Creating a Team

In 2005, Mr. Weinberger participated in his first half-marathon (a 13-mile or 21-kilometer race, used as a fund-raiser by people sponsoring the runners for their efforts) with a secular organization. Afterward, he thought, Wouldn’t it be nice to do this for a Jewish organization too?

As Mr. Weinberger had long been involved in Chai Lifeline, which helps cancer patients and their families, he immediately thought of it. Once the organization agreed to the plan, he had to choose a race location, find volunteers to help out with the technical details, and create a way to arrange both participants and sponsors.

Coordinating a marathon includes not just the running but also creating a full race weekend, where participants get Shabbos accommodations and prerace and postrace events as well. “Our first year we got 26 runners,” Mr. Weinberger recalls. “We chose Miami because we wanted a race that offered both a full marathon (26 miles/42 km) and a half marathon, and we felt Miami would be an appealing destination for people from colder climates. Shuls and kosher catering were easily accessible. The race weekend coincided with many schools’ winter breaks, so it worked out well.”

That first year, 2006, Team Lifeline raised 145,000 dollars. The next year they had 63 runners, and by the third year they had grown to 200 and raised close to a million dollars. “Now, our 12th race year, we have three runs and a bike ride, for a total of four events each year,” says Mr. Weinberger proudly, “and we’re raising, in total, close to 3 million dollars. It’s become an event on many people’s calendars.”

Rising to the Challenge

The Miami event is still the biggest of the four, with 430 plus runners in the last couple of years. While Mr. Weinberger isn’t involved in the day-to-day organization anymore, he still plans strategy with the race director. In addition to recruiting runners and making sure they have a great time, there are many logistics involved, from finding a hotel that can accommodate 800 plus people to making sure all the runners are safe. When there’s bad weather, things get even more complicated!

One of the most amazing things about Team Lifeline is how Chai Lifeline patients rise to the challenge to join in the marathon. “We have one Camp Simcha camper who’s in a wheelchair and on a ventilator,” says Mr. Weinberger. “Last year she trained to walk the last 1,000 steps and ended up doing 1,500. We had another camper who trained himself to walk the last mile, then did two miles. Another pushed himself in his wheelchair for five or six miles.”

Anyone Can Do It

“In Miami, Team Lifeline is a fixture in the race. We’re the biggest charity team there,” Mr. Weinberger continues. “Every year in the airport people see me wearing the Team Lifeline hat and stop me to tell me what a great team it is.

“When I started this, people told me, ‘I don’t know any runners. I don’t know if I can help recruit.’ I said, ‘This isn’t for runners, it’s for anyone who wants to try, anyone who wants to help an organization.’ It’s an amazing experience. We have plenty of people who couldn’t run around the block before they signed up and successfully ran the half marathon. Anyone can do it.”

Team Lifeline Stats

Years in existence: 11

Events per year: 4

Amount raised annually, on average: 3 million dollars

Project Ezra/Chesed Fund of Baltimore

The Torah commands us to stay safe — not only must we take care of our neshamah, but also our guf. From wearing seatbelts to crossing the street carefully, we need to be sure we’re not endangering our lives. In Baltimore, Maryland, there’s a man who’s concerned not just with his own personal safety, but with that of the community at large, too.

Let’s Stay Safe

Mr. Frank Storch, who founded Project Ezra of Greater Baltimore in 1988 together with a group of other community activists, believes strongly in spreading the word on safety initiatives. When he sees an area of safety that’s been neglected, he speaks up — and then he creates a program to address the lack.

One of Project Ezra’s first programs focused on bike safety. Through ads in the local newspapers, Mr. Storch encouraged kids to wear helmets by giving out vouchers for Slurpees to kids “caught” wearing a helmet while bike riding. Although that program has been discontinued, people can still buy helmets at cost in a local store.

After a frightening incident in an elementary school in 2012, Mr. Storch created a guide called “Keep Your School Safe.” The guide was endorsed by many prominent organizations and sent out free to every Jewish school in North America — 10,000 guides total. It’s been followed by 15 more publications, on topics like “Staying Safe in Israel” and “Staying Safe in Camp.”

You Can Make It Happen

One of Project Ezra’s most innovative projects is its Community Service Award, which started out as the Outstanding Youth Award. The organization holds a yearly award program, where 10 to 20 kids (and now adults, too) are honored for doing something special for others, or helping ensure the safety and security of the community.

Kids who win the award get a plaque and a class pizza party, as well as a write-up in a local paper. “One kid saved someone else from drowning,” says Esther Saltzman, one of Mr. Storch’s assistants. “This past year we honored a 2nd grader who brought food to a homeless shelter after his school’s chometz drive. We also honored six kids who led Yachad groups, which runs programs for people with special needs, and a 15-year-old who does maintenance and sets and cleans up the kiddush each week in his shul. The award is for kids who go above and beyond doing something for the klal.”

Mr. Storch’s message to kids? “You’re never too young to start helping out. Follow your dream. You can make it happen.”

Project Ezra Stats

Years in existence: 28

Community service awards given out each year: 10-20

Number of safety awareness publications: 15

This Rosh Hashanah, if you have a dream of changing the world, realize that you can do it! Find something that no one’s done yet, and go for it!

Times are a-changing. Here are a few historical movements that have changed the way people around the world think and act.

The Civil Rights Movement

It’s hard to imagine, but nearly a hundred years after blacks were freed from slavery (in 1865), they still faced discrimination (unequal treatment) and segregation (separation in public places) in the American South. Blacks weren’t allowed to attend the same schools as whites or use the same public bathrooms or water fountains or restaurants (and many other things), and they couldn’t sit in the front half of a public bus.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, several black leaders rose to change this situation, which ultimately led to the Civil Rights Act of 1968. These leaders included Rosa Parks, who famously refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, and Martin Luther King Jr., who encouraged nonviolent demonstrations to promote black people’s rights.

Today, although racism still exists, segregation is a thing of the past. The civil rights movement, as it is called, is viewed as a movement that changed the face of American democracy, so that all American citizens could truly be treated as equals.

Children’s Rights

Just like blacks, children needed to be protected by a special movement, called the children’s rights movement. Why? Well, historically, children in poor societies were often sent out to work at a young age. Even at home, they could be beaten, starved, and forced to do backbreaking labor. Only in the 19th century did the situation slowly start changing, but it took until the early 20th century for children’s rights to be officially recognized.

In the US, it was only during the Great Depression in the 1930s that child labor in the US was abolished, and in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which included limits on many forms of child labor. Internationally, the person credited with championing children’s rights was a British woman named Eglantyne Jebb. In 1919, Miss Jebb founded an organization called Save the Children, laying out a number of criteria to protect children around the world.

In 1959, the United Nations officially adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which stipulates that all children should have their basic needs provided for. Aren’t you glad you were born in the modern era?

Animal Rights

It’s not just people who have rights; animals do, too! In 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was founded in New York City by a man named Henry Bergh, a philanthropist and diplomat. The story goes that Bergh spent two years as an American diplomat in Russia, where he was horrified at the sight of the cruel treatment of work horses. On his way back to America, he visited the British Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and decided to create the same kind of organization in the US.

Bergh, a very forward-thinking person, didn’t stop with creating his organization, though; he made personal inspections of slaughterhouses, worked to close down dog-fighting pits, and gave speeches about his cause to children and adults. The ASPCA led to the launch of a number of other humane societies and still exists to this day, rescuing animals from cruelty and neglect, lobbying for laws that keep people from abusing their pets, running shelters, and saving animals during natural disasters like hurricanes and floods.

(Originally Featured in XXX, Issue XXX)