The Jewish Home at Rockleigh was awarded the Jewish Programming Award by the Association of Jewish Aging Services for their “Linking the Generations” program bringing young people together with seniors to learn about leadership.
The Jewish Home, which runs several programs bringing together young and old around technology and shared knowledge, partnered with The Frisch School for the awarded program. Called “Linking the Generations: Training the Next Generation of Jewish Communal Leaders,” the program grew out of a meeting between six student council representatives from Frisch and Jewish Home residents—(the late) George Hantgan, founder of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey and the Englewood JCC (now the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly); Lillian Marion, a long-time member of Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley; and Allen Nydick, former director of major gifts at the Jewish Federation.
Mr. Nydick told the group how the Bergen County community raised $1.6 million in the 1980s to help bring Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Ms. Marion talked about her father’s role in the Jewish Legion, which fought with the British in 1915 to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. Mr. Hantgan related that when he was president of the student council at Brooklyn College, he wrote to first lady Eleanor Roosevelt about the lack of student jobs, and thereby had a hand in the passage of the National Youth Act.
Jessica Adler, a 12th-grader from Teaneck and one of the heads of the Frisch Chesed (Kindness) Society, said that Mr. Hantgan, who is 98, also revealed that he played an indirect role in the founding of the Frisch School in 1972. The school was built on land donated by philanthropist Alfred Frisch.
“George told us that Mr. Frisch was asking him what to do with his money and George told him he should make a high school,” Jessica said.
The Jewish Home at Rockleigh Russ Berrie Home for Jewish Living is a state-of-the-art, kosher, skilled nursing facility offering exceptional care to our long-term-care residents, those suffering from dementia, and those in need of respite care, hospice care, sub-acute care, speech, physical and occupational inpatient/outpatient rehabilitation.
The mission of the Jewish Home Family and its constituent organizations is to provide the very best care, service and guidance for the benefit of our elderly and their families, at home and at our facilities, now and into the future, regardless of race, religion or financial ability, consistent with our Jewish traditions and values.
