When Jonah Goldberg, a seventh-grader at Bethlehem Central Middle School, learned about the bar/bat mitzvah program run by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, he decided to take his bar mitzvah to the next level by raising money for the organization.
I heard about JFR from my mother. She and I researched a bunch of organizations that I could raise money for as my mitzvah project and I picked JFR, said Goldberg.
The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous was created in 1986 to provide financial assistance to non-Jews who risked their lives and often the lives of their families to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. The JFR supports more than 1,100 aged and needy rescuers in 23 countries. The foundation also runs an international education program that preserves the legacy of the rescuers and teaches the history of the Holocaust.
`There are millions of people in the world who desperately need help. However, the people aided by the JFR not only need help, but their heroic actions to help others make you think that your responsibility, as a person, to help them is even stronger,` said Goldberg.
Goldberg said he was brainstorming ideas about how to raise money for the group when it came to him.
`I like to swim, and I am on the Delmar Dolfins swim team. I thought that I could raise a lot of money through swimming,` said Goldberg.
`About 18 kids swam with me ` three of them were friends, one was my brother, and the others were swimmers from the Albany Arrows swim team of the Albany JCC, who volunteered to participate on my project,` said Goldberg.
The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous has a special program for young people that enables a bar/bat mitzvah to combine the mitzvah, or good deed, of tzedakah, or charitable giving, with education. The program provides ways to teach young people about the importance of tzedakah, tikkun olam (repairing the world), and hakarat hatov (recognizing, or appreciating the good). The program matches a bar/bat mitzvah with a Christian rescuer and enables the bar/bat mitzvah to learn about this individual who saved Jews during the Holocaust. It also offers the opportunity to recognize and appreciate the heroic deeds of rescuers.
`I began working on the project around two months ago, but I started getting sponsors and raising money just one month ago,` said Goldberg.
He said that the current fundraising total is still uncertain because many of the Arrows swimmers have not yet submitted their personal totals, but that he is still getting more pledges, so he isn’t sure of his personal goal, either.
Thus far, though, he has raised at least $2,870 and of that amount, Goldberg has raised over $1,650 himself.
Students preparing for a Bar/Bat Mitzvah may be paired (or `twinned`) with one of these rescuers as a way of honoring them.
Goldberg chose to honor Helena Blaszczyk as his twin.
Blaszcyk is in her 80s and lives in Czestochowa, Poland. She and her brother, Stefan, were members of the Polish underground and fought the Nazis however they could. They made a hiding place behind a wall in their home where they hid four Jews.
One day, Blaszcyk and her brother were denounced, arrested and beaten ` however, they continued hiding and protecting Jews. The Germans never found them. The underground eventually obtained the release of the Blaszcyks, and they continued to hide the Jews until liberation in 1945.
However, Goldberg won’t be able to get into contact with his `twin.`
`She’s in a very small village in Poland and doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Polish,` said Goldberg. `The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous has a very limited number of translators and they’re using them very sparingly because they don’t have all that much that they can pay them with.`
Instead, the translators are being used to get the rescuers back together with the people they rescued.
`Jonah has always had a very strong sense of justice,` said his mother, Karen Lipson. `He always stands up for what is right, and he stands up for people who need help.`
His father, Alan Goldberg, said he was pleased his son could find a project he believed in.
` I think that part of one of the challenges in finding and doing a project like this is finding something that you really want to work for and that means something to you,` said Alan Goldberg.
He said that this project is something that really touched his son. “