Jewish National Fund Luncheon Honoring Supreme Court Justice Jules Spodek

Jules Spodek Luncheon podium

R&E member Deborah E. Riegel was the keynote speaker at the Jewish National Fund luncheon honoring Supreme Court Justice Jules Spodek, who died October of 2019. Riegel, the co-chair of JFN’s first Law and Justice Tour bringing lawyers and law enforcement personnel to Isreael, described the impact of JNF and explained their work goes beyond planting trees. “I knew JNF when I was a kid, from the tree certificates and blue boxes,” Reigel said. “That’s all I knew about it until I went to Israel at 14. I remember being horrified that I couldn’t find my trees that I donated and that’s where I learned that in a very real way, they are all our trees…. The work is critical in making sure that ‘never again’ is real. Never again will we as Jewish people not have someplace to go.”

Jules Spodek Luncheon Group Photo

(Pictured from left: Rabbi Hanniel Levenson, Hon. Ellen Spodek, Deborah Riegel and Todd Sandler, the Brooklyn director of the Jewish National Fund)