News & Impact

The LGBT Fund permanently endows Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ LGBT Program, which offers targeted services for the Bay Area’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and their family members. A former JFCS Board member and chair of our LGBT Leadership Task Force, which advises the agency on strategies to grow and strengthen our innovative LGBT program, established this named continuity fund in loving memory of Stephen G. Perger and Donald Yaquinto. By doing so, she has permanently endowed a JFCS program that recognizes and addresses the specific needs of the area’s LGBT community, especially its Jewish component. If you… Read More

The Extend Our Happiness Fund assists people with food, weight, and body-image issues and/or eating disorders. Joan Barnes and Steve Strauss married in 1996 and started this fund in honor of their union and the happiness it brought them.  A longtime JFCS friend and a former member of our Board of Directors, Joan had recovered from a life-limiting and -threatening eating disorder. Their named continuity fund was established to help others struggling with these same issues. Within a year of their wedding, Steve began to experience strokes, which became increasingly serious over the course of a few years. Eventually, his… Read More

Annual distributions from the Mae Mandl Scholarship Fund are used to ensure that young people traveling or studying in Israel have the opportunity to explore the country, its people, and their Jewish identity in greater depth, as Mae was able to on her own visits. The Mae Mandl Scholarship Fund was established by a former JFCS employee in loving memory of her husband, Max Mandl, and also of her parents and two younger sisters, who didn’t survive Hitler’s regime.  Soon after immigrating to the United States in 1941, Mae Mandl was hired by the Jewish Family Service Agency, one of… Read More

Max and Jacob’s Toy and Food Fund helps to bring joy and a sense of being welcomed into a caring community to Russian emigre families new to the Bay Area. Max and Jacob’s Toy and Food Fund is a joint effort of Marin-based Marion Weinreb, the child of Holocaust survivors and a consultant for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and her two sons. Marion, a firm believer in “giving back,” does this in a variety of ways, including through her named continuity funds at JFCS. As one might guess from its name, Max and Jacob’s Toy and Food Fund… Read More

The Auntie Irene Hannah Rubens Girls Can Be Anything Fund provides assistance—both financial and practical—to enable women, especially single mothers and women in transition, to fulfill their ambitions and establish careers. Emphasis is given to women who pursue nontraditional careers, providing opportunities that might otherwise be unavailable to them. Barbara Meislin created her named continuity fund in December 1993 to honor the memory of her beloved aunt. Irene Rubens inspired her niece to follow her dreams and to help other women do the same. Barbara fondly remembers Irene, born in 1903, as a well-before-her-time feminist who had her own checking… Read More

J Weekly by Dan Pine Lawrence Goldberg fought hard for the politics and principles he believed in. One of those principles was civility, which explains why he had friends of all persuasions. An attorney, politcal operative and tireless Jewish community activist, Goldberg died of cancer on Jan. 29 in his Tiburon home. He was 80. Read More from J Weekly… Read More