Exceptional Anniversary Gift: 450 Kids Enjoy Tel Aviv’s Luna Park

For the last 29 years, Randi Luxenberg of Great Neck, N.Y., has bought rather traditional items for her husband, Arthur, to mark their anniversary—shoes, wallets, business accessories. For their 30th anniversary, however, she decided to try something very different.

“There is no receipt, this is not returnable, and no one can ever take it away,” she states in a videotaped message to her husband.

The gift also wasn’t directly geared to Arthur Luxenberg, founding partner of the New York-based law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, or their family, which includes two daughters.

Instead, she teamed up with Colel Chabad’s Widows and Orphans project in Israel—known at Chesed Menachem Mendel—to sponsor a “Fun Day” at Luna Park in Tel Aviv for hundreds of kids from single-parent homes throughout the country. The outing was held on Aug. 14, the Luxenbergs’ anniversary.

“I never realized my greatest gift to him would be to give to someone else,” Randi says in the video put together by Colel Chabad on the day of the anniversary, which incorporated videos of families and individuals enjoying the morning at the park.

According to Menachem Traxler, director of volunteering for Colel Chabad, Arthur Luxenberg “is a person who can’t stop giving. He’s always concerned with the other person. Are they comfortable? Do they have enough to eat? … He is overflowing with love.”

And that’s why the anniversary present, which allowed 450 kids to attend a fully funded trip to an amusement park, was so fitting.

Families Express Appreciation

“He was totally shocked,” says Traxler, noting that Colel Chabad representatives texted with him during the day. “He talked to one of the widows for a few minutes, and he was so grateful to be honored with this event.”

In the videotaped message, Chava, a widow with seven children, says: “We’d like to thank you very much for this wonderful day. It’s really exciting for me, for my children. … As you can imagine, losing their father was very difficult, and it’s these kinds of activities that make life that much more fun and bearable.”

Yair, a widower and the father of five children, also had words of gratitude for the Luxenbergs. Noting that his family lives in Ashdod—a town in southern Israel that has come under constant rocket fire this summer from Hamas in Gaza—he says having a day away from the war was really important.

Initially, Colel Chabad was planning to take some 50 kids to Luna Park thanks to the generosity of the Chesed and Achdut Mission, run by Rabbi Naftali Besser, a principal at Yeshiva of Flatbush in the Brooklyn, N.Y. That group had raised funds to send a busload of children to the park for a day.

When Randi Luxenberg heard about it, she decided to extend the trip to all of the children who participate in Colel Chabad’s Orphans fund—a total of 750 kids, more than half of whom attended the event.

As for Arthur Luxenberg, who dedicated the Colel Chabad soup kitchen at the Kotel Plaza by the Western Wall in Jerusalem and who is involved in many charitable programs, his wife’s choice of an anniversary present couldn’t have been more on target.

“What an amazing and appropriate gift,” he said a few days after the event. “It’s a gift that gives back and touches so many.”