Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School, students lead the Kabbalat Shabbat service to welcome the Sabbath. Relating a recent Torah portion to their secular studies, they discuss how California’s colonizers, like many of the Bible’s characters, were motivated by greed.
Six thousand miles away in Ukraine, some 200,000 elderly Jews live, many in isolation, without funds for food and firewood. Jewish social service agencies provide home health care and financial assistance, freeing up the elders’ limited funds so they can buy expensive but essential medicines.
And in Jerusalem, girls at the Pelech Religious High School are pursuing humanistic studies and sharing encounters with peers from secular high schools, together visiting such settlements as Hebron. The goal is to promote peace not only by eradicating barriers between Jew and Arab but also between Jew and Jew.
On Super Sunday, which takes place Nov. 24, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation will be calling on the community to support those critical services at home, in the former Soviet Union and in Israel.
With new welfare restrictions, as well as concerns about promoting Jewish identity at home and fostering religious pluralism in Israel, the need for additional dollars is crucial, says Karen DiGiorgio, chair of the 17th annual Super Sunday phonathon.
That’s why 1,000 volunteers will gather at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco on Union Square and the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto on Sunday. They will call some 10,000 Jewish households in San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma counties.
The goal is to top last year’s Super Sunday phonathon, which raised about $2.3 million in an annual campaign totaling just over $19 million. The theme of this year’s Super Sunday is “A Lasting Tradition In a Changing World.”
“As Jews, we need to take care of each other,” says DiGiorgio, who is serving as chair for the second year. “From the help that enables children to learn what it means to be Jewish to the funds that provide care for Jews in need throughout the world, every service we support reinforces our Jewish values.”
Gerald Elgarten, director of the Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School in Palo Alto, agreed. Funds from the federation not only provide scholarships to assist needy families who might not otherwise be able to send their children to Jewish schools, camps and day-care centers, but they also lower the costs for all families involved.
The annual JCF campaign supports more than 60 Jewish agencies and programs, including a plethora of social and educational services in the Bay Area.
In addition, through overseas programs that receive funding from the JCF annual campaign — such as those sponsored by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee — humanitarian workers assist those in need throughout the world.
In Ukraine, where the average pension among Jews earlier this year was $17 per month and dropping — well below the poverty line — such help not only provides elderly Jews with their main source of nutrition but it also keeps Jewish schools and synagogues alive.
And through the Amuta, the JCF’s volunteer advisory group in Israel, the JCF campaign also directly funds projects in the Jewish state. One such program enables Jewish youth from Kiryat Shmona, the JCF’s partner town, to share cross-cultural encounters with Druze teens from the Golan Heights.
Such encounters “break down incredible barriers between the two peoples,” said Natan Golan, director of the JCF’s Israel office.
At Super Sunday, the formal kickoff to the 1996-97 campaign, volunteers work in three-hour shifts, bringing their children, working the phones and connecting with old friends during the 12-hour event.
Representatives from the Amuta will be on hand to talk with volunteers about needs in Israel, while people from local agencies will be discussing their organizations’ concerns.
One of this year’s goals is reaching out to those who have not donated previously. To that end, the JCF has increased its phone bank on the South Peninsula, where co-chairs are Anne Sterman and Anita Rosen.
The good news and the bad news this year is that there are no crises to ignite the campaign, said Carol Saal, JCF campaign chair.
“Without crises, how do we respond? We’re at a crossroads and we have to begin to respond to the positive, such as the importance of Jewish community and Jewish values,” she said.
“Each of us has to figure out for ourselves what that means to us as Jews in 1996. My point of view is that it’s actually a relief to be able to feel we can respond to the Jewish community without feeling we are under siege. There’s a sense of relief and a sense of excitement.”