12/11/2025
Federation Campaign for Jewish Needs Raises Record $39M
Amir Jaffa, Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s outgoing general campaign chair, stands before a presentation announcing a grand total of $39,035,018 raised in the Federation’s 2026 annual Campaign for Jewish Needs at the campaign’s closing event Dec. 8 at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland’s Mendy and Ita Klein Okawood Campus in Cleveland Heights. CJN Photo / Ellie Evans
Article reprinted with permission from Cleveland Jewish News.
by Ellie Evans
The Jewish Federation of Cleveland raised a record $39,035,018 through its 2026 Campaign for Jewish Needs to support the needs of local and global Jewish communities, which was announced to about 900 attendees at the Dec. 8 campaign closing event at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland’s Mendy and Ita Klein Okawood Campus in Cleveland Heights.
The Federation’s 2026 campaign total is $947,843 more than the 2025 campaign total, making it the highest amount raised in any of its previous Campaigns for Jewish Needs. The $39 million was solicited through 9,036 gifts representing 12,094 donors, with people giving on average 6% more than they did last year, according to a news release.
“(The campaign) is not just about me – it’s about all of us, both those in the room tonight and the entire community, standing shoulder to shoulder,” Amir Jaffa, Federation’s outgoing general campaign chair, said. “As I reflect on the last three months since the campaign kicked off Sept. 7, I keep returning to a simple idea – the annual campaign is not just about dollars, it’s about people. Every gift, every phone call and every volunteer hour translates into real impact through real human beings every single day.”
Jaffa said this year, more than 400 dedicated leaders volunteered as campaigners, “reaching out to friends and family, inspiring giving and strengthening our collective future.” He said the top three donor divisions in terms of gifts given were the young leadership division, which raised $916,216 through 1,375 gifts; the Women IN Philanthropy division, which raised $5,757,930 through 3,045 gifts; and the division of high school and college students, which raised $61,563 through 1,068 gifts.
Jaffa said Federation is “grateful for the generosity of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation,” which this year matched all new gifts dollar for dollar, as well as every additional dollar to gifts, which increased by 10% or more between Sept. 7 and Nov. 1. He also acknowledged the generosity of Brunswick Companies, which donated $1,000 to the 2026 campaign on behalf of each donor who upgraded to the next Giving Society during a campaign event.
The 2026 campaign also brings Jaffa’s two-term as campaign chair to a close. Jeffrey J. Wild, Federation’s current board chair, announced at the event that Lynne Cohen will succeed Jaffa as the 2027-28 Campaign for Jewish Needs chair.
“(Cohen) is a wonderful community leader, and has been involved in the Federation since birth,” Wild said. “She has been chair of the overseas connections committee and Israel at 75, and it’s most important in her family, who have been involved in the campaign for decades, especially her mother, of blessed memory.”
Cohen’s father, Marty Marcus, is a past board chair of the Cleveland Jewish Publication Company, and her brother, Greg Marcus, is a current member of the CJPC board of directors.
Wild also announced the event’s special guest, Eli Sharabi, an Israeli hostage survivor of the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack by Hamas. Sharabi is also the author of “Hostage,” the first memoir published by a survivor of Hamas captivity.
“Tonight, as we celebrate the strength of our community, we are also deeply aware of the pain and fragility the entire Jewish world feels today,” Wild said. “We find ourselves in a moment of profound transformation, moving slowly and painfully from helplessness toward hope. At the heart of that shift are stories of people like Eli Sharabi – stories of survival, courage and a refusal to give up.”
Sharabi shared with attendees the story of his 491 days in captivity before returning home Feb. 8, 2025, in a fireside chat moderated by Cohen, who said it was “impossible to overstate” what it meant to Federation and the event’s guests to have Sharabi present.
“(My family and I) had a very simple, peaceful and ordinary life in our community before Oct. 7, 2023,” Sharabi said.
Sharabi said he recalls members of the Hamas terrorist group “congratulating themselves, celebrating and laughing” as they took hostages out of their homes in his kibbutz, Kibbutz Be’eri, during the Be’eri massacre. He said once in captivity, he felt compelled to step up as a leader among the other men he was imprisoned with.
“I found myself for 14 months, 440 days, with very young guys half of my age,” Sharabi said. “It was unfair to expect them to have the tools and experience I had. There were many, many situations in captivity that needed managed, especially analyzing our captors. We had to choose very, very carefully how to interact with them, and we spoke a lot about that in our group. We studied their behavior every day.”
The four men, who were strangers, were confined within 10 square meters of space for over a year. This made resources, like food and pillows and blankets for sleeping, scarce, Sharabi said.
“We suffered humiliation on a daily basis,” he said. “Psychological terror, starvation, violence from time to time ... it was very complicated, and for the four of us to stay humane and civil with one another, we had to have some rules to survive together for a long time.”
Sharabi said all four of them were non-religious, but they “waited for Friday night,” and he was able to find “faith in the dark” until he was released as part of the Israel-Hamas agreement. Upon his return home, Sharabi learned his wife, Lian, and daughters, Noya and Yahel, had been murdered during the initial attack on their kibbutz.
Being in captivity ultimately led Sharabi to realize what really matters in life and gain a newfound appreciation for the “basic things in life,” he said.
“When you spend 491 days not as a free man, but needing to ask permission to go to the toilet, begging for food and begging for your life, and having so much time to think to yourself, you don’t miss material things,” Sharabi said. “You don’t care if you have a big house or a small house, you don’t care if you have a flashy car, you don’t miss your bank account, you just want five more minutes with your wife, children, brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and you would pay all of the money in the world for those five minutes.”
Allison Brandon was also recognized as the recipient of the 2025 Amb. Milton A. and Roslyn Z. Wolf Young Campaigner of the Year Award for her service as co-chair of the Young Leadership Division Campaign and of the Super Sunday Kickoff campaign event held Sept. 7.
For more information and to donate to the Jewish Federaion of Cleveland’s annual Campaign for Jewish Needs, visit jewishcleveland.org/campaign.
