NCJW Holds Gala at NOPSI Hotel

By NICHOLAS HAMBURGER, Special to the CCJN

The Greater New Orleans section of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) held its annual gala on Saturday, March 10 from 7-10 PM, entertaining guests with cocktails, a three-course dinner, a live funk band and a silent auction at the recently renovated NOPSI Hotel.

NCJW vice president Barbara Greenberg speaks in place of absent president Barbara Kaplinsky (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)

“Your presence tonight makes our job successful because all the funds that we get go right back into the community,” said Barbara Greenberg, the NCJW vice president. Greenberg spoke on Saturday night in place of NCJW president Barbara Klapinsky, who was unable to attend due to an emergency visit to the hospital.

NCJW is a grassroots organization of volunteers that provides various services for women and children across 28 states. In addition to membership dues, legacy trusts, and grants, the Greater New Orleans section of the organization depends on fundraising to finance its programs.

Of the 14 services that NCJW supports, FOX 8 Defenders is the most well-known. Staffed by NCJW volunteers, FOX 8 Defenders consists of a telephone information service committed to assisting callers by connecting them with the relevant agency or company.

The program, referred to as “the service that gives us all the pizzazz around the city” by Greenberg, was founded by the late Babs Isaacson on WDSU before shifting to WVUE FOX 8, which NCJW underwrites. That partnership was on display Saturday night, as David Bernard, the chief meteorologist of WVUE FOX 8, served as the gala’s master of ceremonies.

Event co-chairs Patty Barnett, left, and June Leopold (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)

Other services supported by NCJW include STAIR, a children’s literacy program; Nola4Women, a social action group dedicated to the improvement of women’s lives; and Court Watch, an advocacy group that observes and reports on the fairness and transparency of the Orleans Parish Criminal Court system.

Greenberg also highlighted NCJW’s involvement in the exhibit “L’Dor V’Dor: From Generation to Generation,” open to the public at Longue Vue House and Gardens through April 29. The exhibit chronicles the history of Jewish women in New Orleans from 1895 to 2005, and, in doing so, prominently features past and present members of NCJW.

Created in 1897, four years after Hannah Solomon founded the national organization in Chicago, the local section of NCJW has been entwined with New Orleans’s social history since its inception. “When immigrants came over after the second World War, and this is a very big port, the New Orleans community went to meet them, to bring them back to the JCC,” gala co-chair June Leopold offered in an interview with the CCJN. “NCJW was a big part of that.”

Indeed, the longevity of NCJW’s commitment to progressive action was at the core of Leopold’s message on Saturday. “As yet, these goals are the same goals that we had 121 years ago,” she said to the gala’s attendees at the beginning of the evening. “Good family values, education for everyone, opportunity for all and, certainly, justice.”

Rabbi Gabriel Greenberg of Beth Israel (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)

Patty Barnett, who co-chaired the gala with Leopold, attributed NCJW’s abiding activeness in the community to its Jewish principles. “It’s the tikkun olam, repair the world,” Barnett said in an interview, referring to a Jewish concept often interpreted as an impetus for community service or philanthropy.

Both Leopold and Barnett have spent the majority of their lives as members of NCJW. Leopold, a former president and vice president of the section, came to New Orleans over 40 years ago and has participated in the organization ever since, while Barnett, who previously served on the chapter’s board, joined in her 20s. “Once people join, they’re here — like me,” Leopold said.

In this way, the organization’s longevity manifests itself on an individual, as well as historical, scale. It comes as no surprise, then, that Kenneth Hoffman, the executive director of the soon-to-open Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, concluded the night as the gala’s guest speaker. Hoffman declared his intention to preserve and recount the histories of Southern Jewish individuals at the museum, which is set to open in 2019. “We’re collecting stories, oral histories,” Hoffman said. “If you have a Southern Jewish story to tell, I’m gonna want to talk to you.”

Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience executive director Kenneth Hoffman speaking about the opening of the museum (photo by Nicholas Hamburger)

The museum will collaborate with the firm Gallagher & Associates, which designed many of the exhibits at the acclaimed National World War II Museum, where Hoffman recently completed an 18-year stint as the director of education. The Museum of Southern Jewish Experience will be located at 818 Howard Avenue, a short walk down Baronne Street from Saturday night’s venue.

Before its transformation into a luxury hotel, the building of the NOPSI Hotel housed the city’s now-defunct gas and electricity provider, New Orleans Public Service Inc. As a nod to the venue’s history, NCJW’s gala committee selected a fitting theme for the evening – “An Electrifying Event.”

“People who have been here or who have lived here for a very long time, they can relate to that kind of thing,” Leopold explained. On a night celebrating another year in NCJW’s long history of community service, the organization continued to find new contexts – be it the current exhibit “From Generation to Generation,” the upcoming Museum of Southern Jewish Experience, or the restored NOPSI Hotel – to share its enduring impact in New Orleans.