by stacey palevsky
staff writer
The Bay Area Jewish community boasts so many hands-on volunteer opportunities that a kind-hearted person with a bit of free time could feel overwhelmed trying to choose just one way to lend a helping hand.
Jewish Family and Children’s Services, for example, offers volunteer opportunities for people of all ages — serving people of all ages — throughout the Bay Area.
The East Bay-based and S.F.-based agencies offer volunteer placements ranging from driving a senior to a doctor’s appointment to serving holiday dinners to helping an immigrant with English.
“All you have to do is let someone know you have an interest in volunteering, and they will help you find where you belong,” said Janet Quint of Tiburon.
“It took me awhile to figure out how to use my passion for giving,” she added. “Now I cannot imagine my life without being a volunteer. For me, it would be empty. If I’m not giving, I feel kind of useless.”
Through the S.F.-based JFCS, the 50-something mother of two helped launch a program called Special Delivery, in which she coordinates a group of volunteers to go grocery shopping at Safeway for seniors who can’t go on their own.
Quint also spends one afternoon a week with an elderly woman originally from the Netherlands who survived the Holocaust in hiding. The women were matched up through JFCS’s Senior Companion program.
The pair usually go to Trader Joe’s, out to lunch and sometimes to a doctor’s appointment.
“She introduces me to people in her world as her adopted daughter,” Quint said. “I’m always in the loop of what’s going on in her life. We love each other. I’ve learned so much from her.”
Other connections with seniors can be made as a volunteer at the Jewish Home of San Francisco.
Volunteers there do such things as visit residents, teach impromptu dance lessons and help serve food in the dining room. One resident likes ice cream, so a volunteer brings her some every week. Other residents just like to spend time in the Jewish Home’s café, where volunteer and resident can sip cappuccinos and talk about their families.
“Volunteers are a big part of our community here, and in some cases they have been for generations,” said Carole Burns, volunteer coordinator at the home.
The Jewish Coalition for Literacy places Jewish adults and teens in low-income and high-minority schools where children (usually not Jewish) need extra help with reading. The agency has placed volunteers in 53 schools and after-school sites in San Francisco, the Peninsula and the East Bay.
Rick Weisberg, one of JCL’s 530 volunteers, has been reading to first- and third-grade students at John Gill Elementary School in Redwood City for about 3 and a half years.
A Foster City resident who works as an attorney for Sun Microsystems, he visits the school once a week for two hours. He usually spends at least two hours preparing mini-lessons for the kids with whom
he works. Once, he wrote and illustrated a book for
a student.
“It’s relatively easy to make a donation, but it’s a lot more meaningful to actually show up, give time, meet the people you’re helping,” Weisberg said. “I know I’m making a difference in these boys’ lives.”
And the program is doing more than stimulating
literacy. “It really engenders good will in the general community toward the Jewish community,” said Roberta Rothman, director of JCL.
The Bay Area also boasts a variety of volunteer opportunities for children and teens. Jewish youth groups, synagogue religious schools and day schools increasingly emphasize the importance of tikkun olam, efforts that educators say have proven successful at engaging young people in Jewish life, learning and practice.
Mayan Anton, a senior at El Cerrito High School, attends classes at Berkeley’s Midrasha, an educational program for Jewish teens. She also chairs the Midrasha homeless committee, through which she organizes three dinners a month at the Berkeley Men’s Shelter. She recruits and arranges for Midrasha students and their families to cook, serve and clean up.
“The men at the shelter are so kind, so grateful, and it makes me feel good knowing I’m helping someone who really appreciates the help,” Anton said.
Increasingly, Bay Area educators are looking for ways to promote Jewish service learning; that is, activities that blend volunteerism and social action with Jewish ritual and belief.
“We want young Jews to see service and volunteerism and charitable giving as an expression of their own Jewish identity,” said Jaré Achkin, service learning coordinator at the Bureau of Jewish Education in San Francisco.
In 2007, Akchin worked with the Jewish Studies department at San Francisco State University to create a Jewish service learning certificate program.
The program required each of the seven students, many of whom already work in the organized Jewish community, to create and implement a service learning project in the Bay Area. Program coordinators predict the students’ efforts could have a long-term impact on Jewish education.
“We hope it sparks something within [teens] so that they themselves will be more entrenched in Judaism in their adult life,” Akchin said.
For people who prefer behind-the-scenes to direct-service volunteering, all Jewish agencies have boards of directors, leadership positions that provide people with another avenue to give of their time.
Not too long ago, JB Leibovitch, who lives in Oakland, began serving on the board of Oakland Hebrew Day School, where his daughter is in the fourth grade. He was encouraged to take on the position of treasurer after a six-week leadership development program at the East Bay federation.
“I don’t think I understood how much of the iceberg is under water,” he said, emphasizing the importance of serving on a board, an effort that often goes unnoticed. “I looked for where I could contribute, and where there was a need, and the job of a treasurer fit perfectly.”
Synagogues also provide support and resources for congregants to volunteer. Many have social action or volunteer coordinators who help organize efforts that reach out to the Jewish and general communities. For instance:
n Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco plants and cares for a garden, growing vegetables that they donate to local food banks.
n Congregation Beth Israel in Berkeley has started a program called Tikkunim Ketanim, which means “Children Changing the World.” It was designed to educate families about the importance and centrality of tikkun olam.
n Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon delivers food to a homeless shelter once a month.
n Chabad in Palo Alto and San Francisco often connect people to a related organization called Friendship Circle, which organizes summer camps and finds mentors for children with disabilities.
Lorraine Harris, volunteer coordinator for JFCS in Marin, said she thinks the Bay Area Jewish community is unique not only for its diverse volunteer opportunities, but for its diverse (and ever-growing) pool of volunteers.
“I think we live in this very privileged community and feel very, very blessed,” she said. “Parents want their children to recognize that they have a lot of advantages other people don’t have, and it’s important to learn those things when you’re young.”
This article has been reprinted from j.'s 2008 Resourse Guide.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California