STATEN ISLAND JEWISH COMMUNITY'S WALK-A-THON RAISES $12,000 FOR THE ISRAELI VICTIMS OF TERRORISM*

Thanks to a Willowbrook teen-ager and a partnership of many of Staten Island's synagogues, the borough's Jewish community on October 13, 2002 raised more than $12,000 for Israel. Despite the fine mist falling from the sky and the deep puddles everywhere underfoot, a walk-a-thon around the grounds of the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield attracted about 250 walkers.

The idea for the event came from Aviva Pearlman, a 17-year-old senior at Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Queens. After taking part in a walk-a-thon for Israel last year in Livingston, N.J., she thought it would be a good idea to have such an event on the Island. Bolstered by the confidence she gained at a leadership conference at her school, Miss Pearlman brought the idea to the Israel Awareness chairman at her synagogue, Young Israel of Staten Island in Willowbrook. "I decided I really wanted to do it," she said. In June, when a Long Islander who founded the Israel Emergency Solidarity Fund, which provides money and services to the families of those killed or wounded in terrorist attacks during the last two years of nearly ceaseless violence in Israel, made an appeal to Islanders, plans for the walk-a-thon started to gel.

Registration for the Walk-a-thon (pictures to the left and below):

*The text was taken from the article by Leslie Palma-Simoncek in the Staten Island Advance, October 14, 2002