Shabbat Candlelighting 5:51 p.m.                                             Friday, March 9, 2012/15 Adar 5772
 

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2011 Campaign Raises $7.6 Million
With the last gifts now in, our 2011 Federation Annual Campaign is now complete, having raised $7.6 million to meet community needs locally, overseas and in Israel. Jewish Federation raised $587,000 in supplemental gifts from donors to fund specific programs identified through consultation with partner agencies as part of our community planning process. Between the Annual Campaign and supplemental gifts process, we are leveraging significant resources to fund programs that help meet the growing needs of our community.

While the total raised through the Annual Campaign is down 2% from the previous year, we are pleased with the result. Considering this climate of economic uncertainty, we are proud that our community came together once again to demonstrate its unwavering commitment to the Jewish values of tzedakah and tikkun olam. Despite the dip, the amount that the Allocations Planning Committee (APC) has available for local distributions will remain the same as in 2010. We are able to achieve this by accessing our Agency Stabilization Fund. Coming out of the 2008 Annual Campaign, we conservatively set aside funds to help stabilize allocations in down years. The APC will continue its work to determine how campaign funds will be distributed to local programs and services, and they will go through the adjudication process that they go through at the start of every new allocations cycle.

VHEC Trying Skype to Extend their Reach
The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) is experimenting with Skype as a way of introducing Holocaust survivors to students in other parts of the province. The VHEC has long engaged local survivors in talking to students as a way of bringing history lessons about the Holocaust to life. Evolving technologies make it possible for survivors to engage face-to-face with students without the wear and tear of travel - a significant consideration for some who are getting older. David Ehrlich, who at age 17 was deported to Auschwitz, is shown here Skyping with students at Spring Valley Middle School in Kelowna. On the video monitor is a young girl asking David a question.

Lessons from Purim
One of the consistent and amazing parts of our tradition is the cyclical reading of various texts. On Purim, which we celebrated Wednesday evening and yesterday, we read Megillat Esther. The story tells of Esther's ascent to become queen to Achashverosh, and her steps, guided by her uncle Mordechai, to use her position to save the Jews, who were threatened by the king's counsellor, Haman. There are many extraordinary components of the story, but perhaps one of the most compelling, to paraphrase Mordechai, was his admonition to Esther that perhaps it was just for the purpose of saving her people that God placed her in her high position. Throughout the centuries Jews have relied often on high-placed, connected people to carry their message to rulers who could influence whether Jews lived or died. It brings to mind the extraordinary role Eddie Jacobson played with his army buddy and former business partner, Harry Truman, at the time of Israel's birth, and the long tradition of the "court Jew" through much of European Jewish history.

Also taking place this week was the annual AIPAC Conference. AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and it is the formal Israel lobby in Washington DC, widely regarded as one of the most powerful lobby organizations in the US. AIPAC is not so powerful because of its reliance on high-placed members of the Jewish community, rather it rests on the power of grassroots organization. AIPAC's ability to gather 13,000 people from all walks of life, from the US and Canada, and from across the political spectrum, all in support of Israel's right to exist, is what makes it so powerful. They don't rely on the one person who can talk to the US President; they rely on 13,000 people who can talk to thousands of influential people in the US government. The juxtaposition of Purim with the AIPAC Conference, perhaps, demonstrates our adaptive capacity as a people, to develop new ways in which we can protect ourselves beyond the limited options we had in the past.

Shabbat Shalom!

 
 
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