Ladies and Gentlemen, distinguished Rabbis, dear friends, and guests.
Welcome to the Fourth Annual Charity Ball of the Russian Jewish Community of Massachusetts!

Over the past four years, the RJCF Charity Ball has become the super bowl of the Russian Jewish Community and has gained national prominence. The Russian Jewish Community Foundation was born, when a small group of individuals simply had the desire to do good.

Our goal was to have an event where we would have a good time together, enjoy each other's company while raising a few dollars to give back to our community and to Israel. The Charity Ball was our main fundraising event.

But in the short period of time since then, something phenomenal has been achieved.
From a foundation that started off with a few individuals purely wanting to do something good came an entity of unlimited strength.

We acquired partners such as the Jewish National Fund and the Zionist House.
The RJCF has become a respected organization that does much more than organizing charity balls. It became an institution with immeasurable power.
Today, the Charity Ball is simply a celebration of the past year's accomplishments.

The Jewish word tzedaka is translated into English as charity.
But it isn’t a very accurate translation. While charity is something that we can choose to do, tzedaka is something that we have to do.
G-d gave us resources, so that we would utilize them to their greatest potential.

Since the Boston visit of the children of Sderot a year and a half ago, the Russian Jewish Community raised over $150,000. This year the RJCF ran a camp in the Golan Heights for 52 kids. For two weeks these children had a chance to forget about their daily life under kassam rockets.

The money, we raised, also went to building a bomb-shelter in Sderot and an after-school program. The entire Russian-Jewish community of Boston took part in this effort.
Our elderly, led by people like Nach Vysoky, Dusya Karpa-chevskaya and Aron Kofman, collected thousands of dollars towards the Sderot Project.

Svetlana Shaknovich and Nellie Geifman of Brookline, and Irina Shakhnovich and her family of Lexington ^ organized fundraisers in their homes. The Russian Jewish Elite Academy raised money for the Sderot Project during the children’s Purim festival. Donations came in denominations varying from just a few dollars to thousands from as far as Lake Oswego in Oregon from Joel Kwart-ler, who donated part of his Bar Mitzvah money to the RJCF Children of Sderot Fund.

Our American partners, Boston Israel Action Committee of Newton and the Zionist House joined our mission. A true visionary and a personal friend -- Zvi Bar Yam, who saw very early on the true potential of our community deserves a special “thank you”.

Yet, with all the efforts being put into fundraising, we realized that money alone can't solve the problem. We saw how Sderot residents were temporarily moved to five star hotels, just to be brought back to kassam fire in a few days. We realized that in order to execute our plans we had to put together a top notch operation.

None of it would've been possible without the RJCF's staff and partners on the ground there in Israel. Here they are: Natasha Pona-yatova, Sveta Shetrit and Rav Zeev Pizem.
Former Bostonian, Boris Youssin, currently a resident of Ma'ale Adumim, made many trips from Jerusalem to Sderot and spent countless hours helping effectively monitor our projects.

And of course our Bostonians, the RJCF Board Members, Inessa Rifkin and Greg Margolin took the risk of going to an embattled city. Greg went to Sderot during some of the heaviest kassam fire days to see the shelter we built, and to morally support the people there. Newton residents Sasha and Leonid Raiz spent ten days in Sderot meeting our partners, learning about current projects, and starting new ones.

But this summer something happened that sets apart this year from all others.
Six young people from our community chose to work with children of Sderot this summer.

They could’ve done anything they wanted to: traveled, worked or taken valuable internships.

But instead, they chose to spend their summer being counselors for some very difficult children.

They had to raise $2,000 each to be able to travel to Israel. They lost 10 lbs on average during their stay in Israel, and they came home changed. They created a different future for those children.

And they also created a future for the RJCF. The RJCF torch is now being carried forward by the young generation. We are so proud of you.

Locally, here in Boston in 2008, the RJCF made grants to many worthy causes.
Some of them were to the JCHE to hire a Russian-English translator, to Shaloh House to help finance the 2009 Pesach celebrations, to the Cultural Center “Makor”, and to the radio program "Jewish Voice" that carried live weekly interviews with Rabbi Pinchas Polonsky, a resident of Jerusalem who answers questions on Judaism.

Now, as I mention individuals and organizations that helped the RJCF in its efforts,
I should mention the most important people in this room. And they are – you. Yes.
You, my friends. Without your help and support nothing like this would be possible.

Let me share with you a quote from the letter sent to me by David Pilavin, a former combat soldier in the Israeli Army whose college tuitions are paid by the RJCF and the Zionist House:

“When I was released from the Army, I didn't know what to do with my life: I wanted to study but I didn't have any money. My Father was handicapped and he couldn't help me. Then, I discovered the scholarship program offered to demobilized soldiers who served in Combat-Units. It gave me the hope to be able to make a change in my life. I thank you for your support. I thank you from the bottom of my heart!”

I would like to join David and say ”thank you” to all of you!
We should be very proud of our many accomplishments, yet Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Rebbe, explains that being satisfied with our lot applies exclusively to material needs and wants, but in matters of spiritual growth we can never be satisfied with our past accomplishments. We must constantly be pushing ourselves to go higher and to do more.

Dear friends, let us NOT look back and say we have done enough. Let us look forward and ask what more can we do to help our brethren?

I will end with the words of President Ronald Reagan: “There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress ^ except those we ourselves erect.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, the sky is the limit to what we can accomplish together.

Ary Rotman, RJCF President