November 4, 1999 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Giving to the Jewish women’s charity Hadassah is a family affair for Long Islanders David and Sylvia Salzberg,
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their children, and their 10-year-old granddaughter.
Over the last 50 years, members of the family have given more than $1-million to Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America (No. 133 on the Philanthropy 400 list). They have also helped raise money for the charity, which last year took in $74-million, most of which went to support medical facilities in Israel.
While many established Jewish charities have had trouble attracting young donors, Hadassah has succeeded in appealing to younger generations of the Salzberg family largely because its programs are so diverse.
In addition to its health-care work in Israel, the charity operates health-education programs in the United States, teaching women about osteoporosis, nutrition, domestic violence, and many other matters. The organization has also long been an outspoken champion of causes important to women, adding its voice to the political debate on such issues as gun control, reproductive freedom, and First Amendment rights.
Sylvia, now 81, started the Salzberg tradition of giving to Hadassah during the final days of World War II. After learning that Hadassah ran an underground rescue program to save Jewish children from Nazi concentration camps, Sylvia, a full-time homemaker, threw herself into raising money to help the charity. She also donated regularly.
The rescue effort, called Youth Aliyah, helped transfer thousands of children to what was then called Palestine. The program still operates today, but now it helps children from war-torn countries emigrate to Israel. And Sylvia continues to support the program, as she has for more than 40 years; currently, she gives about $1,000 annually.
Her daughter, Lani Hopp, and son, Barry, now in their 50s, have been inspired by their parents’ donations to make joint six-figure gifts. When the elder Salzbergs paid for construction of a floor of rooms at Hadassah’s Mother and Child Center, in Israel, for instance, the two siblings paid for the neonatal feeding unit that would be on the same floor.
Lani does not simply follow her parents’ lead, however. The co-owner (with her husband, Robert) of a business that makes plastic labels, she also makes big gifts to support Hadassah’s health-education program called “Check It Out,” which teaches American high-school girls how to examine their breasts for signs of cancer.
Lani’s daughter has been giving since the age of 6, when Sylvia presented her with a blue tzedakah box that she had received from Hadassah. (Tzedakah is the Hebrew word for charity.)
The box can hold up to about $50 in coins. When the child — whose name the Salzbergs requested not be published — cannot squeeze in another dime, Sylvia helps her transfer the coins into paper rolls from the bank. Then Sylvia takes the money to Hadassah.
The 10-year-old enjoys the ritual, and she likes going to a Hadassah camp each summer. But what has captured her imagination most recently, Lani says, is the story of Henrietta Szold, a free-thinking rabbi’s daughter and Zionist who founded Hadassah in 1912 to channel medical aid and pasteurized milk to destitute mothers and their families in Palestine during World War I.
Ms. Szold is revered by many Jews for her courage and staying power in starting Hadassah during a time when women were not allowed to vote, and for building it into a world-famous medical institution that treats Jews and Arabs alike, in line with her commitment to peaceful coexistence of the two populations.
“Henrietta Szold and I are very alike,” Lani’s daughter wrote in a recent school report. “I’m a donator to Hadassah, she is Hadassah. I enjoy giving, she spent her whole life giving. She never let herself be pushed around. I don’t like it either. She is more like women today than most women in her times.”
But if the story of Hadassah’s founder reads like that of a 1990s woman, the current leaders of the organization resemble women of an earlier era.
Full-time volunteers have always been in charge of the organization. At Hadassah’s national headquarters, in New York, national president Bonnie Lipton, a volunteer since 1961, works 60 hours per week without pay, while Miki Schulman, the chief fund-raising volunteer and a 30-year veteran, maintains a similar schedule.
About half of the charity’s staff at national headquarters are paid, but they take a background role.
“All policy decisions are made by volunteers,” says Ms. Schulman. “We like to call ourselves ‘volunteer-driven, staff-managed.’”
While the long-time volunteers are responsible for much of the charity’s success in raising money, Hadassah will not be able to rely so heavily on their special brand of support in the future, as more and more of its members juggle child rearing and demanding careers.
To attract the next generation of women to the charity, Hadassah in 1996 created a Young Women/Young Leaders program for women 45 and younger who are selected by members of the charity’s national board. More than 150 women, each of whom donates $500, have been educated about the charity’s work. They also participate in a partially subsidized trip to Israel to see Hadassah facilities firsthand.
Hadassah’s reliance on volunteers is one reason that the charity manages to keep expenses low; for every dollar it brings in, just 8 cents goes toward overhead. That statistic carries a lot of weight with donors like Sylvia’s husband, David, aged 90, who ran a successful printing and commercial real-estate business before finally retiring a decade ago.
“They are so dedicated,” he says of the volunteers. “The whole top echelon of the organization works for nothing. When I say they work, I mean work. They work day and night, Saturday and Sunday. That’s why it is a privilege to give to this organization. I wish I had more to give them.”
Those volunteers, with help from the charity’s staff members, keep track of 1,500 local chapters, to which some 306,000 women belong.
Each chapter has an annual fund-raising quota, ranging from $2,000 to more than $1-million. To raise the funds, members undertake a variety of activities, ranging from gift wrapping at the local mall to tennis tournaments, dinners, rubber-duck races, and many other events. Those efforts generated $22.3-million last year.
“We’d do almost anything to raise the money,” Sylvia says of her own chapter.
Like the Salzbergs, many members and their families also make big gifts. Last year, Hadassah received $17.9-million in gifts of $5,000 or more, as well as $32.8-million more in bequests and other types of deferred gifts.
The Salzbergs started making big gifts to Hadassah after their first trip to Israel, in 1956, Sylvia recalls.
Since that trip, the Salzbergs have returned to Israel almost every year, and they come away from the trips with a greater determination to help Hadassah carry out its mission. In addition to setting up a research fund at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, they have provided dental equipment and paid for an orthopedic operating room. “Every time we went over, we saw the needs,” says David.
To acknowledge the extensive help the Salzbergs provide, Hadassah has filled its medical facilities with plaques bearing their names.
Lani says that she had no idea of the extent or depth of her parents’ charitable involvement until she went to Jerusalem to take an archaeology course during college. A fellow student, she recalls, asked if she was related to David and Sylvia Salzberg and told her that their names were “all over the place” at the Hadassah hospital.
“What impressed me,” says Lani, “is not only did my parents not tell me about it. They didn’t even tell me when they knew I was going to Jerusalem.”
She adds: “They didn’t think it was that relevant. For them, it isn’t about what you get for giving. For them, the relevant thing is that they give — not how much, but as much as they can.”
