UJA campaign off to quick start, officials say

Liza Fromer talks with Jon Voight [Jen Arron photo]

TORONTO — UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s annual fundraising campaign is off to its best start in many years, according to Bruce Leboff.

A co-chair for Campaign 2013, he announced at the annual UJA campaign launch Aug. 21 that $25 million had already been raised from more than 2,600 donors.

“We’ve been asking donors, where they can, to consider an increase of at least 10 per cent,” said Leboff, whose co-chair is Sarena Koschitzky.

“It’s so vital that we all take responsibility,” Leboff told a crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered at the Fairmont Royal York for the launch.

 The event featured an interview of actor Jon Voight by television host Liza Fromer and a performance by Hagit Yasso, 22-year-old Israeli Idol winner, a native of Sderot and the daughter of Ethiopian immigrants.

D.J. Schneeweis, new consul general of Israel for Toronto and Western Canada, made his first public appearance at the launch, emphasizing the importance of Jewish communities like the one in Toronto to Israel and Israelis. “More and more Israelis are coming to realize that… the strength and the well-being of this community is directly relevant to Israel,” he said.

Last August, The CJN reported that the 2012 campaign had raised $7.8 million as of the campaign launch – only about one-third of this year’s amount to date.

Campaign officials said that’s because the pace of collections is ahead of last year, although the amount raised has also increased moderately.

In an e-mail exchange following the launch, Steven Shulman, UJA’s campaign director and counsel, explained that this year’s campaign is up $1.8 million in terms of comparing gifts from the same group of donors last year.

“We’re out of the gates faster in terms of bringing in pledges,” he said. “That’s very important, because it creates momentum and gives canvassers an opportunity to reach out to new donors.”

He added that “UJA has reverted to our past successful practice of reaching out to as many leading donors as early as possible, prior to the campaign launch… focusing on a greater number of leadership gifts early ensures that our volunteer canvassers and professionals can reach out to the entirety of the community more effectively in the precious months we have remaining.”

Money raised in the annual campaign is used in the Jewish community here, in Israel, and internationally.

Speaking at the launch, women’s philanthropy chair Laurie Sheff said that Toronto’s federation has the third-largest annual campaign in North America.

Voight – an Academy-Award winner and the father of actor Angelina Jolie – said at the launch that his association with Israel dates back to 1987, when he was invited to appear on Chabad’s annual telethon for the first time.

But his association with the Jewish community goes back to his childhood, when his father was a golf pro at a German Jewish country club in Scarsdale, NY.

Voight, who was born in 1938, said that, because of his father’s work, “one of the first things we knew was what antisemitism was.”

He also told of filming a movie in 1991 in Moscow, where he ended up having dinner with a group of UJA-affiliated rabbis who were there to help Soviet Jews.

“I really do feel like I’ve had a certain kind of destiny come my way because of my deep need to protect the truth of what Judaism stands for. It stands for love of life, it stands for liberty, for treating your neighbour in the way you’d like to be treated. It stands for charity. It stands for every good thing.”

Voight called Israel “God’s gift to all mankind, because Israel is a… reminder of the survival of the Jewish People.”

He called on everyone – Jew and non-Jew alike – “to keep Israel safe and free to worship democracy and freedom forever.”