Decennial Friendship Circle Dinner Lauds Teen Volunteers

An estimated 900 people, including politicians, prominent business leaders and one professional football player, descended on the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in downtown Newark to celebrate the decennial anniversary of the state’s branch of the Friendship Circle, a Chabad-Lubavitch program that pairs teenage volunteers with children with special needs.

Among the guest list at the March 2 gala was State Senate Pres. Stephen Sweeney, former State Sen. Bill Gormley, former U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Martin Silverstein, and New York Jets left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson. But judging from the speeches and tributes – including an emotional video documenting the changes among many of the Friendship Circle of New Jersey’s “special friends” – the focus of the evening was clearly the volunteers and the children they’ve befriended.

“Here we are, many of us not even old enough to drive, and we’re affecting people’s lives in ways they will never, ever, forget,” Jennifer Mandelbaum, 15, president of the Friendship Circle chapter at Newark Academy in Livingston N.J. “We’re already learning that true happiness doesn’t necessarily come from what you get, but from what you give.

“Anyone who thinks that you have to wait until you’re a fully-grown adult to make a real difference,” continued Mandelbaum, who was honored with her parents, Nathan and Sheree Mandelbaum, “isn’t familiar with the Friendship Circle.”

According to figures circulated at the event, in its 10 years of striving to make “a world in which people with special needs and their families experience acceptance, inclusion and friendship as contributing members of society,” the Friendship Circle has drawn on the efforts of some 3,400 teenagers. Collectively, they’ve spent 35,000 hours of time annually with children with special needs.

Other honorees included community leaders Betty Pantirer and Howard Schwartz.

At the end of her speech, Mandelbaum called up her friend, 10-year-old Danielle Sass, to represent those touched by the project. Susan Sass, the girl’s mother, later described how important the appearance was for her.

“Before we left the house, Danielle kept looking in the mirror and telling me ‘Mom, I look so pretty, just like a princess,’ ” said Sass. “My daughter is never going to be on the championship basketball team or receive accolades for academics, but tonight she felt like a princess and that is indescribable.”

The highlight of the evening was the presentation of “Mindsets,” a professionally-produced film that brought tears to many attendees’ eyes. Its theme was how interactions through the Friendship Circle have changed how people with special needs are viewed by their communities, peers, families and themselves.

After the dinner, Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, president of the women’s philanthropy division of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey asserted that under the direction of Rabbi Zalman and Toba Grossbaum, the Friendship Circle – part of a network that includes more than 70 similar initiatives around the world – has “changed how the entire MetroWest community thinks about children with special needs and their families.”

“An entire generation of young people … have been touched,” she wrote on her blog, “and now think differently about what it means to be a part of a community [that] includes people with special needs.”

In his remarks, Zalman Grossbaum focused on the future.

“We’ve come a long way in these ten years. We’ve opened some incredible new doors and have achieved some truly remarkable things,” he said. “But let us not for a moment get so caught up in how far we’ve come that we lose sight of how far we have yet to go. Let us not rest on our laurels, for our work has only just begun.”