When Chicago’s Jewish community gathers on Sept. 14 for the Jewish Federation’s Annual Meeting, Andrew S. Hochberg, an ambitious and dedicated leader in the community, will be awarded Federation’s highest honor, the Julius Rosenwald Memorial Award.

The award, presented each year at the Federation’s Annual Meeting, goes to an individual who has demonstrated a lifetime of outstanding dedication and service to the Federation and the entire Jewish community. It is named for Julius Rosenwald, the iconic Chicago business leader and philanthropist of the early 1900s.

Describing himself as a “lifer” in terms of involvement in the Jewish community, Hochberg most recently served as Board Chair of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation in 2018-2020. He shepherded the community through major events including the shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, changing of leadership at JUF, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to this, he served as Chair of JUF’s Overall Planning and Allocations Committee. In 2008, he was the JUF General Campaign Chair, where he successfully led a record-breaking annual campaign of $83.6 million. Hochberg followed in his parents’ footsteps – his father Larry chaired the campaign in 1981, and his mother Barbara z”l chaired it in 1990, and later became the first female board chair.

He has served in many other leadership roles at JUF, including being involved in the creation of the Jewish Day School Guaranty Trust Fund. He also served, by presidential appointment, on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.

Hochberg earned his undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business and his Juris Doctor from Northwestern University. He rose through the ranks to become CEO at Sportmart, a family-owned big-box retail sporting goods chain. Hochberg negotiated Sportmart’s merger with Gart Sports in 1998, creating the second largest sporting goods retailer in the United States.

Hochberg then formed commercial real estate investment firm Next Realty, L.L.C. in 1998, which invests in commercial real estate assets, currently holding a portfolio comprised of 37 properties in eight states and the District of Columbia. He is also the co-founder of Hilco Real Estate Services and has served as a director of CASCO (Chicago Association of Shopping Center Owners), Prism Mortgage Company, LR Development, Gart Sports, and Art.com.

He lives in Highland Park, Illinois with his wife, prominent Lake County pediatrician Dr. Laurie Hochberg. They have four children who carry on the family tradition of Jewish leadership.

Chicagoan Lauren Tapper and Highland Park resident Hannah Frazer and are recognized for their extraordinary efforts to embody the value of tikkun olam, to repair the world.

Lauren Tapper, 15, launched COVID-TV, an online platform connecting teenagers to provide emotional and mental health support during the pandemic. The project was launched as a blog in March 2020 for teens to create a virtual community where they could share their quarantine experiences and reduce their sense of isolation and anxiety. Teens from around the world participated, from the U.S., Israel and the UK to China, Singapore and India.

COVID-TV now supports 60 global teen ambassadors leading community fundraising and action campaigns to address pandemic-related crises and other social justice issues.

Tapper, who just completed JUF’s RTI program, also was a local 18 Under 18 Honoree this year.

Eighteen-year-old Hannah Frazer is founder and CEO of Question Connection Game, NFP, which has designed and distributed over 1,200 conversation-starting card games across the USA, Spain, Israel, Czech Republic, China, Korea, Germany, and Colombia.

The game, which is designed to facilitate interpersonal connection and cultivate empathy, is available in Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, and Hebrew. It continues to be interwoven into multiple curricula at schools and community centers globally and has been employed within programs like the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chicago and the Joint Educational Project in LA.

“In the face of the unusual challenges of this past year, the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award recipients exhibit courage, commitment, and compassion, bringing hope for the future,” said Phyllis Cook, Chief Philanthropic Consultant to the Helen Diller Family Foundation. “These young leaders inspire all of us to do our part to repair the world.”

Each awardee will receive $36,000 to support their work or further their education.

Hannah Bloom-Hirschberg and Emily Pevnick will receive the Davis, Gidwitz & Glasser Young Leadership Award, celebrating an outstanding young volunteer leader’s achievements and promise.

• Bloom-Hirschberg is the Director of Strategy and Outreach for the Jewish Early Childhood Education Leadership Initiative (JECELI). Prior to this, she developed professional development curricula for daycare providers and taught young children. She serves on JUF’s Education Committee and Community Building and Jewish Continuity Commission and Chaired JUF’s Good Deeds Day in 2020. She also serves on the Board of Directors of both Mishkan Chicago and Vanderbilt Hillel.
• Pevnick currently serves as a Government Affairs Vice Chair, the Young Women’s City Council Campaign Chair, a Jewish Women’s Foundation Trustee, and chaired four TOV Nourish Our Neighborhood community drives during COVID-19. She is a previous YLD Board Vice President and 2018 36 Under 36 honoree. She is also on the Board of CityPAC, a member of Anshe Emet Synagogue, and involved in Mishkan Chicago. She has dedicated her professional and personal work to advancing social change with over a decade of experience in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Nora Bergman, Program Manager of Holocaust Community Services at CJE SeniorLife; Letícia Cardoso, Assistant Director of Resident Supports at JCFS Chicago; Kyle Kolling, Assistant Director at JCC Camp Chi; and Tejal Patel, PharmD, BCPS, System Director of Inpatient Pharmacy & Respiratory Services at Sinai Chicago will receive the Samuel A. Goldsmith Award, this year spotlighting outstanding young Jewish agency professionals shaping Chicago’s community.

• Bergman joined Holocaust Community Services (HCS) in 2019 and her responsibilities include overseeing program operations, grant writing and reporting, managing the program budget, and supervising the administrative team. Prior to joining HCS, Nora worked in Care Management and Guardianship, where she came to love both working with and learning from older adults. She is the granddaughter of three Holocaust survivors.
• Cardoso has worked in Chicago’s Jewish community for twenty-one years, including eight years at JCFS. Throughout her career, she has been involved in direct support for individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities and their families and management in residential, educational, and recreational settings. Creating and fostering environments that allow individuals to achieve their full potential with dignity is infused throughout her work.
• Kolling has spent the past twenty-one summers at Camp Chi, including the last six as a member of the full-time team. He is also recent graduate of the Merrin Teen Professional Fellowship through the Jewish Community Center Association. He graduated from Illinois State University with a degree in Theater Education and is currently working to finish a Master of Arts in Jewish Professional Studies from Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.
• Patel’s career includes clinical pharmacy, improving medication safety, and remodeling sterile compounding rooms where medications are prepared. Most recently, she has led the vaccine operations at Sinai Chicago, where she has been instrumental in expanding Sinai’s capacity across the Chicago community, including developing and coordinating logistics of pop-up vaccination clinics.

Click here for more information and to register for the event.

Thanks to a dedicated group of teens studying philanthropy with JUF, over $52,000 in grants have made their way to ten Jewish organizations in the Chicago area.

Over the last year, teens in two programs – Voices 101, which includes first-time participants from 9th through 12th grade, and Voices Alumni, for previous participants in 10th through 12th grade – met over Zoom to learn about philanthropy and grant writing. They assessed grant proposals from 33 organizations, conducted virtual site visits, and used Jewish values to choose where to allocate the money.

“I am so grateful for having this experience,” said Kayla Kupietzky, who joined Voices 101 after spending two summers volunteering with TOV Teens. “This past year…lived up to all of my expectations; I learned about wonderful organizations, formed relationships with other high school students, and was taught how to read proposals and allocate money. Throughout the program, there was a big emphasis on Jewish values and how they helped guide our decisions.”

Every month, Kupietzky and her fellow participants met for a two-hour call where they dove into different topics, including using “Jewish values to guide giving, community needs research, how to read a budget critically and strategically, grant reading, proposal reading, and consensus [building],” said Genna Kahn, Program Director of Teen Volunteering and Philanthropy at JUF and Voices program officer.

This year’s Voices 101 cohort focused on four issue areas – hunger and food access, environment and sustainability, civil rights and anti-racism, and mental health. The Voices Alumni group divided into three committees – environment and sustainability, civil rights and anti-racism, and combating antisemitism.

Every participant pledged a certain amount of money to either donate themselves or solicit from friends and family, which was supplemented by seed money from a donor and a social media campaign from Voices Alumni.

Once the grant applications started rolling in, the teens learned how to use Jewish values like chesed (lovingkindness) and tikkun olam (repairing the world) to prioritize which organizations they should ask for virtual site visits, where they asked thoughtful and challenging questions to inform their final decisions.

Kupietzky found the allocations process to be the most impactful part of the year. “We had learned so much and had become so close with our peers that finally coming together to decide where our money would go was such an incredible experience. Having all of our hard work come full circle was absolutely amazing!”

The Voices 101 group made a total of $34,714 in grants divided among: Children’s Home and Aid; the Dina and Eli Field EZRA Multi Service Center; JCFS Response for Teens; Jewish Council on Urban Affairs; the Lakeview Pantry; No Shame on U; Repair the World, and JUF. The teens in Voices Alumni allocated $17,521 to: Hand in Hand; the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center; Jewish Council on Urban Affairs; and JUF.

Kahn is incredibly proud of how this year’s cohort stepped up in the virtual space. “It was a really unique experience for me to watch super-passionate and amazing teens go through this process virtually together and navigate the year that COVID has given us…. I’m very proud of the work they put in and excited to watch the program continue to grow!”

When Rabbi Jessica Wainer was growing up, she always wanted to be a doctor.

The majority of her family worked in the medical field, and that was her dream too – until she studied abroad in Jerusalem and interned at a rabbinical school. “Through that program, I realized that what interested me in medicine was the people side of things – being able to help people through situations and walking with people in all their journeys in life,” she said. “I realized I could find much more of that in the rabbinate, so I decided to go to rabbinical school.”

After attending Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati – the rabbinical school she interned with in Israel – and serving congregations in West Virginia, Michigan, Kentucky, and Ohio, she found a position in the exurbs of Washington, DC. Now, she has moved from Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston, VA, where she was the Associate Rabbi and Director of Congregational Learning, back to her hometown.

Wainer, who grew up in Oak Park, has taken a position as the Associate Rabbi at Congregation Etz Chaim of DuPage County, which she was thrilled to begin in early July.

She was inspired to return because of the opportunity to rekindle old friendships and “build connections with the larger Jewish community of Chicago.” Wainer sees Chicago as a “very heimish community, down to earth, where everybody knows everybody, and people are willing to help and make sure everything gets done.” She looks forward to building a “relational-style rabbinate” along with Rabbi Andrea Cosnowsky, Etz Chaim’s Senior Rabbi.

“The more I learned about the congregation, the more I thought it would be a really good fit for me and my rabbinate,” said Wainer, and she is eager to hit the ground running. She described her priority as “building relationships with as many people as possible, getting to know and understand them, and working together in partnership” to create an enjoyable synagogue experience.

She hopes to build on Etz Chaim’s social justice work and missions of inclusion and diversity. Additionally, she will bring her experience producing programs for her congregation in Virginia during the pandemic to build inventive programs to appeal to new and old members.

As a rabbi, Wainer had to reframe her training to come up with innovative ideas: “A lot of times in the Jewish world we think about recreating the wheel, and in the pandemic we were creating the wheel, since it had never been done before,” she said.

Wainer explored how to forge meaningful experiences without singing as a group, or even gathering in the same room, developing her sense of creativity to rise to the challenge. She now hopes to meet a new challenge in her new role: What is the best way to serve the entire Jewish community, if different people have different comfort levels with in-person services and events?

“I want to provide equal access to Judaism through online and in-person access points,” said Wainer, who is also eager to “get to know the Chicago community as it is now,” as the pandemic wanes.

“Coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people are exploring what they want from their Judaism and finding congregations that fit them,” Wainer said. She wants to get to know people in the community who haven’t yet found their place and help them to do so.