News & Impact

In the midst of the pandemic, Dr. Carl Grunfeld, member of the JFCS Board of Directors, reached out the JFCS Holocaust Center to donate an important piece of his family history. The passport belonged to Otto Schwarz, Carl’s uncle, who was born in Viersen, Germany in 1904. When Kristallnacht unfolded, Otto raced home and jumped over a wall to escape the Nazis. Days later, he returned to look at the wall and realized he could not jump high enough to even get his hands on the top. As Carl recalls, Otto “spent the rest of his life wondering how he… Read More

For Michael Rolnick and Linda Himelstein, community service is an essential family value. As they were raising their children, Jillian and Ben, in Hillsborough, Michael and Linda made it a priority to model the importance of giving back. “We wanted to nurture in our children a lifelong habit of giving back—not just money, but also time,” says Linda, an award-winning author and journalist. “This should be a vital part of life.” They began volunteering as a family at the JFCS Peninsula Food Bank. When Jillian and Ben were in high school, they participated in the YouthFirst service-learning and leadership development… Read More

Caryn Siegel, a spiritual care volunteer for JFCS’ Jewish Chaplaincy Services serving Stanford Medicine, has been dedicating her time to supporting hospital patients for fifteen years. Caryn offers her patients a compassionate presence and a listening ear. She also brings insight from a very personal experience. In 1987, Caryn’s son, Ilan, was born at Stanford Hospital severely disabled. Ilan was in and out of Stanford’s Intensive Care Unit for the next seventeen years of his life. Caryn vividly remembers sitting in the hospital with her husband, Mark, over the years—the two of them feeling very alone. When Ilan passed… Read More

Last month, an alarming incident in Marin County schools reminded us that antisemitism exists, even in our own backyard. An Instagram account associated with Redwood High School in Larkspur named specific Jewish students in Marin and asked for followers to contribute to a list of names. The account was titled “Redwood students organized (against) semitism.” This incident represents an urgent and growing problem—what has happened in Marin schools is unfortunately not unique. Acts of antisemitism have been reported in schools across the Bay Area, most recently in San Mateo County, and represent a larger, national shift. A study released … Read More

Mark Bely says that what he knows about JFCS is that it is a go to organization. When you need help, have questions, or want to give back to the community, you go to JFCS. Mark was nine years old when his family left Russia for a new life in San Francisco. His parents, Boris and Larisa, moved the family to be closer to Boris’ father, who had made the same journey a year before. With hard work and the help of JFCS’ Emigre Services, the three generations of the Bely family soon adjusted to life in America—Boris became… Read More

Just last year, Sarah escaped from a decade-long, abusive relationship with the father of her two young children. She was finally making ends meet on her own when she lost her retail job due to the pandemic. Sarah called JFCS in tears, worried that her sons—who had already experienced so much pain and trauma—now would not even have enough to eat. Sarah is one of thousands of people struggling to afford the cost of food and basic essentials who have called JFCS for help since the start of the pandemic. In fact, the need for food in our community is… Read More