By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

Super Sunday in the Lehigh Valley began on February 1 with a message of relief and hope. “Today we can finally say the words we’ve been waiting for: All of the hostages are home,” announced Tama Tamarkin, co-chair of the local Run for Their Lives weekly walk-run in support of hostages Hamas held since its October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

Miriam Zager, fellow Run for Their Lives co-chair of Tamarkin and Naomi Schachter, read from a letter written by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersch was murdered in captivity. Her daily morning prayers had included a plea for the return of the final hostage remaining in Gaza, Israel Defense Forces Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili. After Gvili’s body was sent home on January 26, Goldberg-Polin wrote, “But this morning—on Tuesday, January 27—I stopped.”

“The clock stopped,” said Schachter, referring to the countdown clock that had kept ticking for over two years to mark the number of days the hostages were gone. “The healing begins.” 

Moving forward, Goldberg-Polin wondered how she could heal? Zager read, “It can be done.”

With some prayers and the singing of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah,” the Super Sunday full of events moved forward. Callers took to phones to raise funds for the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley’s 2026 Campaign for Jewish Needs. By day’s end, over 100 callers closed 60 campaign gifts for a total of almost $52,000. 

Meanwhile, hundreds of community members came through the JCC doors to unite in shared purpose, learn valuable skills, catch up with friends, engage in enlightening discussions, and lend their efforts to helping the Federation help people who need it. 

Rabbi Moshe Kurtz of Congregation Sons of Israel brought together PJ Library kids and parents in a rear corner of the Kline Auditorium. The group welcomed each member with song. “We say shalom to Shai,” they sang to one of the kids. “Thank you for coming today. We’re so excited you have come to play.” Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerck and U.S. Congressman Ryan Mackenzie read books aloud. 

A large contingent brought together by the Federation’s Women’s Philanthropy gathered in another corner to pack tote bags with personal care essentials to be distributed to older adults by Jewish Family Service. State Representative Mike Schlossberg and State Senator Nick Miller joined the effort to fill dozens of totes. So did a bunch of students from the Muhlenberg College Hillel led by Hillel director Ira Blum. 

The Federation’s Partnership2Gether committee held a workshop featuring the two Lehigh Valley artists who visited our partner community of Yoav, Israel, last November to demonstrate and teach their creative processes to our friends there. Patrick Conboy, a woodworker, and Marla Duran, a clothing designer and maker, told the audience a bit about that visit.

“As my plane touched down in Israel, I was greeted by a double rainbow,” Conboy said in a video he played, alluding to the good things to come during their visit. Duran recalled, “The kids and the adults were a lot of fun to work with.”

“Now,” Duran continued, “we’re going to try something downstairs.” With that, the group moved to a room where she guided them in making their own tie-dyes. 

In the JCC Board Room, Lehigh Valley regional security advisor Tim Brooks taught a class in countering active threats. Developed for faith-based institutions and houses of worship by the Secure Community Network, which works to keep synagogues, Jewish agencies, and the Jewish community safe, the training program instructed the class in what to do in response to an active threat of violence.

Super Sunday ended with a screening of “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire,” the 2025 documentary about the late Holocaust survivor and how his experiences shaped his life and his Jewish faith. A discussion with Michael Chomet, producer and editor of the film, followed. 

Footage and photos from archives and from the Wiesel family lend memorable imagery to the film’s exploration of how the prisoner of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the memoir “Night,” became an influential moral voice of the post-WWII era. “We wanted to keep it very personal and have Elie tell his story in his own voice,” Chomet said.

Larry Glickstein introduced the screening, the first-ever event sponsored by the Temple Beth El Glickstein and Marin Holocaust Memorial Fund. He stressed the importance of passing down Holocaust stories to ensure that younger generations know what happened. “We feel that we’re doing everything we can together to make sure we keep this alive,” he said.

Among the film’s highlights, confirmed by Chomet and some audience members, were the scenes from an English class at a Newark charter school where the inner-city students read and studied “Night” over five weeks. Chomet didn’t originally like the idea of filming the class. “I was against doing it because I didn’t think 13-year-olds would know anything and be expressive,” he said. 

The teens thoroughly surprised him. Watching the film, it’s fair to say they sounded like college students discussing scenes from the book, considering Wiesel’s profound insights, and expressing sharp perceptions of their own after delving into and pondering the book as a whole.

Wiesel’s wife, Marion, who appears in the film frequently, spent some time with the students. They all got along famously. “There was a real love fest there,” said Chomet. 

One Super Sunday audience member commenting on how impressive the students were wondered whether the Holocaust remained on the curriculum in schools today. “It’s still being taught,” said Shari Spark, event moderator and director of the Jewish Federation’s Holocaust Resource Center. “Here in the Lehigh Valley, it’s being taught in the seventh and eighth grade.”

Shortly before Marion died in February 2025, she got to see a screening of the final film. Chomet said he talked with her immediately afterward, and she was impressed and moved. “It made her fall in love with her husband all over again,” he said. 

If you’re inspired to help the Jewish Federation keep community-building events like Super Sunday on the calendar into the future, while helping the Federation fill Jewish needs all over the world, especially here in the Lehigh Valley, contact Aaron Gorodzinsky, Federation director of development, at [email protected].