Campaign leaders call on community

By Paul Haist

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When Sharon Weil embarked on her first term as a co-chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Annual Campaign last year, she made this comment on the subject of soliciting donations: “I never was afraid to ask, because the worst thing is someone is going to say no, and I don’t take no,” she said.

“If you see everything as negative, then you don’t move forward. If you take a positive approach, I think you accomplish more.”

That was in the fall of 2006.

This fall, Weil embarked on her second term as campaign co-chair, partnered this year with Portland attorney Alan Blank.
   

The words she spoke last year have a special resonance this year. Last spring Weil was brutally attacked in a random assault in the grocery aisles of a local Fred Meyer store. She was hospitalized after having sustained an extremely severe injury from a blow to her head.
   
After a long recovery, Weil was back at the podium at the federation’s Opening Night celebration Oct. 26—its Annual Campaign kickoff event—and, despite all she had been through, she still was taking “a positive approach.”
   
“I reflected over the thought of how I have been tested by God,” she said. “My thoughts brought me to realize that my test, besides surviving the assault, was whether I could still be the same person I was before May 12. Could I still be positive and see the glass half full, or would I be fearful and not trust anyone?”
   
She said she wondered if she would be able to do as much as she had done before the assault.
   
“Another person might have given up, but not me,” she said. “You can’t keep a good woman down.”
   
There was a great upwelling of warm applause, and then Weil went to work.
   
Weil is a veteran federation volunteer and activist who knows the turf. She has served on the critical Allocations Committee helping to decide where community funds should be directed; she has served on the federation board and on the leadership team established by the federation in 2005.
   
Weil challenged the 318 people at Opening Night and others throughout the Jewish community to follow the example set by her, fellow co-chair Blank and the federation board.
   
“Last year, we raised an additional $650,000 (over the regular campaign total of $???????) to help Israel in crisis with the Israel Emergency Fund,” she said, referring to last year’s second-line campaign to aid victims of Israel’s war in Lebanon.
   
Noting that “the war is over, (but) those crisis need are still essential in Israel as they are in our own community,” she announced that she and Blank and the entire federation board have increased their gifts to this year’s Annual Campaign.
   
“I am asking you to do the same,” she said.
   
Weil announced also that this year she endowed her gift to federation “in honor of Israel’s 60th anniversary and my life.”
   
She encouraged everyone to give not out of a sense of obligation or duty, “but as a pleasure that you are able to give.”
   
Weil’s moving remarks followed those of Blank who illuminated why it is necessary to give.
   
But first, he explained why, after heading up Congregation Neveh Shalom’s current $9 million capital campaign, he agreed to take this new community-wide leadership post. He previously served eight years as Neveh Shalom’s treasurer before being elected president and then moving on to the capital campaign.
   
“I agreed because Sharon was going to be my co-chair. Those of you who know her know how her heart beats for this community,” said Blank. “We are so glad to have her back with us.”
   
He said he joined the federation campaign also because the campaign is unique in that it allows him to be effective in many spheres by making just one gift.
   
Blank is not entirely new to federation and his involvement in federation is not exclusively about raising money.
   
He grew up in Cincinnati where his parents were active in federation and his mother was also involved ORT.
   
“It was absolutely ingrained in us that we had a responsibility to give back (to the community),” he said, in a separate conversation with the Review.
   
Blank and his wife Ellen, both attorneys, came to Portland 14 years ago with their two children, Michael, now 23, and Stephi, now 20.
   
In Portland he came to federation as a member of the Leadership Council and was asked onto the board in 2006.
   
As the federation has studied recreating itself in an evolving philanthropic environment (see story page ??), Blank said he saw issues that concerned him.
   
“I couldn’t sit on the outside and look at some of the issues and the perception by some that federation is not as effective as it should be without rolling up my sleeves and getting involved,” he said. “I’m not interested in the status quo ante; I think federation has to improve its image.”
   
For Blank, part of that is making sure the federation does more than just hold out its hand at campaign time.
   
Reflecting on his past role with Neveh Shalom’s capital campaign and his new role with the federation’s Annual Campaign, he elaborated.
   
“Both involve make the case, understanding people’s motivations, and community building,” he said. “You want people to feel good about their donation and you have to understand their motivation.”
    The result of that more intimate approach, said Blank, is “a stronger community.”
   
For the Opening Night audience Blank was very specific. With the help of a PowerPoint display he described four cases in which federation dollars, dollars raised in Oregon and Southwest Washington, made meaningful differences here and around the world.
   
He recalled his recent trip to Ethiopia and to Israel where 150,000 recent Israeli immigrants from Ethiopia are struggling to adapt to their radically new environment.
   
“There is so much they are going to have to learn, and we are there to help them,” said Blank.
   
He showed how Annual Campaign dollars help those in need here in Portland, how our dollars helped victims of Hurricane Katrina, and an apartment-bound Jewish invalid, Olga, in St. Petersburg, Russia. Without weekly food, medical and household assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—funded in part by local dollars, Olga would live in abject desperation, if she lived at all.
   
In introducing Weil, Blank called up Opening Night goers to complete their pledge cards.
   
He stressed the local need, noting that 45 percent of the resident of the Robison Jewish Home rely on Medicaid, which falls far short of the cost of caring for those individuals. “Thanks to us,” he said, “no one is turned away for lack of money.”