More than 700 young Jewish communal leaders gathered at Sony Hall in the Paramount Hotel in New York City on Thursday, May 3, for a gala event in support of Israel’s national volunteer emergency medical services (EMS) organization, United Hatzalah.
The gala included a special performance by Café Shahor Hazak and an appearance by Rona-Lee Simon from Fauda. The event emcee was actress and comedian Renée Willett, a United Hatzalah global ambassador. Capping off the evening Miss Israel 2012 Shani Hazan sang Hatikvah, delighting the crowd with her talent.
United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs Murad Aliyan and Gavy Friedson were both in attendance and shared their experiences. Aliyan, who began the organization’s Muslim chapter, now sits on the board of the organization supervising the Muslim volunteers. Friedson is the Atlanta and Washington, D.C.-area regional representative and had just returned from a week in Israel where he treated more than 120 people in less than 10 days.
Both Murad and Friedson, as well as the organization’s founder and president, Eli Beer, regaled the crowd with descriptions of the organization’s effectiveness thanks to its network of more than 5,000 volunteer first-responders. Beer thanked the young leaders for their attendance and support.
“Today on the Jewish calendar we celebrated a respite from mourning, mourning that was caused by senseless death. The young leaders who attended this gala event are helping us prevent more senseless deaths in Israel by helping us reach patients faster and save more lives. I wish to thank everyone who came out to the event and supported us in this most important mission,” said Beer.
Rose Danielle Spiegel, the co-founder of LifeShareCare, developed a new model for young leadership initiatives with the organization and spoke about her experience at the gala event. “For me, the gala was a celebration that the dream we envisioned came full circle. No matter the leadership consisting solely of volunteers, over the last year we planned and built a 50-person leadership, threw monthly intimate invite-only comped events between our three neighborhood boards, built an app to further engage the scaled community, and now organized a gala that hosted almost 800 people. In doing so, over this past year we’ve touched the hearts of thousands of handpicked young professionals and have raised about $1.5 million.”
Spiegel said that she hopes to keep working hard to help the organization succeed. “My goal is for Eli Beer to focus solely on delivering quality fast-response emergency care. His backing should simply magically appear, the young leadership acting as his wand. He plays his part and it’s our duty to play ours. Future leaders of the community shouldn’t only be counted upon for what they are going to do; we should be counted upon for what we can do right now. I’m so humbled and honored to have steered that ship and to have built a family of lifesaving.”
Gala Chair Ami Pomeranc, who together with his family runs a company named Sixty Hotels, also spoke about how he intends to move forward with his efforts to support the organization’s mission of saving lives in Israel. “This gala event set the stage for me as a tremendous opportunity using all my might and influence to take UH to new levels. This platform will be the backbone of the continuing lifesaving efforts that will stem from this evening and save countless lives.”
The organization had a goal of raising more than $1 million from the event, a goal which they achieved with final donations that came in over the weekend. “We have proven to ourselves and to young leaders everywhere that we don’t have to wait for tomorrow to begin making a difference. We can do it right now. The young leaders who attended the gala showed us this and more. With these people leading our communities, our future looks bright,” Beer concluded.