Friday, March 29th 2024   |

JEF’s major annual event gala is tonight

The Jewish Endowment Foundation (JEF) of Louisiana’s Annual Event, will commence tonight at 5:30 p.m. with a reception and cash bar at the Hilton Hotel Riverside in the Grand Salon. The event will begin in earnest at 6:00 p.m.

Keynote speaker Loren Robinowitz

JEF will be honoring several Jewish community leaders, who have exemplified giving and charity, cornerstones of the organization headed by executive director Sandy Levy. The keynote speaker will be Loren Galler Rabinowitz, a Columbia University Medical School student, humanitarian, and motivational speaker. Rabinowitz, whose mother Nina was born in New Orleans to Holocaust survivors Eva and Henry Galler of blessed memory, was recently selected by the Jewish Forward as one of their nationally recognized “40 under 40.”

In addition Rabinowitz has excelled as a figure skating champion, has been a published poet, classical pianist, and served as Miss Massachusetts 2010. Her talk will be on “Surviving, Thriving and Making a Difference.”

A major JEF acknowlegment – the JEF’s Tzedakah Award – will be made to the Cahn family — Adele Cahn, Richard and Vivian Cahn, and Jimmy and Marie Cahn.  The Cahns have been quiet philanthropists for four generations in New Orleans.

According to Levy, the Cahns are accepting the award in the hope their story will inspire others to follow their lead and open funds or otherwise establish a relationship with JEF. Levy acknowledges that the small foundation that started by the Cahn family three generations ago has matured into a substantial charitable entity.

Tzedakah Award honorees, the Cahn family.

As the family members have also matured, they have added substantially to the fund and now support a host of local, national and Israeli charities.

Larry Lehmann will receive the Young Family Award for Professional Excellence. An accredited estate planner and a board-certified specialist in both estate planning and administration,  Lehmann has established himself as a highly respected attorney specializing in estate planning and taxation. He is the third generation in his family to practice law with a concentration in wealth transition and charitable giving strategies. Lehman follows his father René as a past recipient of this same award. The elder Lehmann is expected to present the award to his son. Both Lehmanns  have been highly supportive of the JEF and have contributed in other ways to a number of other community organizations.

Larry Lehmann

Recently retired Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans president, Alan Franco, is slated to receive the  Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) Endowment Achievement Award.  During his recent tenure, Franco encouraged members of the Jewish community to follow his lead and “Create a Jewish Legacy,” an advocacy campaign championed by JEF. Franco and his wife Diane still champion that campaign and have plotted out significant and strategic giving to further their own philanthropies.

The final award to be presented is the Helen A. Mervis Jewish Community Professional Award, which will go to Tulane Hillel’s Rabbi Yonah Schiller. Schiller, the executive director at Tulane Hillel, oversaw a successful completion of a $4.3 million capital campaign. That campaign resulted in the completion of the recently dedicated Morris and Goldie Mintz Center for Jewish Life. The building also serves as part of the academic campus for regular coursework at Tulane.

Through his tenure at Hillel, Schiller has doubled the organization’s operations budget and quadrupled student participation. It has made Tulane Hillel a model for other similar organizations across the country.

Schiller also serves as an adjunct professor at Tulane University and was awarded the 2013 Mortar Board Excellence in Teaching Award for the most outstanding non-tenured professor at Tulane University.

Event chair Melinda Mintz believes the evening will be even more inspiring because of the participation of the honorees and the guest speaker. “This will be a very inspiring evening of recognition and remembrance.  We will pay tribute to our most deserving honorees and hear from a young woman who has accomplished more in her 27 years than many do in a lifetime,” she said.

“The fact that her grandparents came here as new Americans after the Holocaust with hope in their hearts to start a new life in New Orleans and that Loren, a second generation born in the US. has achieved so much is an incredible story of survival and triumph.”

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