February 24, 2010

More than 450 volunteers helped raise $4.5 million on Feb. 21 for The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles at the annual Super Sunday phone-a-thon, kicking off an annual campaign that for the last several years has raised nearly $50 million.

The Super Sunday total matched last year’s amount and reached the goal organizers had set for the day.

“Yesterday, I saw the strength of community in action,” Federation President Jay Sanderson said. “I was excited and inspired to see both longtime supporters of The Federation, as well as many new faces.”

Volunteers working from Federation offices on Wilshire Boulevard and at the Valley Alliance’s West Valley campus spent 12 hours soliciting pledges from supporters. Among those who made calls were Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Congresswoman Diane Watson, California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, State Sen. Alex Padilla, Assemblyman Mike Feuer, L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel, as well as L.A. City Councilmembers Paul Koretz, Jan Perry and Dennis Zine.

Federation supports more than 100 educational, cultural and social service programs in Los Angeles, Israel and communities around the world. In addition to the annual campaign, Federation this year launched an effort to establish a $100 million endowment in honor of the organization’s 100th anniversary in 2011.

Sanderson, who took over as president in January, says he expects this year’s annual campaign to do well, too.

“We believe that our campaign will be more successful in 2010 because we are reaching out to the community in a more meaningful way with strategic priorities that better reflect the needs and the dreams of the entire community,” he said.

Jews, Mexicans and Japanese celebrate their common heritage in the East L.A. neighborhood.

What do an elderly Jewish history and fiction writer, a young Mexican playwright and a Japanese developer have in common? They all spent their childhoods in Boyle Heights.

Harriet Rochlin, an author of both fiction and non-fiction on Western Jewish history; Josefina Lopez, author of “Real Women Have Curves” and founder of a Boyle Heights theater; and Jon Kaji, president of the investment firm Kaji & Associates, shared a panel on Feb. 18 at a symposium of the Boyle Heights Heritage Joint Initiative, a collaboration between the Consulates General of Israel, Japan and Mexico. Titled “Boyle Heights Intersections: Israel, Japan and Mexico,” it was the first of a series of events considering a neighborhood that once was home to all three ethnic groups.

“In the Talmud, it says, in order to know where you are going, you must know from where you came,” Jacob Dayan, consul general of Israel in Los Angeles, told an audience of community activists, politicians and dignitaries. George Sanchez a USC professor who has written extensively about the history of Boyle Heights, gave the keynote address, focusing on the theme of both past and future. The goal of the joint initiative, launched in November 2009, is to reinvigorate the bonds among the three communities.

During World War II, as Japanese students at Roosevelt High School were being sent to internment camps, fellow Jewish students wrote them postcards and visited them at Santa Anita racetrack, where they were being held, Rochlin recalled during her slideshow presentation of personal photographs. Rochlin was born and raised in Boyle Heights at a time when the Breed Street Shul was the center of a thriving Jewish community. One of the projects the initiative is supporting is the renovation of the Breed Street Shul, transforming it into a community center.

Lopez, who was born in Mexico and grew up in Boyle Heights, lamented the fact that the neighborhood is associated with gangs and crime. According to Sanchez, the population is now 98.5 percent Latino. “It’s an amazing place that gave me a wonderful childhood,” Lopez said, choked by emotions. “It’s time for us to take the ownership back.” Lopez’s play, “Boyle Heights,” was inspired by her memories, and she heads the Casa 0101 Theater Art Space, where she mentors a new generation of Latino artists.

“Boyle Heights is a touchstone,” said Kaji, who as a boy visited his grandparents in the neighborhood. “It’s an L.A. secret. There are so many people in Southern California who share a place in their hearts for Boyle Heights.”

“We need to remind the young generation that what makes us strong as a city is our diversity,” Dayan said, comparing Los Angeles to Israel, “a country of immigrants and enormous cultural pluralism.” As far as he knows, Dayan said, the Boyle Heights Heritage Initiative is the first joint effort by the three consulates.

Held at the Tateuchi Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, the symposium was followed by an elaborate reception featuring Japanese cuisine by the Japanese Food Culture Association. The selection included fried surimi seafood, matcha green tea smoothies, a stew called oden, and more than 10 varieties of sake. Chefs also demonstrated yellowtail fish cutting and sushi-making techniques.

Emma Lipner has half a ton of medical supplies for Haiti piled up in her living room, and thanks to some chance encounters and quick corporate action, she knows how to get it to the earthquake-ravaged country.

Lipner, a senior at Shalhevet high school, was part of a school-wide effort to collect medical supplies to send to St. Damien, the only hospital left standing in Port-au-Prince. The supplies were intended to be transported on a private jet carrying relief workers to Haiti, but the jet left early, stranding the supplies, including crutches, bandages, medications and surgical supplies collected from doctors, pharmacists and medical supply companies.

Meanwhile, Dave Chameides, a filmmaker and the school’s director of sustainability, who spearheaded the project, was called to Haiti to work on a documentary film. Before he left, he told Lipner to keep collecting, and they’d figure out how to get the supplies over.
En route to Haiti, Chameides was schmoozing with a Virgin America flight attendant and mentioned the stalled project.

“I’ll be right back,” the attendant told him. Even before the flight landed, Chameides received an e-mail from Douglas Stolls, a guest services specialist at Virgin America, saying he would take care of things.

Virgin America already had shipped 40,000 pounds of food, clothing and medical supplies to Haiti, via south Florida, immediately after the Jan. 12 earthquake, and employees had collected $50,000, which was matched by the airline.

But this effort for Shalhevet was less formal. Stolls marshaled a half-dozen employees to fly from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale and to check in the boxes as personal luggage. When corporate heard what the employees planned, it agreed to ship the additional boxes as cargo at no charge. Virgin America transported 22 50-pound boxes for Shalhevet.

Lipner, Chameides and a crew of students   met with the airline’s employees as their flight left Los Angeles International Airport for Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 17.
Lipner and Chameides have been amazed at the response on all sides.

“Money is a very abstract thing. You can say, ‘I’m giving $100,’ but then you can’t really see the money in use,” Lipner said. “But when you’re carrying boxes of stuff that will actually be used, or when you see someone wrapped in gauze that you helped pack, you think, ‘Wow, I was part of that effort. I contributed to that.’”

Three years ago, JDate initiated an unofficial program offering rabbis the chance to purchase memberships at 18 percent off the regular price. Since then, rabbis around the country have been buying in bulk and giving out free JDate memberships to congregants.

“Rabbis are trying to find more creative ways to help Jews meet other Jews,” said Arielle Wolin, manager of public and community relations at JDate.

Here’s how it works: A rabbi buys a group of gift certificates, each with its own code, which the recipient enters on the Web site to initiate the subscription.

Los Angeles rabbis have not participated at present, Wolin said, perhaps because it is easier for Jews to meet Jews here than in most other cities. However, Rabbi Jonathan Kupetz of Temple Beth Israel in Pomona, which Kupetz calls “an isolated Jewish community,” has distributed a half-dozen three- and six-month memberships to his community, paying for them with rabbinic discretionary funds.

“Finding other Jews you want to meet [in Pomona] is not so easy,” Kupetz said. “When people are looking to find a Jewish partner, I want to help facilitate that.”

The program began in November 2007, when a New Jersey rabbi contacted Wolin with the idea. Wolin said that about 30 rabbis have since followed suit across the country.

After Hurricane Katrina, the Jewish Federation in New Orleans offered free JDate memberships to make the city more attractive to Jews, and in 2008, an anonymous donor purchased 75 memberships on behalf of the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City.

Kupetz says his recipients are mostly older recent divorcees, while other rabbis find the gifts popular among Jews in their mid-20s.

“Part of what I’m concerned about as a rabbi is the future of the Jewish people,” Kupetz said.

For more information, contact Arielle Wolin at (323) 658-3000 or AWolin@spark.net.