It was the joy that a particular JFCS program brought to her father’s life that prompted Joyce Newstat, along with her spouse, Susan Lowenberg, to establish a Named Endowment Fund in his loving memory. The Seymour Newstat Endowment Fund makes distributions each year to support the Annual Seymour Newstat Passover Seders for participants of JFCS’ Café by the Bay program for Holocaust survivors. Joyce recalls that her father did not talk much about his life during World War II—which included time in a work camp, from which he’d later escape. As he aged, he began to share more about his… Read More

Philanthropist Bill Lowenberg z”l, who survived Auschwitz, spent much of his life educating children, grandchildren, and countless others about the lessons of the Holocaust. Two years after his death, the JFCS Holocaust Center renamed its survivor speaker program as the William J. Lowenberg Speakers Bureau, in tribute to his legacy of courage and leadership. “It was very important to my father that young people understand the Holocaust and that they never forget. He saw the impact that eyewitness testimonies had on students,” says Susan Lowenberg, Bill’s daughter. In tribute to her father, Susan and her spouse, Joyce Newstat, dedicated… Read More

The Mitzi and Adolf Wilner Memorial Fund was established by Susan Wilner Golden in loving memory of her parents. Adolf and Mitzi were married in Lvov, Poland, on November 28, 1944, having survived the last few years of the war together. Adolf had immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and returned to Poland in the summer of 1939 to attend a family wedding. With the outbreak of the war, he was caught in Poland, unable to return to Tel Aviv. During the war, Adolf was hidden in the basement of a home where Mitzi worked serving meals to German soldiers who… Read More

For George Maisels and his wife, Lois, both of blessed memory, caring about others began at home in the Bay Area. George ran a liquor store in the Mission District of San Francisco for many years with his brother, Larry. When he and Lois decided they wanted to leave a legacy for the Jewish community, they chose Jewish Family and Children’s Services to receive a substantial part of their estate, dedicating it to establish the George and Lois Maisels Perpetual Endowment Fund. The couple thoughtfully designated the fund to support domestic violence survivor services; housing assistance for seniors; immigration legal… Read More

The S. Portia Steele Memorial Scholarship for Jewish Women provides an annual scholarship for qualified Jewish women pursuing an academic degree in creative writing, English, or journalism. When Portia Steele died in 2005 her husband, Dennis Steele, chose to memorialize his beloved friend and wife of 40 years by establishing a Named Endowment Fund at JFCS in her honor. During her writing career in Burlingame, California, Portia was the founder and instructor of Women on Writing©, a seminar for published writers sponsored by the Daly City Senior Center. Between 1992 and 2002, as the Center’s facilitator, she helped scores of… Read More

The Rabin Family Memorial Endowment Fund helps wherever the community’s needs are the greatest, today and in years to come. The Rabin family originally established their named endowment fund in 2004 in loving memory of their mother, Anne Simon Rabin. When Anne’s daughter Cathy died in 2007, the fund’s name and description were modified to memorialize her as well. Anne Simon was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in 1919. Her first husband, Murray Weiss, died during World War II, leaving Anne with an infant daughter. Showing remarkable courage, Anne took her daughter cross-country to California and started anew. Several… Read More