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Friday November 10, 2006

Super Sunday returns to South Peninsula

by dan pine
staff writer

Super Sunday 2006 will be extra super for South Peninsula volunteers.

For the first time in four years, the fall fundraiser of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation returns to the region, and according to organizers, it’s a homecoming long overdue.

“Many people in the South Peninsula felt disenfranchised when their main community event of the year departed,” says Joy Plummer, director of the Women’s Alliance and Campaign in the South Peninsula region. “This is an opportunity for us to reach out to many people whom we haven’t seen in a while or ever. People are coming out of the woodwork.”

Super Sunday’s South Peninsula edition takes place Nov. 19 at Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto.

For Super Sunday organizers, holding the event at Kehillah is a big deal. The school is the Peninsula’s new federation-supported institution, and is a source of joy for Bobby Lent, a Kehillah parent, a director of the Levine-Lent Family Foundation and a Super Sunday lay leader.

“It’s part of the vision of the school founders that it would not only deliver a school of excellence, but also be concerned with events for the whole Jewish community,” says Lent. “So we were proud to be asked to host Super Sunday.”

Lent helped outfit the school with the necessary phone-banking equipment to handle the hundreds of calls made on the big day.

Super Sunday co-chair Sherry Solden hopes to see a turnout of up to 300 volunteers manning the phones. Like her friends in the area, the Palo Alto resident is relieved to see the event return to her home turf.

“We gave [San Francisco] a try,” she says of Super Sunday volunteering over the last four years. “Unfortunately our phone participation dropped every year. You didn’t have the community feeling. People wanted it back here for a long time.”

“We’re running a two-line campaign this year,” adds Plummer. “Our callers will be actually asking for two gifts, one to the annual campaign and a second to the Israel Emergency Campaign to help rebuild after the conflict with Lebanon. Our overall goal for the Israel emergency campaign is $10 million, and to date, we’ve raised about $4.7 million of that.”

That’s on top of the federation’s overall Super Sunday goal this year of $3 million (raised in the JCF’s two calling centers). Plummer is quick to point out that Super Sunday isn’t about just raising money, but also about “connecting people to the mission of the federation.”

Bringing Super Sunday back to the South Peninsula reflects the explosive growth of the local Jewish community in terms of population and projects like the upcoming Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto. No one is more aware of all this than the area’s Jewish residents and community leaders like Lent.

“Jewish life continues to go nowhere but up,” he says. “I can remember when this was a place Jews just didn’t show up. Palo Alto is now 20 percent Jewish. The character of the community is young, vibrant and growing, but it also has a very serious sense of what Judaism is all about.”

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