The City of Milwaukee could learn from the Jewish community, said Mayor Tom Barrett last week after the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s 105th annual meeting, for which Barrett served as keynote speaker.
“I admire the Jewish community’s understanding of the need for partnerships, which it demonstrates in the way it partners with the general community in Milwaukee,” he said in an interview with The Chronicle.
“I would like to emulate that model. The Jewish community and, in particular, the federation are committed to education, philanthropy and advocacy. Those are remarkably analogous to the needs of the city of Milwaukee,” Barrett said.
Those needs — education, public safety and economic development — comprised the flesh of his speech to the more than 200 people gathered on Tuesday evening, July 31, to celebrate the federation’s successes in its 2007 Annual Campaign, including the Israel Emergency Campaign, and the close of the Jewish Community Capital Campaign.
Capital Campaign Steering Committee Co-Chair Judy Guten announced a $43,514,000 campaign achievement. The event venue itself was a tribute to the campaign, as participants toured the newly renovated Helfaer Community Service Building. Dinner was served on the first floor, in the unfinished site of the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, which is slated to open Jan. 8, 2008.
That campaign, led by steering committee co-chairs Guten and Stephen L. Chernof, and campaign cabinet co-chairs Robert L. Habush, Sheldon Lubar and Stephen H. Marcus, was “a labor of love for all of us,” Marcus said.
Initiated in 2004, with a $40 million goal, the campaign covered the renovation, expansion and development of the community’s physical structures, including:
• The north and south campuses of the Harry & Rose Samson Jewish Community Center, which house the JCC, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, the federation’s Coalition for Jewish Learning, Jewish Beginnings-Lubavitch Preschool, The Academy (Hillel) and the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
• A new facility, still in the planning stage, for Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee.
• The Helfaer Building, which houses the MJF, the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, the Jewish Chaplaincy Program and The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.
‘Hyphenated identity’
MJF Executive Vice President Richard H. Meyer thanked event co-chairs Albert “Ollie” Adelman and Julie Zvi, as well as the volunteers and staff “for everything [they] do individually and collectively to build such a strong and vibrant Jewish community.”
In presenting the annual report, Meyer praised the federation’s work.
“We are justly proud of the relationships we cultivate and the partnerships we develop and maintain, all to benefit those in need and to build and sustain an active and engaged community,” he said.
MJF president Bruce A. Arbit, who is beginning the second year of his two-year term, highlighted the year’s achievements. “It was a year of amazing achievement.” He thanked Jane Gellman and Moshe Katz, who co-chaired the Israel Emergency Campaign, which raised $1 million to help Israel deal with the destruction suffered during last summer’s Lebanon war.
He also thanked 2007 Annual Campaign Chair Marlene Lauwasser, and 2007 Women’s Campaign Chair Audrey Bernstein, who helped that campaign bring in $7.5 million.
But, he noted, this fundraising “is not about the federation. It’s about the larger community. When the federation succeeds, the whole community benefits.”
Arbit also spoke about the declining sense of community among younger Jews. While young American Jews tend to express their identities informally — “they live the hyphenated identity of American Jews — they have trouble defining community,” he said.
“We can stop that decline here at the Milwaukee Jewish Federation,” he said, “by raising the bar. We must be responsible for educating the next generation of leaders,” he said.
Nominating Committee Chair Marci Taxman presented her committee report. In addition to Arbit, the 2007-2008 federation officers are: vice presidents Mark E. Brickman, Frederick R. Croen, Jane Gellman, Idy Goodman, Moshe Katz and Mitch Moser; treasurer John Cohn; secretary Scott Sampson; assistant secretary Jodi Kaufman Loewenstein; and officers at large Daniel Bader, Jerry Benjamin and Andrea Schneider.
The MJF board elected 14 new members for a two-year term: Gregory Dorf, Michael L. Green, Beverly L. Greenberg, Marlene Lauwasser, Sanford Mitz, Abigail Nash, Mitchell A. Nelles, Richard Ruvin, Michael Sadoff, Rabbi Michael Stern, Sue Strait, Melinda Swartz, Leslie Usow and David R. Werner.
Gellman brings devotion and experience to campaign
Jane Gellman’s first trip to Israel in 1984, on a federation Acharai Mission for young leaders, “changed [her] life in a lot of different ways,” she said in a telephone interview with The Chronicle late last week.
Gellman, the new Milwaukee Jewish Federation 2008 Annual Campaign chair connected [to Israel] in ways [she] never expected” and in ways that have shaped her involvement with the Jewish communities of Milwaukee and several places in Israel.
Although she had been a federation donor for several years, that mission was Gellman’s first active involvement, she said. “My real home in the community was at the [Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center],” where she volunteered for many years, eventually serving as president.
After the mission, Gellman said, she “was looking for ways to get back [to Israel]” and she got involved in a federation-sponsored partnership between the community of Or Yehuda, Israel, an impoverished city near the [Ben Gurion] airport, and Milwaukee.
In 1996, Gellman became the first cluster chair of Partnership 2000’s relationship between the Sovev Kinneret region in northern Israel and Milwaukee; St. Paul, Minn.; and Tulsa, Okla. P2K is a joint effort of the North American federation system and the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is coordinated here by the MJF.
In 1993, Gellman won the MJF Ann Agulnick Women’s Young Leadership Award. She has since served on the board of directors and as an officer of the MJF as well as Women’s Division Campaign chair.
Last year as co-chair of the Israel Emergency Campaign with Moshe Katz, she was a leader in raising $1 million for Israel.
Gellman has just completed a term as president of Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee and she spearheaded that organization’s efforts to construct a new facility.
She is also a new officer at the Milwaukee Jewish Day School, where her two now-adult children were students in the earliest graduating classes.
Gellman said there were many reasons behind her decision to take on the job of annual campaign chair. “I really thought it was my turn…. It was the right thing to do … [and the federation] asked me,” she said.
Gellman’s involvement and experience have prepared her for the job, she said.
“I come with an understanding of the local agencies and an appreciation of the [Jewish Community] Capital Campaign,” Gellman said.
“We’ve invested so much in bricks and mortar, but they are irrelevant if we don’t have the programs and we can’t pay the salaries of our excellent professionals. We have created something really good and now it’s our obligation to make sure we provide the resources that the community needs to thrive,” she said.
Andrea Waxman
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