Alina Gerlovin Spaulding described her family’s rescue from Russia at the annual Main Event of the Central federation’s Women’s Campaign. Photo by Elaine Durbach
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Remembering a volunteerMay 22, 2008
An annual benefit for the Women’s Campaign of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey raised more than $80,000, doubling the amount raised last year.
220 women — fewer than last year — attended the Main Event, held May 14 at Crystal Plaza in Livingston, to support the work of the federation and to hear presentations from two women who both described how a helping hand from the Jewish community changed their lives.
Erica Needle, president of the Women’s Campaign, was delighted by the fund-raising tally.
“And this at a time when, with everything happening in the economy, we thought people might give far less,” she said.
Needle attributed that surge of generosity to the two guest speakers, Sally Cohen-Alameno and Alina Gerlovin Spaulding.
Alameno-Cohen, who lives in Westfield, spoke of losing her husband in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and the help she received from an unexpected quarter: the Jewish Family Service of Central NJ, a beneficiary of the federation.
“They asked, ‘How can we help?’ It didn’t matter that I was married to a Catholic or that we didn’t belong to a temple. I was a Jew and I was in trouble. I don’t even know how they knew I was Jewish.”
She said the agency offered her financial help and other support in piecing together her new life.
“Now that I am back in the fold, and back on my feet,” she said, “it’s my chance to give back.”
Spaulding spoke of growing up in a relatively privileged family, and overcoming financial setbacks, personal tragedy, and other upheavals with the aid of the Jewish community.
“Everything, everything, every single last thing I have in my life and every thing I will accomplish is because of people like you,” she said.
In response to a special invitation to the younger generation, this group of daughters, mothers, and an aunt attended the Women’s Campaign Main Event together. They are, from left, front row, Allison Simon, Lauren Weissbrod, Ali Rome, and Julie Deutsch; back row, Barb Simon, Linda Weissbrod, Wendy Fuchsman (Lauren’s aunt), Jill Rome, and Elyse Deutsch. Photo by Elaine Durbach
Born in Russia, Spaulding was the daughter of an Olympic skier whose relatively charmed life changed abruptly after a terrible accident on the ski slope. Shunted aside by Soviet authorities and offered paltry medical treatment — “because we were Jewish and worthless,” Spaulding said — her father developed hepatitis and was given no more than five years to live.
Then they met an American woman, one of the intrepid cadre of people secretly working to help Jews leave the Soviet Union. “We thought no one knew we existed,” Spaulding said. “But all through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, you and people like you convened in rooms like this, and stood up for families like mine.”
With such help, they finally got to the United States, but with just $400 and no idea what to do next. A woman from Passaic met the family at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and declared herself their “adopted family.” They were given an apartment for as long as they needed it — larger and more luxurious than any home they’d ever seen — and her father was taken to see doctor after doctor.
Eventually, an anonymous donor provided the money to bring a top specialist from California to see him. After examining him, the doctor agreed to do a new, experimental procedure that very day.
“My father had an additional 20 fabulous years of life,” Spaulding said, long enough to have another child, to see both children celebrate becoming b’nei mitzva, and watch Alina graduate from college and her brother graduate from high school.
Spaulding was in her mid-20s when she started a job at a newly established Jewish boarding school in Greensboro, NC. Immediately, the local Greensboro Jewish community roped her into a project that had her mother up in arms — returning to the former Soviet Union to run a summer camp in Moldova. There, she was able to help two sisters come to America just as she had been helped years before. The girls, who live with her and her husband, are now in college. “We’ve been a family for seven years,” Spaulding said. “It has been absolutely wonderful.”
Today Spaulding is marketing director for the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro. In addition to those two adopted daughters, she and her husband have an 18-month-old son.
“We don’t lead ordinary lives,” she told attendees. “And we don’t have the right to make ordinary gifts.”
‘Hooked’ on federation
Joanie Rosenthal, right, received the Rhoda Rosenbach Young Leadership Award from previous recipient Lisa Olender at the Central federation’s Women’s Campaign Main Event. Photo by Elaine Durbach
The evening’s two honorees, Sylvia Seltzer of Watchung and Joanie Schwarz Rosenthal of Westfield, also played a part in inspiring those present to support the federation’s annual campaign.
Seltzer received the Woman of Valor Award. A Sapphire Lion of Judah, she has served the local and international Jewish community for decades. Currently, she is serving on the federation’s board of directors, and on the executive committee of the Women’s Campaign, as a Ruby Lion of Judah cochair. The Lion of Judah is earned by those women who give a minimum annual gift of $5,000 to a federation over several years.
Receiving the award from Sandy Gelfond, Seltzer credited longtime federation activist Marilyn Flanzbaum with getting her involved 25 years ago. “I was hooked, and I’ve been on the Jewish federation wagon ever since,” she said.
Rosenthal received the Rhoda Rosenbach Young Leadership Award. Rosenthal, a Lion of Judah, is serving on the federation board of directors, the Women’s Campaign’s executive committee, and as its education and outreach cochair. She has chaired the Main Event, the social action committee, Vanguard Inaugural, and Super Sunday.
Accepting the award, she pointed out that Jews make up .02 percent of the world population, but if every one of those 14 million Jews “chose to give a gift, it would change everything in the future — for the Jews and for the world as a whole.”
Remembering a volunteer
Charlotte Shak, a longtime community volunteer and a member of the Women’s Campaign Main Event committee, died three days before the event last week.
At the Main Event of the Women’s Campaign of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey, held last Wednesday, May 14, in Livingston, tribute was paid to Charlotte Shak of Scotch Plains. Shak, who died suddenly the previous Sunday, had been active in planning the event, and a number of people mentioned how sorely they felt her absence.
Renee Krul, who cochaired the Main Event with Cathy Tabak, said, “Charlotte loved this event.”
Shak, together with her husband Nieson, was active for decades in multiple aspects of Jewish community life. Most recently, in addition to helping plan the Main Event, she served on the board of Jewish Family Service of Central NJ, where she worked each month packing food parcels. Last year, JFS honored her for her outstanding volunteer service. She was a Lion of Judah and a Westfield Hadassah Keeper of the Gate.
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