HAPPY SHAVUOT Celebrating Jewish Life in Sarasota and Manatee Counties, Israel and the World FEDERATION NEWS
Serving our community since 1971!
Published by The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee www.jfedsrq.org
June 2017 - Sivan/Tamuz 5777 INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
7 Community Focus 13 Jewish Happenings 17 Jewish Interest 22 Israel & the Jewish World 26 Commentary 29 Focus on Youth 31 Life Cycle
3 Federation grant helps fight hunger in Israel
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Volume 47, Number 6
LIFE & LEGACY™: Over $3.6M promised to our community in first month By Gisele Pintchuck, LIFE & LEGACY™ local director
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pril 1, 2017, marked the official start of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee’s and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation’s year one of the LIFE & LEGACY™ program. The four-year program is a transformative collaboration involving eleven local Jewish organizations focused on promoting after-lifetime giving to benefit local educational, social service organizations, synagogues and other Jewish entities. Through training, support and monetary incentives, LIFE & LEGACY™ motivates Jewish organizations to secure legacy gifts, steward donors and Gisele Pintchuck integrate legacy giving into the philanthropic culture of the Jewish community. The Jewish Federation along with Chabad of Sarasota, Chabad of Bradenton & Lakewood Ranch, Chabad of Venice & North Port, Hershorin Schiff Community Day School, Jewish Family & Children’s Service of the Suncoast, Jewish Housing
Council Foundation/Aviva, Temple Beth Israel, Temple Beth Sholom, Temple Emanu-El and Temple Sinai are teaming up to engage donors in conversation and promote the importance of planning for the future and securing Jewish tomorrows for generations to come. “It gives me great pride to see so many organizations collaborating to secure the future of our Jewish community,” said Howard Tevlowitz, Federation Executive Director. LIFE & LEGACY™ is not only for the wealthy donor, it is designed to encourage everyone to become a legacy giver. In addition, it fosters camaraderie and respect among Jewish organizations that share the goal of legacy building for the Jewish community. Since the implementation of the program, all eleven partners have participated in comprehensive training to create a solid, complete and effective legacy program for their organizations. With the support of the Massachusetts-based Harold Grinspoon Foundation, partners receive step-by-step guidance to engage in meaningful legacy conversations, provide significant stewardship activities, effectively continued on page 3
High-school students share their experiences at the AIPAC Women’s Giving Circle mission to Israel Policy Conference By Julie Friedman
“We did it and we’ll do it again!”
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Temple Sinai’s Chavurah Gan Eden strengthens community outreach
29 Community Day School enjoys Israel exchange A publication of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee Klingenstein Jewish Center, 580 McIntosh Rd., Sarasota, FL 34232 Annual voluntary subscription: $25
uring the two weeks before Passover this year, eleven members of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee’s Women’s Giving Circle (WGC) enjoyed our first mission to Israel. We visited a dozen nonprofit agencies whose missions reflect the WGC goal – supporting vulnerable children and women in Israel. The agencies ranged from very small with limited funding, to very large with quite diverse resources. Ros Mazur, co-founder of the WGC and the mission chair, saw to it that our visits were interactive and intimate, with opportunities to meet beneficiaries of WGC support from in and around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Mission participants assumed responsibility to provide more details about each organization so that our understanding of their goals and relevance to the WGC mission was enhanced. Among the programs we visited was Sulamot, which focuses on the power of music to effect social change via engaging very young and middle schoolage children from diverse communities, many from impoverished and immigrant families. Sulamot is a collaboration of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, NON-PROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID MANASOTA FL PERMIT 167
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Students at Sulamot playing their instruments
Tel Aviv University, and the Israel Defense Forces. Our hearts were warmed by the 5- and 6-year-old children “playing” their cardboard instruments, singing, having fun and laughing while they entertained us. Older youth performed on culturally evocative instruments, such as the oud and tambor, as well as western wind and string instruments. We were treated to powerful vocal selections from a sweet 12-year-old girl, blind and abandoned as an infant, who was literally picked up on a street by an Israeli continued on page 2
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