The 2021 Annual Campaign is underway with the goal of again raising more than $4 million and surpassing the previous year’s achievement in order to address growing needs in the community. After very successful campaigns in 2019 and 2020, the message for 2021 is simple: Moving Forward. Moving Forward means focusing on shared values and the good that can be accomplished together to make a positive impact on the Indianapolis community and the world. Moving Forward means overcoming obstacles in order to raise vital funds for the Annual Campaign. Moving forward means uniting together to navigate and overcome a difficult and uncertain time. 

Before this theme was even determined, a local Jewish community hero, Jenni Berebitsky (z”l), said at the end of her award-winning short film Grateful: The Jenni Berebitsky Story, “I think all we, any of us, can do is acknowledge what the feeling inside of us is and choose whether or not we want to move forward. And that is what I have done.”

Married two and half years, with a 15-month-old son, and just finishing her residency as a Naturopathic physician, Jenni Kleinman Berebitsky was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) at the age of 33. When diagnosed in 2009, she was given only 18-24 months to live. She first mourned her diagnosis, but then took it as a challenge of a lifetime. She wrote the book ALS Saved My Life…Until it Didn’t, a biography on her life with ALS that was published in 2018, and which is widely known to the ALS community. Also in 2018, a 17-minute short film documentary boldly shares what Jenni’s life has been like with ALS and how she chooses to move forward. A trailer of her documentary can be watched at alssavedmylife.com/#movietrailer. 

“Jenni mourned and grieved her diagnosis and then decided to move forward without letting it stop her from her passions or engaging with friends and family,” said her husband, Jeff Berebitsky. “With this pandemic, we grieve our losses and allow the related emotional components to unravel. Then it will be time to move forward despite the obstacles.”

Jenni passed away in August 2019, 10 years after her diagnosis.

“I decided to give myself the needed time to grieve my loss.  And when it was time to start living again, I chose to follow Jenni’s amazing example and move forward,” he added.

Jenni’s incredible outlook and inspiration to so many serves as a reminder as the Federation and its partners continue to battle the effects of the pandemic and the continued need to move the 2021 Annual Campaign forward…so its successes can help more than 4,000 in need in the Indianapolis community and countless other Jews all over the world.