COMMUNITY NEWS
The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia mobilizes
financial and volunteer resources to address the
communities’ most critical priorities locally, in Israel and
around the world.

Learning Leadership Skills Today. Changing the World Tomorrow.

THE JEWISH FEDERATION of Greater
Philadelphia helps teens develop their leader-
ship skills in a way that draws a connection
between Jewish tradition and contemporary
issues. The Diller Teen Fellowship is an incred-
ible one-year leadership training experience
for 10th and 11th graders that aims to build the
next generation of committed Jewish leaders.

Through monthly leadership programming,
Diller inspires and empowers a global network
of teens by equipping them with the skills,
confidence, knowledge and Jewish values they
need to help create a better world. Fellows in
the Philadelphia-area cohort build meaningful
connections with teens in the cohort’s partner
on Jewish values. The Philadelphia cohort
made a grant to Pathways to Housing PA, an
organization focused on empowering people
with disabilities to improve their housing
stability, achieve better health and reclaim
their lives. Local teen fellows have been partic-
ularly interested in learning about Jewish
perspectives on racial justice, antisemitism,
and the community response to COVID. The
program has responded with speakers from
ADL, Avodah and a clergy panel from our
local Philly community.

While the fellowship program is a one-year
commitment, there are more than 4,000 active
Diller alumni around the globe, including a
The Diller Teen
Fellows 2019-2020
cohort’s Leadership
Shabbaton Courtesy of Darren
Rabinowitz city of Herzilya — including two exchange
opportunities, between Philadelphia and
Herzilya — culminating in a three-week
summer experience that includes the Global
Diller Congress with more than 650 fellows
from across six continents.

This past year, Diller programming was
moved online due to the pandemic. New virtual
programming included cohorts becoming
community changemakers through local grant-
making. The Diller Teen Fellows Tikkun Olam
Grants launched over the summer, a collabora-
tion between Diller Teen Fellows, the Helen Diller
Family Foundation and Jewish Teen Funders
Network. Cohorts researched local needs and
organizations to build consensus about the
greatest impact they could have as a group.

Given the economic and health impact of
COVID-19 and the fight for racial justice and
other social issues, this was an important time
to explore the leadership skills necessary to
build a commitment to lifelong giving based
20 JANUARY 21, 2021
growing cohort here at home. The Philadelphia
Diller Alumni Committee is focused on
creating opportunities for local alumni to
continue to engage with Jewish learning, social
action projects and mentorship opportunities
for current Diller Teen Fellows.

The Philadelphia Diller Teen Fellowship
program is funded through the Helen Diller
Foundation and the Jewish Federation of
Greater Philadelphia through various grants
including the Bernard and Etta Weinberg
Family Fund.

Do you know a Jewish teen in 10th or 11th
grade that wants to step up, lead their commu-
nity and repair the world? Learn more about
how the amazing teen in your life can join with
more than 600 teens from around the world
as a Diller Teen Fellow. Recruitment for the
2021-2020 cohort will begin in late spring. For
more information, visit jewishphilly.org/diller
or contact Diller Teen Coordinator Darren
Rabinowitz at drabinowitz@jewishphilly.org.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Diller Teen
Fellowship a
Game Changer
for Greater
Philadelphia Teens
Meet Naomi, a Diller Teen Fellows Alumna
“MY MOM IS FROM ST. LUCIA and my dad was born
and raised here in the U.S. so I identify as a Jew of color. I
live in West Philadelphia and attend The Episcopal Academy
where I’m currently one of a small number of Jewish
students in the high school.

While the teachers and school curriculum has given me a
lot of support in exploring some of my intellectual connec-
tion to Jewish faith and in looking comparatively at a range
of religions, I still miss the sense of Jewish community and
Jewish spiritual practice. Luckily I have been able to interact
with other Jewish kids through my synagogue and the Diller
Teen Fellows program.

Thanks to Diller, I’ve learned to embrace my unique
identity, support my exploration as a Jew of Color and work
with my peers to collectively make a difference in the world
around us.

Today I hold a deeper connection to my roots and for the
first time ever have meaningful interactions with other Jews
of Color from my community. I am so grateful to Diller and
the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia for all that it
has made possible for me.”
Courtesy of Naomi
Diller Teen Fellowship
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



C ommunity / mazel tovs
B I RTH
E N GAG E ME N T
SYDNEY MO SOLLBERGER
THOMAS-SCHECTER Izzy Sollberger of Philadelphia
and Grace and Lilly Sollberger
of Blue Bell announce the birth
of their baby sister, Sydney Mo,
born on June 18, 2020.

Sharing in the simcha
are her parents Shawn and
Kimberly Sollberger
of Philadelphia and grandparents
Marvin and Diana Lenetsky of
Bensalem and Jim Sollberger of
Ravenna, Ohio.

Sydney Mo is named in
loving memory of her paternal great-grandfather, Moe Lenetsky.

Paul and Hope Thomas of Lafayette Hill and Herbert and Linda
Schecter of Narberth announce the engagement of their children,
Rebekah Lauren Thomas and Devin Blake Schecter.

Rebekah is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island,
where she earned a doctor of pharmacy degree with a Spanish
minor. She is a pharmacy manager at Walgreens.

Devin is a graduate of Delaware Valley University, where he
earned a bachelor’s degree in biology. He is a research scientist at
Larimar Therapeutics.

Photo by Hannah Thomas
Rebekah is the granddaughter of Richard and Harriet Solomon,
Alice Thomas Parry and the late William Thomas. Devin is the
grandson of the late Bettye Schwartz-Kaplan, Harry Schwartz and Doris and Max Schecter.

Sharing in the couple’s happiness are Rebekah’s sisters, Hannah, Abigail and Sarah.

A May 2022 wedding is planned.

Photo by Kimberly Sollberger
COMMUNITYBRIEFS Alan Horwitz to Donate $5M for Philadelphia
Youth Basketball Facility
PHILADELPHIA YOUTH
BASKETBALL announced that it will repurpose a 100,000-square-
foot industrial building in Philadelphia’s Nicetown
neighborhood to be named The Alan Horwitz “Sixth
Man” Center after its lead donor.

Horwitz, 76, the Philadelphia real estate developer
behind Campus Apartments and a Philadelphia 76ers
superfan, is contributing $5 million as part of a $25
million capital campaign.

The facility, which will become PYB’s new home,
will feature seven basketball courts, five classrooms, a
health and wellness oasis, a financial literacy workshop,
a civic dialogue arena, a healthy food commissary and
a retail shop, a youth leadership and multimedia lab,
a Philadelphia Basketball Hall of Fame, conferencing
pods and administrative space for PYB staff.

“PYB’s coach-mentors and staff team leaders are
top-notch and have devoted themselves to creating
opportunities for kids to achieve academically and
intellectually, socially and emotionally, athletically
and civically,” Horwitz said. “Our center will be an
absolute game changer at a time when our city and
thousands of young people need a safe and positive
place to learn and develop.”
PYB, which was founded in 2015 as a youth and
community development organization, will break
Holocaust Continued from Page 9
figured would serve him well as
an interviewer were not as trans-
latable as he thought. For one, his
last name hadn’t been an obstacle
to establishing a rapport with
subjects in his other jobs, but now
he had to assure some survivors
that he was indeed Jewish.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM ground on the center late this year and will open its
doors 12-14 months later. It will be open seven days a
week from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

PYB uses basketball as a tool to surround young
people with culturally relatable coach-mentors who
come from the same neighborhoods and circumstances
that they do to help young people find voice, value and
visibility as they navigate their formative years.

Its six core programs are a middle school partner-
ship, collegiate summer camp series, the female-based
HoopHers, an older youth program called I Am
Because We Are, learning pods and a leadership
development academy.

KleinLife Awarded $50K Grant for Holocaust
Survivor Support
The Jewish Federations of North America’s Center
on Aging And Trauma awarded KleinLife a $50,000
grant to be paid over two years for Holocaust survivor
support services.

The award follows a 2018 grant of $150,000 that
allowed KleinLife to establish its Revive program.

Kleinlife serves 220 Holocaust survivors from
the former Soviet Union with a variety of health,
wellness, nutrition and socialization services that
focus on improving participants’ physical, psycholog-
ical, social and spiritual wellness.

KleinLife said in a news release that in a recent
The preparation was
intense, sending Schmidt
running off to read books on,
say, the Romanian experience
of the Holocaust in 1941. There
also was a difference between
the goal of his previous inter-
views, conducted to gather
information that Schmidt
would transmit to an audience,
and the act of recording testi-
mony, which required him to
be less visible.

He was instructed to react
as little possible to the story
he was told, even to refrain
from providing all but the
bare minimum of comfort
when a survivor began to cry.

Interviews took anywhere
from four to 12 hours. One
time, Schmidt had to interview
a neighbor; he’d never even
known that she was a survivor.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Revive program evaluation, 86% of participants
said they experienced an improvement in physical
wellness and 93% said they had improved their
psychological wellness.

KleinLife Hosts Virtual Dance Program for
Holocaust Remembrance Day
“Maybe Even Higher,” a virtual dance program
inspired by children’s artwork from the Theresienstadt
concentration camp in the Czech Republic during
World War II, will be shown at 2 p.m. on Jan. 27 by
KleinLife as part of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Philadelphia dance company The Artist House will
perform the original choreography for the program,
which is set to Johannes Brahms’ waltzes.

“The show is dedicated to Jewish and other artists
who refused to shed their humanity and life’s work
in the face of extermination and found dignity and
humor in theatre in the pits of hell,” dance company
Artistic Director Asya Zlatina said.

The four-part program will be presented in English
and Russian.

To view the program, register and receive a Zoom
link from Mariya Keselman-Mekler, KleinLife’s
counseling and program manager and certified art
therapist at 215-698-7300, ext. 185, or by emailing
mkeselman@kleinlife.org. l
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
Though he felt the
profound impact of what he
heard long after his time as an
interviewer concluded, it was
not until 2014 that he began
to speak publicly about the
experience. It took him three
months to write the speech’s
first version, but when it was
finished, Schmidt knew it was
ready to be heard.

Since that address, Schmidt
has regularly spoken to Jewish
groups and non-Jewish groups
for free. Though he cherishes
the special silence that comes
with the attention his lecture
is given during an in-person
event, Schmidt feels fortunate
that the pandemic hasn’t kept
him from telling his story. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JANUARY 21, 2021
21