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Friday July 25, 1997

JCEF to fund S.F. home for Holocaust history program

DEBBIE COHEN
Contributing Writer

Using lessons of the Holocaust to examine moral choices, "Facing History" gave her a deeper awareness of racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism. Now Van Meter, who is not Jewish, hopes to teach the course.

A product of the Boston, Mass.-based Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, the course is taught in classrooms across the country and annually reaches some 800,000 students of diverse backgrounds in more than 40 states.

Locally, $50,000 in grants over two years from the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation's Endowment Fund has helped enable the foundation to establish its own Bay Area center.

The new center, which will be rented somewhere in the area, joins Facing History's national office in Boston and regional offices in Memphis, Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles.

For the past few years, Facing History's Northern California regional coordinator, Jack Weinstein, has operated the program part-time out of his Fremont home. As a full-time staff member he will eventually seek permanent space nearer to San Francisco, and provide support for teachers around the Bay Area.

"It is our responsibility to support organizations which end bigotry and hatred and foster understanding and common respect," said Bob Friend, endowment distributions committee chair, explaining why the JCEF decided to help launch the Bay Area center.

"Since going regional we've been able to provide the on-site support that guarantees positive results," noted Weinstein, a former Milpitas High teacher who for the last decade has been part of Facing History's nationwide teaching team. "Follow-up is everything."

In fact, one of Weinstein's major responsibilities is to provide follow-up seminars for the over 400 Bay Area educators who have already attended the organization's training workshops and seminars.

In addition to seminars, Facing History coordinators assist teachers, helping to facilitate classroom events and lending books and videos from the organization's library.

Teachers, in turn, maintain regular communication with the training program, providing feedback on lessons and resource materials.

Cathy Mellera, a Milpitas High English teacher who has taught Facing History for nearly a decade, says the class allows "kids to let go of all that baggage of who they are and begin to look honestly at themselves."

Last spring, Facing History's national executive director, Margo Stern Strom, visited the Bay Area to meet with Weinstein and leaders in the Jewish and educational communities to discuss the long-term growth of the organization's local program.

"If it weren't for the Endowment Fund we would never have gotten this far. We went to them for support and they responded positively," said Stern Strom from her Boston office.

"They understood what Facing History is all about."

Weinstein said he couldn't think of a better way than Facing History "to engage students of diverse backgrounds in common dialogue. To make the Holocaust relevant without trivializing it: That is our major challenge."

The grant to the Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation was one of 16 totaling $1.94 million recently allocated by the JCEF committee to local, national and overseas Jewish organizations and projects.

Other grants approved in the areas of education, culture and public affairs, family and health are:

*$235,000 to the Jewish Family and Children's Services for camp and nursery school subsidies for newly arrived Jewish emigre children.

*$167,025 in second-year funding to the Bureau of Jewish Education for its Teen Initiative Project, a new communitywide outreach and collaborative regional high school program for affiliated and unaffiliated teens.

*$150,000 in a one-time grant to the Jewish Community Relations Council as the principal agency involved in coordinating an array of communitywide activities celebrating Israel's 50th anniversary.

*$20,000 in reserve funding to the Jewish Vocational Services to provide short-term vocational scholarships primarily to needy Jewish emigres from the former Soviet Union.

*$50,000 to the Northern California Grantmakers for its Northern California Citizenship Project, a communitywide consortium effort to naturalize 49,000 senior and disabled legal immigrants.

*$22,500 in second- and final-year funding to the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco for its Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, an intensive Jewish education program for adults.

*$20,000 in second- and final-year funding to Cal State Chico to enable the school to offer four new courses through its Jewish studies program.

*$350,000 loan to Congregation Sha'ar Zahav for the acquisition and remodeling of a new building. The loan is intended as a demonstration of support to the largest gay and lesbian Jewish organization within the federation area.

*$25,000 in third- and final-year funding to Lehrhaus Judaica to establish a Community Consortium for Adult Jewish Education in San Francisco. Previous funding helped establish similar collaborative efforts in Marin, Sonoma and the North and South Peninsula regions.

*$1 million to the Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School to secure a 1.5 acre building site immediately adjacent to its current rented space at the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto.

*$66,509 to the Jewish Community Relations Council to strengthen its communications capabilities by upgrading its work stations, telephone system and computer network.

*$62,736 to the Northern California Hillel Council for a systemwide communications and computer technology upgrade in eight Hillel offices.

*$256,323 in a one-year grant to the JCF for a regional outreach and involvement initiative designed to increase participation in both federation activities and the larger Jewish community.

*$248,677 to the JCF to fund a portion of its community planning efforts, enabling it to address the needs of the Jewish community in the coming century.

*$41,250 to the Peninsula Jewish Community Center to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment study of the North Peninsula Jewish community prior to starting any new capital projects.

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