Tell the people in San Francisco: they are saving lives

The Federation recently put out a new promotional piece showcasing some of our work in Israel:

To see the PDF of the above, click here.

For a more complete picture of the Federation’s oversees commitments, click here.

300 young adults celebrate Simchat Torah!

For 2 hours every month, The Cellar closes its doors to the public and hosts an exclusive event for anyone Jewish and single, ages 21-40. The night, called Second Saturday, is known as the “longest running party for the young Jewish community in San Francisco” and is all about us – the young Jewish community in the Bay Area.

On October 10, over 300 young adults gathered at The Cellar to celebrate Simchat Torah and happiness in an unforgettable production called SIMCHA! which brought a taste of Israel to the Jewish young adult community in a fresh and exciting way.

The Israeli-themed SIMCHA! party drew over 300 young adults.

The festivities included Israeli snacks, Israeli video art, a raffle for a $100 dinner at Boulevard restaurant, and two amazing DJs – Second Saturday’s great house D.J. Josh Abrams, and Israeli D.J. Moshe Bonen from Maydalleh, who came straight from New York and brilliantly spun Hebrew music.

Part of the proceeds from the evening is being donated to the LGBT youth center in Tel Aviv. The special evening was a joint effort with Tzavta, the Israel Center’s young adult division, supported by the Helen Diller Family Foundation.

For more Tzavta programming information contact Lital at litalc@sfjcf.org or 415.512.6425.

Mishmash engages new Russian-Jewish community leaders

This past Saturday, twenty-three 20- and 30-something San Francisco Bay Area Russian Jews ascended a steep hill in the heart of Mill Valley to start off their collective involvement in the Mishmash Leadership Program, a ground-breaking effort to engage potential new leaders among young Russian Jews.

The Mishmash Leadership Program is truly one of a kind, not just in the Bay Area but in North America. The eight-month long course aims to raise communal consciousness in the younger population of the Russian Jews, most of them products of late ’70s and early ’90s immigration tides. Culturally diverse and multilingual, Mishmash participants have signed up to tackle complex questions about core values and responsibilities of being young Russian-American Jews in our community.

Russian Jewish community leaders engage through the Mishmash program

The visionary behind this educational project, Sasha Belinski, an emissary from The Jewish Agency for Israel, working out of the Federation’s Israel Center, built the Mishmash Leadership curriculum around the mission of strengthening the participants’ Jewish identity, their connection to Israel, and their sense of belonging to the local Jewish community. To reach these goals, the program is structured around three core components: personal exploration, Jewish community exploration, and personal leadership initiative. The last component will take shape as a communal project—ranging from a cultural event, to an outdoor adventure or Jewish holiday celebration—that each participant will conceive, plan and deliver as a mindful contribution to the quality of local Jewish life.

For more information contact Sasha at alexandrab@sfjcf.org or 415.512.6285.

Our work in Israel

For more than two decades, JCF has partnered with Israelis to build a more pluralistic, just and vibrant democracy.

For the past 25 years, the Jewish Community Federation has helped Israel and its people face enormous challenges. By pioneering a partnership with Israelis, we help ensure that its citizens have access to equal opportunities, build a greater acceptance for different approaches to Judaism and adapt productively into Israeli society.

We help transform the lives of tens of thousands of Israelis by creating economic empowerment, promoting religious pluralism, teaching tolerance and connecting a new generation of youth to their homeland.

JCF provides leadership, shares its expertise and dedicates financial resources enabling Jews from the Bay Area and Israel to become more knowledgeable about, supportive of, and deeply engaged with one another. By investing community dollars directly in Israel while working closely with an Israeli advisory committee—the Amuta—we strengthen Israel by granting millions annually to projects that fund programs that reflect our shared values. In 2009-2010 more than $9.5 million has been allocated in support of Israel, demonstrating Federation’s enduring commitment to its security and survival. Funds go directly to programs that: connect Israel and the Bay Area (through Israel Center and events like Israel in the Gardens), provide equality of opportunity, provide job training, give academic access, develop leadership, close educational gaps, respond quickly and effectively to emergency needs and promoting Jewish pluralism for disadvantaged or marginalized populations.

Our work throughout Israel will help to build a more inclusive, stronger and vibrant state.

We are proud that our Bay Area Federation’s initiatives provide a chance for every child in Israel to have a brighter future, offer families integration into the social and economic mainstream and sow the seeds from which a safer and more secure Israel will bloom.

Setting the record straight

Months have passed since the Jewish Film Festival’s screening of Rachel and emotions continue to run high. The Jewish Community Federation has been frequently implicated and targeted in the controversies surrounding the film.

We have learned a great deal from this experience and should have more clearly articulated our position sooner and elaborated on steps the Federation has been taking. Although the Federation’s allocation, made many months prior to the 2009 Festival, provided 1.7% of the Film Festival’s funding, some in our community saw the Federation’s participation as having a greater significance.

We are committed to improving our communication, transparency and responsiveness. So, given the barrage of misinformation, let us set the record straight:

• We are unwavering in our commitment to Israel. Last year, $9.5 million was allocated in support of Israel. We were the first Jewish federation to establish its own office in Israel. For more information on our Israel programs, please see
  http://www.sfjcf.org/howthemoney/programs/#israeloverseas

• We oppose the boycott/divestments/sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. We do not affiliate with or fund groups that advocate for the BDS movement.

• We value the contributions the Film Festival has made to Bay Area Jewish life. The Rachel event should not overshadow the Film Festival’s successful 29 year history.

• We believe that the Film Festival made significant mistakes in its handling of the Rachel event and have conveyed our concerns accordingly.

• We strongly disagree with the Film Festival’s choice of Rachel Corrie’s mother as the event speaker as well as the co-presenters and deplore the rancorous and offensive behavior of anti-Israel attendees at the event.

• The Federation does not, nor should it, participate in the planning of Film Festival programming or in the choice of films. The Federation is a separate legal entity, funding the mission of the Film Festival. We are one of more than 115 organizational contributors to the Festival, including KGO and the Consulate General of Israel.

• We have urged Film Festival leadership to adopt new policies and procedures to ensure that the specific problems associated with the Rachel event do not happen again, including policies addressing choice of co-presenters and speakers.

• We believe that the Federation’s many stakeholders can share diverse opinions on how best to support Israel as a secure Jewish democracy, while remaining civil and connected as a community.

• The Federation is surprised and concerned by the counter-productive assertions of a relatively few community members, who, in the name of a pro-Israel campaign, have urged the broader community to discontinue support of the Federation. We have received letters filled with personal insults, some even accusing the Federation of anti-Semitism, Nazism, or anti-Zionism. If successful, this campaign will seriously undermine the critical programs we support both here and in Israel.

We ask you to join us in ending divisive accusations and rhetoric. The abiding mission of the Federation remains a positive and hopeful one: to build and strengthen Jewish education, culture and identity here in the Bay Area and in Israel. With the needs being more acute than ever during these unpredictable economic times, together, and only together, can we rise to the challenge.

Jim Koshland
President, Jewish Community Federation

F. Warren Hellman
Chair, Jewish Community Endowment Fund

Jennifer Gorovitz
Acting CEO, Jewish Community Federation

Grand opening for a grand JCC

The Oshman Family Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto (OFJCC) will celebrate its grand opening on Sunday, October 18, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. by offering an array of activities for all ages. “Treasures of the Oshman Family JCC” will showcase the JCC’s programs and facilities at its new home on the Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life at 3921 Fabian Way in Palo Alto.

The long-awaited new campus of the Palo Alto JCC will be the main hub for a rich variety of cultural and community programs for the South Peninsula Jewish community, and it houses the new Israel Cultural Connection (ICC), which operates in partnership with the Jewish Community Federation’s Israel Center.

The day’s activities will entice people to wander the 8.5 acre campus and discover its “Treasures,” including yoga classes, Israeli folk music, lectures, and hands-on art projects. Kids and adults can complete a treasure map and enter to win prizes along the way. A full day of musical performances will take place in the Albert & Janet Schultz Cultural Arts Hall and tours of the campus highlighting its secrets and stories will be given in English, Russian, and Hebrew.

The concerts will include a performance of the Israel Center’s production of Tel Aviv from Sand to Rock, celebrating Tel Aviv’s centennial with YaRock band, a performance of the Bay Area-based MusiCA band, of the a capella ensemble Vocolot, Klezmer and Yiddish music, previews of the upcoming Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival and an outdoor concert by the world-renowned Moran Choir from Israel will close out the day.

All opening-day entertainment and activities are FREE.

See the full schedule, and learn more at www.paloaltojcc.org

The Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life was awarded a $10,000,000 grant from the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties in June 2006.  The grant is the largest to a capital project grant awarded in the Fund’s history.

Aschella & Dina: Living Parallel Lives

My Story from the CCD Mission

I never expected to be so personally affected by my recent trip on the UJC Campaign Chairs & Directors Mission to Israel. As a professional who has worked for the Jewish Community Federation for more than 4 years, I thought I knew the details of almost everything that the Federation supports – so I was not prepared to be so deeply moved by what I saw during the mission.  Day after day, I found myself connecting deeply with program beneficiaries and the talented and committed staff who make these programs run.

It was on the third day, on our way to an Absorption Center for Ethiopian olim (those who emigrate to Israel) called Beit Canada Barnea that I had a defining moment.  A gorgeous young woman boarded our bus, wearing a bright yellow top and an even brighter smile.  I found myself stealing glances at her, wondering who she was.  And then she told us her story: Her name is Aschella.  Sixteen years ago, as a seven year old girl, she and her father, stepmother and stepbrothers made the arduous and difficult journey from Ethiopia to Israel.  The connection I felt to Aschella and her story was immediate.

Dina and Aschella

You see, twenty years ago my parents, two grandmothers and I left St. Petersburg, Russia to make our journey to the United States.  Aschella went to Israel, I came to California, but both of our journeys were made possible by the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and the United Federations system.  As this charming, sweet young woman spoke of the hardship of trying to adjust to her new life in an unfamiliar country and the stepmother who demanded she play the role of obedient home-maker rather than studious young girl, I reflected on how much help and encouragement I received when I was an eight year old and a new immigrant.  So I knew exactly what Aschella was talking about when she described her decision to make a different life for herself, when she talked about the boarding school that helped set her on the right path, the Absorption Center where she was given a job and housing, the scholarship she received to attend Ashkelon College where she is now getting a Criminology degree. All of these programs are funded by organizations like the Jewish Community Federation and our JAFI and JDC partners, dedicated to backing just this sort of activity for so many people in Israel and elsewhere.  Just like all of you sponsored my family’s synagogue tuition, my day camp, and the Hebrew Free Loans we received when we were new to this country.

Now Aschella works at the Beit Canada Barnea Absorption Center, mentoring seven and eight- year-olds who are undergoing their own unique and personal experiences of aliyah and immigration.  She is the role model for them that she never had herself.  As she said, “I did not have the support from my family growing up, but the doors of opportunity were opened to me when I went to a residential school.  Now, working with new immigrant girls at Beit Canada Barnea I want to help them like I was helped. I want to give them the will to succeed.”

Dina with some of the children at the Beit Canada Barnea Absorption Center

That desire to get involved with the Jewish community really resonated with me.  Raising money for the Jewish Community Federation gives me an opportunity to give back, to share both Aschella’s and my story, and demonstrate the difference every donation makes.  I feel so privileged to have met Aschella, this young woman living a life parallel to mine, thousands of miles apart.  And I love working for the Jewish Community Federation where I help raise funds for programs that assist families like mine and Aschella’s.

Aschella and I are going to have a strong connection for a very long time – both of us committed to changing lives and continuing a powerful cycle of giving back!

Dina Jacobs
Program & Campaign Manager, Women’s Philanthropy

TONIGHT: Candlelight Vigil/Memorial for LGBT Teens Murdered in Tel Aviv

On Saturday, a masked assailant dressed in black from head to toe opened fire on a gay teen center’s support group meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing 2 members of the group: 16 year old, Liz Trubeshi, and 26 year old, Nir Katz, the support group counselor, and wounding 10 others. The gunman managed to find the secret location of the support group’s meetings; many of the kids were not yet out to their parents before the shooting. On Sunday, thousands in Tel Aviv protested the senseless murders, and crowds gathered in other Israeli cities as well.

An ad hoc group of San Francisco-based Jewish and gay organizations and individuals is organizing a candlelight vigil/memorial for tonight, Monday night, to memorialize the young Israeli victims. The safety of LGBT youth is of utmost concern; this could happen at any center anywhere in the world. Organizers are calling for LGBT centers around the country and world to also hold vigils on Monday.

People will gather at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (290 Dolores St @ 16th St) at 6:00pm and march down Dolores Street and then down Market Street to the San Francisco LGBT Center  (1800 Market Street @ Octavia St).

.

SCHEDULE:

TONIGHT, Monday, August 3, 2009

5:30pm		Gather at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (290 Dolores St @ 16th St, San Francisco)
.
6:00pm		March from Sha’ar Zahav to SF LGBT Center (1800 Market Street @ Octavia St, San Francisco)
.
6:30pm		Speakers & Candlelight Vigil

.

SPEAKERS:

• Rabbi Camille Angel (Congregation Sha’ar Zahav)
• Ruby Cymrot-Wu (Jewish Mosaic)
• Sup. Bevan Dufty (SF Board of Supervisors)
• Ashley Perreira (Youth Space at the SF LGBT Center)
• Gayle Roberts (SF LGBT Center)
• Jessica Trubowitch (JCRC)

.

VIGIL ORGANIZERS:

• Rabbi Camille Angel (Congregation Sha’ar Zahav)
• Supervisor Bevan Dufty
• Martin Tannenbaum (LGBT Alliance)
• Organizer Lisa Geduldig
• The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco
  • LGBT Alliance
  • Israel Center
• SF LGBT Center
• Congregation Sha’ar Zahav
• Kol Tzedek:  A Bay Area Coalition of Jewish Organizations for Justice and LGBT Rights.

Content for this blog post was provided courtesy of San Francisco publicist and co-organizer Lisa Geduldig.  Click here for the original press release.

Photos: Israel in the Gardens 2009

On June 7, 2009, the Jewish Community Federation, in conjunction with 1000s of its friends, celebrated Israeli and Jewish culture at Israel in the Gardens in San Francisco.  I brought my camera along to document the day.  Below are a few of my favorites.  If you would like to see more, be sure to visit: http://sfjcf.smugmug.com/IsraelCenter/805570

Entry into the Tel Aviv Jaffa Orange Project.

Boy enjoying the Circus School Acrobats.

Teens from the Tzofim Friendship Caravan.

Children's artwork from the Bechol Lashon kids craft area.

61 doves.

Hanging out at the Yavneh Day School table.

Ronit Jacobs, the amazing woman who has been running Israel in the Gardens for the past four years.

The Jews Got Talent finalists waiting on stage to find out who won the competition and the trip to Israel.

The crowd enjoying Ivri Lider in concert.

Co-workers Angela and Zach kickin' it in the Federation booth.

Remember, there are many more photos of the Gardens at:
http://sfjcf.smugmug.com/IsraelCenter/805570

If you took photos or videos at the event, we would love to see your shots as well.  Please post a comment with the link to your gallery.

I can’t wait for Israel in the Gardens this Sunday!

Headliner Ivri Lider

Shalom!

Israel in the Gardens is coming up this Sunday! On June 7, 2009, over 20,000 people will gather at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco to celebrate Israel and Tel Aviv at 100 and we can’t wait to see you there!

This year we truly outdid ourselves and there is something for everyone to do, see, taste, enjoy, and dance to.

Below you will find the Top 10 event highlights that we are most excited about.  You can also get the complete schedule for the day and more at www.israelinthegardens.org.

Lastly, we’ve already updated our Facebook and Twitter statuses to read “I can’t wait for Israel in the Gardens this Sunday!”  Please help us spread the word by doing the same.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Lehitra’ot,

The Israel Center

Top 10 Israel in the Gardens highlights:

10.  Cheering for the Jewish Got Talent contestants as they compete in the grand finale.

9.  Flirting at the Bay Area Singles Havurah meet-up.

8.  Making music, tumbling around, and working on crafts in the kids area.

7.  Chillin’ with the Israeli Scouts Friendship Caravan and Unpopable at the Teen Zone.

6. Buying a Tel Aviv Jaffa Orange art piece and shopping at the shuk.

5.  Participating in the Flash Mob.  Wait, were we supposed to tell you about that?  Guess you’ll find out what we are up to at 1:30 p.m.

4.  Dancing the night away at the Tzavta After Party.

3.  Watching new Israeli films at Contemporary Tel Aviv Short Films Festival taking place inside the Contemporary Jewish Museum.  Admission is FREE.

2.  Enjoying a FREE concert by this year’s musical headliner Ivri Lider!  If you aren’t already a fan, get acquainted with his music at: www.ivrilider.com

1. Celebrating Jewish culture, Israel’s 61st anniversary and the Tel Aviv centennial with 20,000 friends!