The Associated Jewish Charities and Welfare Fund of Baltimore and the local Board of Jewish Education, and the Jewish Family Service of the Allentown Jewish Federation have been named as the 1980 recipients of the William Shroder Award, conferred annually by the Council of Jewish Federations for outstanding community programming.
The winning Federations were honored during the five-day CJF General Assembly which ends Sunday. The CJF’s highest designation of accomplishment in innovative programming, the Shroder Awards, recognize superior initiative and achievement in the advancement of social welfare by voluntary agencies under Jewish auspices in the United States and Canada. Dr. Sydney Busis of Pittsburgh chaim the CJF Shroder Award Committee.
The Baltimore Board of Jewish Education received a Shroder Award in the Large City category for Home Start, a Jewish education program involving parents and their young children (ages 3-7) in a series of Jewish learning experiences in their own homes.
The program consists of a series of successive mailings to the children and their parents in the weeks preceding the Jewish holidays. The holiday pockets include stories, poetry, songs, cassettes with holiday music and narration, games, handicrafts, cooking and baking activities.
Praised by its participants, the project has resulted in an increased enrollment in the Jewish schools and has also given the congregations access to moiling lists of unaffiliated families, thus spurring new outreach programs. In addition, the American Association for Jewish Education has launched a Home Start Program in 15 communities — 14 American and one Canadian — to foster increased participation in observances of Jewish holidays.
NURSING CARE FOR JEWISH ELDERLY
The Lehigh Valley Jewish Nursing Home Project won a Shroder Award in the Small City category for the Jewish Family Service of the Allentown Federation. The program has provided nursing care for the Jewish elderly in one central non-sectarian facility with Jewish social and religious services, thereby helping the residents to maintain ties with Judaism and the Jewish community.
Volunteers celebrate Jewish holidays at the Home, and rabbis from Allentown and the neighboring communities of Bethlehem and Easton visit the residents on a regularly scheduled basis. The Jewish Family Service staff person also visits weekly.
In addition to bringing a new dimension to the lives of the Jewish residents, the program has heightened the community’s sensitivity to the needs of the Jewish elderly. It is anticipated that as the number of Jewish residents in the Home increases, Federation will expand the program to include the construction of a kosher kitchen and a Jewish chapel.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
