TORONTO – On Aug. 13, hundreds of Jewish twenty somethings and thirty somethings will return to camp in an effort to help the children of Sderot.
Pictured, back from left, are JNF executive director Ben Prossin, Alan Friedman, JNF events co-ordinator Sheila Krone, Sari Sadofsky, Michael Rubinoff, Jason Kimelman, Sabina Srubiski and Jamie Grossman; and seated from left, Karen Werger, Sean Werger and Michelle Bloch. [JNF photo]
Late last year, JNF Canada’s newly formed JNF New Leadership committee, made up of young friends and acquaintances, decided it was time to give back to the community.
To do so, the members, all in their late 20s and early 30s, decided to launch their activities with a chesed-filled night of fun and fundraising with a summer camp theme. The event, called “One Summer Night,” will be held at Toronto’s C-Lounge club, 465 Wellington St. W.
Proceeds will be used to send hundreds of children from Sderot to Nes Harim, a JNF-run summer camp in the Jerusalem Hills. “It is an opportunity for the children to finally live as ‘kids’ without the constant fear of terror,” JNF New Leadership said on its event website.
Camp is where many on the committee first met and became friends, and it holds lots of shared, fond memories, said the event co-chairs, Toronto lawyers Sean Werger and Michael Rubinoff.
“I went to all my old camp friends… we were talking about ways to get our [demographic] more involved,” Werger, 31, told The CJN over coffee recently.
Werger said JNF agents in Israel will choose children from families “in most need” in Sderot to attend the camp.
Parents will also accompany their children to the camp so that they can all get a respite from the almost-daily bombardment of their town by Qassam rockets from Gaza and instead “go on creative
excursions, trips and be shown the rest of Israel so they can understand why they’re so important to the country,” he said.
Werger said that in addition to the primary goal of helping the children of Sderot, he and Rubinoff hope this event launch for JNF New Leadership will spark more interest in JNF and elicit more community participation from their peers, as well as help de-mystify what the organization actually does for Israel.
“Anyone you ask about JNF, they refer to them as ‘the tree planting people.’ Yes… but we’re also involved in creating security roads and we’re the leading environmental movement for Israel,” Werger stated.
Rubinoff, 31, said he was happy to discover how good it feels to get more involved with the community.
“As you come back later in life, you begin to see the relevance of the JNF and how they’re a vital organization,” he said.
“There was a connection to the JNF early on in [grade] school as kids, with the little blue boxes and stuff, but we’re rediscovering them now as adults. We want to engage people our age for the long term.”
Werger added that there are currently 22 people on the New Leadership committee for the event, 21 of whom never had dealings with JNF before.
For now, the “One Summer Night” fundraising party is strictly a Toronto affair, but Werger and Rubinoff haven’t written off speaking to people their own age around the continent about combined events later on.
“We decided to launch a modest event to begin with and set ourselves up as successfully as possible,” Rubinoff said, indicating that committee members “reached out” to other Jewish youth communities in Canada to assess interest, but in the end, they opted for a local coming-out party.
“Down the road, we may look more international,” he added.
So far, “One Summer Night” has managed to bring in dozens of corporate sponsors through the work of committee members, and Werger expects all 350 tickets, priced at $100 apiece, to sell out.
“I’m excited about the party,” Werger said. “It’s an upscale event where we’ll serve s’mores [and] we’ll have a raffle where guests can win his and her prizes, such as a set of Calloway golf clubs and jewelry.”
The night will also feature the new-folk music of emerging recording artist Jeremy Fisher – who’s been described as a cross between Paul Simon and Bob Dylan – as well as DJ Steve Fernandez.
For more information, visit jnf.ca/toronto/onesummernight or call 416-638-7200, ext. 30.
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