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HOF Continued from Page 1
athletes, men and women,
across all sports,” Rosenberg
said. “When you can induct a
Jewish fencer or a Jewish rower
and put the spotlight on these
people ... that’s great for our
city and our region.”
The changes to PJSHOF’s
model will help build a more
permanent and foundational
support for the organization
after its home in the basement
of the Jewish Community
Services Building was flooded
with 7 feet of water on Sept. 4 in
the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

“We have this one big event,”
Rosenberg said, referring to
PJSHOF’s annual induction.

“And we get a good crowd of
a couple hundred people, but
every year we’re starting over
with a new audience.”
PJSHOF aims to hold
five to eight events around
the community in 2022, in
addition to the induction.

“Rather than have people
come to a museum, the
museum is going to come to
them,” said Carl Cherkin, the
hall’s head of events subcom-
mittee, 2020 PJSHOF inductee
and an Emmy Award-winning
sportscaster. By bringing a speaker, such
12 JANUARY 20, 2022
as Olympian and lacrosse player
Bonnie Rosen, and memora-
bilia, such as Dolph Schayes’
76ers jersey, to a local commu-
nity center, more people would
have the opportunity to learn
more about a sports history
replete with Jewish protago-
nists, but one that is often not
well-known. “There’s a rich athletic culture
emanating from Philadelphia
that so many kids are so into
today,” Cherkin said. “So many
people are in the hero worship
to begin with, they don’t stop to
think they had their own heroes,
their own Maccabees.”
Rosenberg hopes to hold the
first PJSHOF event of the year
in February with an audience
of a couple dozen people
interested in sharing their
experience at the event with
friends and family, who will,
in turn, attend future PJSHOF
events. In hopes of attracting more
traffic to the hall’s website,
Rosenberg hired a new website
developer, who has worked
with Fortune 100 companies,
to improve the website’s search
engine optimization and
marketing, as well as incor-
porate more videos on the
homepage. “We’re going to spend some
money on having a lot more
Retired Sixers announcer Marc
Zumoff (center) hosts last year’s
Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of
Fame induction ceremony on Sept.

29, where both the 2020 and 2021
classes were honored.

Photo by Paul Joslin
video, so that if you click on
any inductee, you’re going
to actually hear from them,”
Rosenberg said.

Instead of finding a new
campus for all of PJSHOF’s
memorabilia, the hall will work
with surrounding organiza-
tions, such as the Kaiserman
JCC, to have a smaller physical
presence in multiple locations.

In its previous locations in
the Jewish Community Services
Building and the Gershman
Y, the hall attracted little foot
traffic, Rosenberg said.

Additionally, the hall’s
memorabilia is unable to be
displayed and is being housed
in a warehouse, where it is
drying off. Most of the objects
were saved and restored after
the flood, but some of the
paper artifacts were perma-
nently damaged.

Because the basement
of the Jewish Community
Services Building was not
covered by insurance, neither
were the damages to the hall’s
memorabilia. PJSHOF
launched a
GoFundMe page in September
to raise money for restoration
JEWISH EXPONENT
Following the Sept. 4 flood of the Jewish Community Services Building
in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, the surviving memorabilia from the
Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame were packed up, restored and
placed in a warehouse.
Courtesy of Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
of the memorabilia and the
rebuilding of a potential home
for the hall. Through the
GoFundMe, as well as a handful
of philanthropic gifts, including
one from businessman and
Sixers-superfan Alan Horwitz,
PJSHOF raised
$50,000. Estimated costs to fully restore
the memorabilia will cost at least
$70-80,000, Rosenberg said.

While the money was
instrumental in helping the
hall maintain a presence in
Philadelphia, Rosenberg empha-
sized that the organization needs
to become self-sufficient.

“We really have to come up
with some real revenue oppor-
tunities for ourselves and
figure out what the next few
years are going to look like,”
Rosenberg said. l
srogelberg@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0741
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM