Chabad of Hunterdon County celebrated its sixth anniversary with a banquet at the Grand Colonial in Perryville.
More than 230 attended, including many business, civic and political leaders.
The event featured Joe Piscopo from Saturday Night Live as its emcee and entertainer as well as Yoel Sharabi, a world renowned Jewish singer and performer.
Honorees included Stanley and June Goldstein with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Miles and Zak Griffin with a Hebrew School Children of the Year, and Michael Camerino with a Community Leadership Award.
Rabbi Eli Kornfeld, executive director of Chabad of Hunterdon County, remarked, "The event was a tribute to the community and its willingness to support and partner with Chabad in ensuring its continued growth and success."
Proceeds from the dinner will fund Chabad of Hunterdon's growing number of programs.
Following the cocktail hour, everyone was treated to a special video presentation highlighting the achievements of Chabad during its first six years as well as its vision for the future.
The event featured many who shared their personal experiences with Chabad, including Richard Kaplan of Novartis and Sharon Gonnen of Thomson Reuters who spoke about the recent passing of her mother Renay Salamon A'H who was a chairwoman for the event and a prominent supporter of Chabad of Hunterdon.
The event concluded with the annual raffle drawings. Ilene Kaplan won a fur coat, William Fiore won a Breitling watch and Dave Ryback won the 50/50
Showing posts with label fundraising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fundraising. Show all posts
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Chabad.org in financial trouble?
By Jacob Berkman · February 19, 2009
It seems that Chabad.org, the de facto global publicity arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, is having some financial difficulty.
Though Chabad.org is not a chabad outpost, it is run like one, and like all other outposts is responsible for its own fund raising.
I have received the following email twice in the past 24 hours:
By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friend,
I value your time and will therefore get straight to the point:
We need your help to keep our virtual doors open!
The economic crisis has hit us crushingly hard and we are in an emergency situation.
Though we always keep our overhead low (-- our editors and writers do their jobs for comparatively little, as theirs is a labor of love), we’ve had to make some painful cuts.
Yet, we are still hundreds of thousands of dollars behind. Some of our largest donations were canceled due to the economic crisis. We simply cannot continue much longer.
So we appeal to you, friends and beneficiaries of Chabad.org:
Please help us serve! Please partner with us to nurture Jewish souls, to help people who are hungry for meaning to find their answers.
Your tax deductible donation to Chabad.org may be the deciding factor in the life of a struggling teenager, a down-on-his luck business owner, a forlorn Jew in some forgotten place on the globe, or an educated professional suddenly interested in her Jewish roots.
You see, every single day hundreds of people in need of advice and a listening ear email us -- and each month we serve up a broad and deep array of life-affirming Jewish content to millions of visitors:
College students who are struggling to create their identity as Jewish adults. Singles wondering whether they should marry Jewish. Traveling professionals seeking to affirm their Jewishness in the far-flung regions of the world. New parents learning how to raise a Jewish child. And anyone seeking support, compassion, advice and warmth for their questions, their struggles and their pain. For hundreds of thousands, young and old, Chabad.org IS their Jewish home.
So I appeal to you today: Please reach in deeply to your pockets and partner with us! Help us serve the Jewish People, including many who might be in even greater need than you.
G-d assures us each repeatedly in His Holy Torah that He will repay us many times over for the charity we give. And His currency is far more sustaining than money alone.
You can contribute securely online at:
http://www.chabad.org/donate18g
While there, please consider setting up an automatic donation schedule for the coming year -- at regular intervals, or perhaps to mark special dates in your family.
Or mail a check to:
Chabad.org Campaign c/o CLMC
770 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11213
If you are interested in planned giving, or in underwriting a site section or feature, or would like to discuss a stock transfer, a donation of real estate or a will, please contact us here.
We thank you immensely for your partnership and bless you that your partnership in our work will help beautify and illuminate your own life and the lives of all those around you and stand you in good stead forever.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, on behalf of
THE CHABAD.ORG TEAM
It seems that Chabad.org, the de facto global publicity arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, is having some financial difficulty.
Though Chabad.org is not a chabad outpost, it is run like one, and like all other outposts is responsible for its own fund raising.
I have received the following email twice in the past 24 hours:
By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friend,
I value your time and will therefore get straight to the point:
We need your help to keep our virtual doors open!
The economic crisis has hit us crushingly hard and we are in an emergency situation.
Though we always keep our overhead low (-- our editors and writers do their jobs for comparatively little, as theirs is a labor of love), we’ve had to make some painful cuts.
Yet, we are still hundreds of thousands of dollars behind. Some of our largest donations were canceled due to the economic crisis. We simply cannot continue much longer.
So we appeal to you, friends and beneficiaries of Chabad.org:
Please help us serve! Please partner with us to nurture Jewish souls, to help people who are hungry for meaning to find their answers.
Your tax deductible donation to Chabad.org may be the deciding factor in the life of a struggling teenager, a down-on-his luck business owner, a forlorn Jew in some forgotten place on the globe, or an educated professional suddenly interested in her Jewish roots.
You see, every single day hundreds of people in need of advice and a listening ear email us -- and each month we serve up a broad and deep array of life-affirming Jewish content to millions of visitors:
College students who are struggling to create their identity as Jewish adults. Singles wondering whether they should marry Jewish. Traveling professionals seeking to affirm their Jewishness in the far-flung regions of the world. New parents learning how to raise a Jewish child. And anyone seeking support, compassion, advice and warmth for their questions, their struggles and their pain. For hundreds of thousands, young and old, Chabad.org IS their Jewish home.
So I appeal to you today: Please reach in deeply to your pockets and partner with us! Help us serve the Jewish People, including many who might be in even greater need than you.
G-d assures us each repeatedly in His Holy Torah that He will repay us many times over for the charity we give. And His currency is far more sustaining than money alone.
You can contribute securely online at:
http://www.chabad.org/donate18g
While there, please consider setting up an automatic donation schedule for the coming year -- at regular intervals, or perhaps to mark special dates in your family.
Or mail a check to:
Chabad.org Campaign c/o CLMC
770 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, NY 11213
If you are interested in planned giving, or in underwriting a site section or feature, or would like to discuss a stock transfer, a donation of real estate or a will, please contact us here.
We thank you immensely for your partnership and bless you that your partnership in our work will help beautify and illuminate your own life and the lives of all those around you and stand you in good stead forever.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, on behalf of
THE CHABAD.ORG TEAM
Father of slain Chabad rabbi visits Sydney
February 18, 2009
SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- The father of the Chabad rabbi slain in the Mumbai terror attacks is visiting Australia.
Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, whose son Gavriel and daughter-in-law Rivka were murdered last November, was honored Tuesday night at a gala dinner with 1,500 guests hosted by Chabad-Lubavitch in Sydney.
Holtzberg thanked the Jewish community “for your great love to me and my family in those days filled with darkness and pain.” He also recognized the Australian government's assistance.
“Participation of the government in such a faraway country is special, as it means that the wider Australian community, not just the Jewish community, stands with us in the struggle of good against evil, light over darkness,” he said.
Holtzberg was joined in Sydney by Moscow Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who has been appointed director of the fund to rebuild the Chabad house in Mumbai and to ensure lifetime support for the couple’s 2-year-old orphaned son, Moshe. More than $3 million will be required to rebuild the Chabad house.
Malcolm Turnbull, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, praised Chabad and paid tribute to the young couple killed in the terror attacks.
“The best way we can remember your inspirational son and daughter-in-law is to practice and promote Yiddishkeit with even more vigor,” he said.
Turnbull added that he was still “humbled” that Chabad’s chief rabbi, Pinchus Feldman, presented him in 2007 with a U.S. dollar from the Lubavitcher rebbe.
Governor General Quentic Bryce sent a letter of support, as did Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who commended Chabad of Sydney’s assistance in the aftermath of the Victorian bush fire disaster on Feb. 7 that has killed more than 200 people.
SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- The father of the Chabad rabbi slain in the Mumbai terror attacks is visiting Australia.
Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, whose son Gavriel and daughter-in-law Rivka were murdered last November, was honored Tuesday night at a gala dinner with 1,500 guests hosted by Chabad-Lubavitch in Sydney.
Holtzberg thanked the Jewish community “for your great love to me and my family in those days filled with darkness and pain.” He also recognized the Australian government's assistance.
“Participation of the government in such a faraway country is special, as it means that the wider Australian community, not just the Jewish community, stands with us in the struggle of good against evil, light over darkness,” he said.
Holtzberg was joined in Sydney by Moscow Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, who has been appointed director of the fund to rebuild the Chabad house in Mumbai and to ensure lifetime support for the couple’s 2-year-old orphaned son, Moshe. More than $3 million will be required to rebuild the Chabad house.
Malcolm Turnbull, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, praised Chabad and paid tribute to the young couple killed in the terror attacks.
“The best way we can remember your inspirational son and daughter-in-law is to practice and promote Yiddishkeit with even more vigor,” he said.
Turnbull added that he was still “humbled” that Chabad’s chief rabbi, Pinchus Feldman, presented him in 2007 with a U.S. dollar from the Lubavitcher rebbe.
Governor General Quentic Bryce sent a letter of support, as did Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who commended Chabad of Sydney’s assistance in the aftermath of the Victorian bush fire disaster on Feb. 7 that has killed more than 200 people.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
26/11: Rabbi's parents want to rebuild Chabad House
Mumbai terror attack
Mumbai: The parents of the late Rabbi Gavriel, who was killed during the November 26 terror attacks here last year, have announced plans to raise Rs100 million to reconstruct the ravaged Jewish centre in south Mumbai.
Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, accompanied by his wife Frieda, and their sons Avraham and Moshe, visited the Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews, situated inside the better-known Nariman House, near the southern tip of the city.
They examined the belongings of Gavriel and his wife Rivka, who was five months pregnant at the time of the attacks. Their two-year-old son Moshe was miraculously saved from the attacks by his nanny, Sandra Samuel.
Soon after the attacks, they were taken to Israel and now Moshe has become a darling of that country and Jews worldwide. His grandparents and other relatives who look after him say that every now and then, he cries for his dead parents.
The Holtzbergs walked through the mounds of rubble, damaged or broken furniture lying around, books and other household articles gathering dust.
The signs of the November 26, 2008 attacks, and its tragic consequences, are still visible inside and outside the building, guarded now by a single unarmed guard.
Rabbi Holtzberg is hoping for the help of even local Indians for the reconstruction and rebuilding efforts since the place was not just for the Jews, but members of other communities too.
So far, they have raised some funds - for the rebuilding of the Chabad House - from Europe and the US, but will need much more, an estimated Rs100 million, to make it rise again with enhanced facilities and security systems.
The All India Jews Federation president Jonathan Solomon confirmed he had heard about the proposed plans to reconstruct Chabad House. "However, even I have no details and probably, the Israeli consular authorities may be aware of this," he said.
Mumbai: The parents of the late Rabbi Gavriel, who was killed during the November 26 terror attacks here last year, have announced plans to raise Rs100 million to reconstruct the ravaged Jewish centre in south Mumbai.
Rabbi Nachman Holtzberg, accompanied by his wife Frieda, and their sons Avraham and Moshe, visited the Chabad House, the Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews, situated inside the better-known Nariman House, near the southern tip of the city.
They examined the belongings of Gavriel and his wife Rivka, who was five months pregnant at the time of the attacks. Their two-year-old son Moshe was miraculously saved from the attacks by his nanny, Sandra Samuel.
Soon after the attacks, they were taken to Israel and now Moshe has become a darling of that country and Jews worldwide. His grandparents and other relatives who look after him say that every now and then, he cries for his dead parents.
The Holtzbergs walked through the mounds of rubble, damaged or broken furniture lying around, books and other household articles gathering dust.
The signs of the November 26, 2008 attacks, and its tragic consequences, are still visible inside and outside the building, guarded now by a single unarmed guard.
Rabbi Holtzberg is hoping for the help of even local Indians for the reconstruction and rebuilding efforts since the place was not just for the Jews, but members of other communities too.
So far, they have raised some funds - for the rebuilding of the Chabad House - from Europe and the US, but will need much more, an estimated Rs100 million, to make it rise again with enhanced facilities and security systems.
The All India Jews Federation president Jonathan Solomon confirmed he had heard about the proposed plans to reconstruct Chabad House. "However, even I have no details and probably, the Israeli consular authorities may be aware of this," he said.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Behind Chabad Fundraising, A Stealth Security Campaign
by Adam Dickter
Assistant Managing Editor
In the weeks since the Mumbai terrorist attack, the Chabad movement has directed contributions from supporters primarily to two campaigns: One to aid the child whose emissary parents were slain, and another to rebuild the badly damaged outreach center and re-establish operations there, which could cost as much as $1 million, according to a Chabad estimate.
But at the same time, some Chabad leaders are acting on their own to secure funds and resources to make dozens of Chabad houses in far-flung outposts safer.
A group of emissaries in southeast Asia, led by Rabbi Yosef Kantor, who is based in Bangkok, Thailand, has launched a campaign aimed at improving security at their centers, and distributed donation cards at Lubavitch world headquarters in CrownHeights, Brooklyn, last week.
And Rabbi Shea Hecht, a member of a prominent Chabad family well entrenched in the emissary movement, told The Jewish Week he has been working the phones since the tragedy to try to arrange security upgrades and protection.
“Security has to be the No. 1 priority,” said Rabbi Hecht of the Lubavitch-run Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education. “If you are not alive, it doesn’t make much difference if you can put bread on the table. One you stay alive, you can worry about the bread.
“If any of us could spend a million dollars to save just one soul, isn't it worth it?”
Rabbi Hecht, who is one of 12 siblings and has six children, and whose wife also comes from a large family, has more relatives than he can count working as emissaries of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, trying to promote Jewish observance.
“In my family alone we are talking about tens and tens of shluchim,” he said, using the Hebrew word for emissary. “Among my immediate friends, tens and tens [more] shluchim. The Hechts are not people who sit on the sidelines. We roll up our sleeves and get the job done.”
While not in any way criticizing the central Chabad operation, Rabbi Hecht, who has developed many political connections in New York, said he expected many emissaries to reach out to him for advice and wanted to have information available for them.
“When they call me, I want to have a file with a lot of information,” he said.
He said he hoped to meet with members of the security consulting firm run by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and had already spoken with another top consulting firm, Kroll Security Group, for help in securing the centers. Spokepersons for both agencies did not return calls for comment.
The spokesman for Chabad, Zalman Shmotkin, would not comment on any fundraising for security. “It is still, unfortunately, too early to discuss these efforts,” he said on Tuesday night.
Rabbi Hecht said that supporters of Chabad around the world were responding generously in the wake of the Mumbai tragedy and that some of them had requested that donations be used for security. He said one of his sons, an emissary in upstate New York, had received such a contribution.
“It wasn’t exactly earmarked, but it was suggested that some of the money be used that way,” said Rabbi Hecht.
While stressing that no one in the movement believed that Chabad centers were more at risk than any other Jewish organization, he said that individual Chabad centers should assess their own security needs and decide how much of the money they raise should be used for security.
“There is a big difference between those in New York City or L.A. or other places in the U.S. and those in Asian countries or African countries,” he said. “There are some that have to be very careful what they do and how they do it. An assessment has to be made on many levels, and I am doing my own study.”
Since the tragedy, the Chabad movement has conducted an orchestrated marketing and public relations campaign. Chabad officials in New York and emissaries around the world are conducting media interviews, and constituents who have been touched by the movement are reaching out in droves to local and international publications to extol its praises.
Chabad handpicked emissaries to speak with the media that officials believed would best represent the movement to a general public that may have had little or no knowledge about it.
The message was twofold: Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, the emissaries killed in Mumbai, would have wanted their deaths to inspire and bring Jews closer to Chabad and Judaism, and the movement’s late spiritual leader, Rabbi Schneerson, taught that it was a religious obligation to take a dark moment and turn it into a positive.
The strategy is to help the audience to “become a continuum of the holy world of Gavi and Rivkah so that they have a way to channel their own personal grief in a manner that makes this world a better place,” Shmotkin told JTA. “A shaliach has to be able to sensitively and articulately convey the basic messages of urging people to increase their own acts of goodness and kindness” in response to tragedy.
Within a week of the attacks, Chabad had raised about $1 million through mailboxes it had opened on Chabad.org.
“[The fundraising] is an opportunity to connect more and more Jews to the mission, and to the Rebbe’s mission of getting every Jew involved. And part of that is channeling the empathy people are now feeling,” said Rabbi Kantor, the director of the Chabad of Thailand, who helped establish the movement’s presence in Mumbai prior to the Holtzbergs’ arrival.
“I see this as being a big package or opportunity to be able to inspire and direct Jews on how they can channel their outpouring of support and sympathy, their emotion, rage, outrage and frustration,” he said.
While the immediate fundraising was geared toward helping the toddler and rebuilding in Mumbai, the stepped-up publicity may also prove to be a boon for Chabad houses. Chabad emissaries usually receive minimal seed money to start their outposts, but each house is responsible for raising its own budget each year. Though Chabad does not keep a formal database on how much each outpost raises, officials estimate that the emissaries combined take in more than $1 billion per year.
JTA contributed to this report.
Assistant Managing Editor
In the weeks since the Mumbai terrorist attack, the Chabad movement has directed contributions from supporters primarily to two campaigns: One to aid the child whose emissary parents were slain, and another to rebuild the badly damaged outreach center and re-establish operations there, which could cost as much as $1 million, according to a Chabad estimate.
But at the same time, some Chabad leaders are acting on their own to secure funds and resources to make dozens of Chabad houses in far-flung outposts safer.
A group of emissaries in southeast Asia, led by Rabbi Yosef Kantor, who is based in Bangkok, Thailand, has launched a campaign aimed at improving security at their centers, and distributed donation cards at Lubavitch world headquarters in CrownHeights, Brooklyn, last week.
And Rabbi Shea Hecht, a member of a prominent Chabad family well entrenched in the emissary movement, told The Jewish Week he has been working the phones since the tragedy to try to arrange security upgrades and protection.
“Security has to be the No. 1 priority,” said Rabbi Hecht of the Lubavitch-run Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education. “If you are not alive, it doesn’t make much difference if you can put bread on the table. One you stay alive, you can worry about the bread.
“If any of us could spend a million dollars to save just one soul, isn't it worth it?”
Rabbi Hecht, who is one of 12 siblings and has six children, and whose wife also comes from a large family, has more relatives than he can count working as emissaries of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, trying to promote Jewish observance.
“In my family alone we are talking about tens and tens of shluchim,” he said, using the Hebrew word for emissary. “Among my immediate friends, tens and tens [more] shluchim. The Hechts are not people who sit on the sidelines. We roll up our sleeves and get the job done.”
While not in any way criticizing the central Chabad operation, Rabbi Hecht, who has developed many political connections in New York, said he expected many emissaries to reach out to him for advice and wanted to have information available for them.
“When they call me, I want to have a file with a lot of information,” he said.
He said he hoped to meet with members of the security consulting firm run by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and had already spoken with another top consulting firm, Kroll Security Group, for help in securing the centers. Spokepersons for both agencies did not return calls for comment.
The spokesman for Chabad, Zalman Shmotkin, would not comment on any fundraising for security. “It is still, unfortunately, too early to discuss these efforts,” he said on Tuesday night.
Rabbi Hecht said that supporters of Chabad around the world were responding generously in the wake of the Mumbai tragedy and that some of them had requested that donations be used for security. He said one of his sons, an emissary in upstate New York, had received such a contribution.
“It wasn’t exactly earmarked, but it was suggested that some of the money be used that way,” said Rabbi Hecht.
While stressing that no one in the movement believed that Chabad centers were more at risk than any other Jewish organization, he said that individual Chabad centers should assess their own security needs and decide how much of the money they raise should be used for security.
“There is a big difference between those in New York City or L.A. or other places in the U.S. and those in Asian countries or African countries,” he said. “There are some that have to be very careful what they do and how they do it. An assessment has to be made on many levels, and I am doing my own study.”
Since the tragedy, the Chabad movement has conducted an orchestrated marketing and public relations campaign. Chabad officials in New York and emissaries around the world are conducting media interviews, and constituents who have been touched by the movement are reaching out in droves to local and international publications to extol its praises.
Chabad handpicked emissaries to speak with the media that officials believed would best represent the movement to a general public that may have had little or no knowledge about it.
The message was twofold: Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg, the emissaries killed in Mumbai, would have wanted their deaths to inspire and bring Jews closer to Chabad and Judaism, and the movement’s late spiritual leader, Rabbi Schneerson, taught that it was a religious obligation to take a dark moment and turn it into a positive.
The strategy is to help the audience to “become a continuum of the holy world of Gavi and Rivkah so that they have a way to channel their own personal grief in a manner that makes this world a better place,” Shmotkin told JTA. “A shaliach has to be able to sensitively and articulately convey the basic messages of urging people to increase their own acts of goodness and kindness” in response to tragedy.
Within a week of the attacks, Chabad had raised about $1 million through mailboxes it had opened on Chabad.org.
“[The fundraising] is an opportunity to connect more and more Jews to the mission, and to the Rebbe’s mission of getting every Jew involved. And part of that is channeling the empathy people are now feeling,” said Rabbi Kantor, the director of the Chabad of Thailand, who helped establish the movement’s presence in Mumbai prior to the Holtzbergs’ arrival.
“I see this as being a big package or opportunity to be able to inspire and direct Jews on how they can channel their outpouring of support and sympathy, their emotion, rage, outrage and frustration,” he said.
While the immediate fundraising was geared toward helping the toddler and rebuilding in Mumbai, the stepped-up publicity may also prove to be a boon for Chabad houses. Chabad emissaries usually receive minimal seed money to start their outposts, but each house is responsible for raising its own budget each year. Though Chabad does not keep a formal database on how much each outpost raises, officials estimate that the emissaries combined take in more than $1 billion per year.
JTA contributed to this report.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)