Meet Our Honorees
We are thrilled to be honoring five remarkable individuals at our 2025 Gala.
Their dedication to the Pelham Jewish Center and the Westchester community is exemplary.
Enjoy their stories.
Please Contribute to this vital fundraiser and join us on Sunday, May 18, 2025.
The photo to the left of young Beth Freedman with Golda Meir symbolizes her lifelong dedication to Judaism and Zionism.
Beth Freedman Yelsey and Neil Yelsey moved to Pelham in October 1991. Beth says, “Just a few weeks later, Sandra Goldman showed up at our house. She told me the Pelham Jewish Center was “the most special place” and that I should join. And really, who can say no to Sandra?!”
Beth explains that the PJC attracted her as a close-knit, intimate community, like that of the Young Israel of New Rochelle she attended as a child and where her father, Paul served as President, though the family was not Orthodox.
Beth is truly an Eshet Chayil, a “woman of valor” for she has volunteered to help or had a leadership role in many projects over her three decades at the PJC, including a prom dress drive; a Chanukah toy drive; Purim Carnivals; dinner in the Sukkah and for over ten years, she shopped for the food served at High Holiday Children’s Programming. Alongside her dear friend Simone Schloss, Beth served as Kiddush Coordinator, establishing arrangements that remain in place today. She hosted gatherings in her home as a part of the Membership Committee and personally delivered multitudes of bags & baskets, always remembering Sandra’s role in welcoming her warmly. She attributes her own Jewish life as inspired by that of her parents and perhaps more so, by her grandparents, Louis and Bert Freedman who were devoted Zionists and philanthropists. Her grandfather played a key role in establishing the pharmaceutical school at the Hebrew University, and in 1970, was recognized with an honorary degree. That year, Golda Meir was also a recipient, and Beth had the incredible opportunity to meet her. Beth notes that “In addition to my father’s leadership at Young Israel synagogue, he also served as President of his B’nai B’rith chapter. My mother’s passion, on the other hand, was Hadassah.” Beth has vivid memories of sitting around the dining room table with her sisters, stuffing envelopes for bulk mailings. Beth is now co-President of the local Hadassah chapter in Westchester.
Currently Beth serves on the PJC Chesed Committee, reaching out to members, and coordinating visits, support or meals for families in mourning or with illness. Tragically, Beth lost both her parents, 11 days apart, in the first weeks of the Coronavirus pandemic in April 2020. Beth took on the challenge of being a Covid Contact Tracer, determined to protect Westchester citizens, help people reduce risk, and find critical resources.
Beth and Neil Yelsey have three adult children and one grandchild, Galen Paul. Ben, Lisa, and David attended the Learning Center and celebrated their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs at the PJC. Beth obviously inspired her children as well. Ben and Lisa continued their Jewish education at the PJC Hebrew High School, with Lisa also serving as a Madricha. To this day, Ben offers his talent as a shofar player as he remains our High Holiday Baal Shofar. Even as her kids are long past those days, Beth has remained committed to the kids of the Learning Center and to our Education Director, Ana, helping her and the PJC, more recently, establish a fire drill and emergency safety response, plus apply for grants for both PJC and LC emergency preparedness and security.
“I am truly in awe of the ongoing generosity of our Pelham Jewish Center community and I applaud the dedication of our Congregation, as well as my fellow Gala Honorees, Diane and Larry Cohen and Michael and Michelle Dvorkin.”
DIANE COHEN
I did not grow up with Judaism in my childhood home, although my first best friend was Jewish, so I was exposed to it from a young age. I was raised Catholic in Phoenix, Arizona. My religious up-bringing included weekly Sunday mass with my mother and brothers, and weekly CCD classes. One thing I noticed at a very young age was that curiosity/questions were not welcomed in those classes.
When I met my future husband, Larry, he expressed to me that he wanted his children raised Jewish. While Larry’s family certainly identified as Jewish, they were not particularly observant. So, I asked him why this was important to him. He didn’t have a strong reason, other than it felt important to him. Since it was also important to me that our future family be united in terms of faith, Larry and I took a class together on Intro to Judaism. I was thrilled to find out that questions were welcomed, indeed encouraged! I took my conversion classes soon after. Larry and I, along with our son, Daniel (age two), moved to Pelham in November 1992. Our daughter, Erin, was born in June 1993. We met Shelli and Joel Peck at one of the first Pelham gatherings we ever went to, and we spent time with them regularly after that first meeting. I think they joined the PJC before us, but we followed soon after in 1995, feeling as though it was time to settle into a shul as we already had friends there!
Our son, Daniel, had his Bar Mitzvah in 2003. Daniel had originally worked with a rabbi who was outside the PJC. She taught a group of local Jewish students who would go on the “share” a B’nai Mitzvot, in a large venue, to accommodate all the families and friends of the 4-5 kids who would become a B’nai Mitzvot at the same time. When Daniel learned that was the case, he said he preferred to have his own Bar Mitzvah. I explained to him that it would be twice weekly (vs once a week) Hebrew school, and it would require his attendance at services periodically, particularly during the year before his Bar Mitzvah. He said that would be just fine. I then told him I didn’t want to hear any complaints once he was enrolled. He agreed. And I must say, he kept his word and never had a single negative thing to say throughout that experience. We decided to enroll Erin at the same time-and she went on to become a madricha years later when she was in High School.
There were two things that happened simultaneously that impacted my Jewish life/identity; I, along with Bob Goldman, worked on the renovations at the PJC for a year and half, starting back in 2004 (and wherever Bob is, Sandra is close by, so I got to know them both better). And Rabbi Schuck came to the PJC, with Tali and infant Noam.
Our family became more observant when Rabbi Schuck became the rabbi at the PJC, which was about two years before the time Erin was preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. Since our congregation was displaced during those two years of renovation, it was very exciting to see Erin, along with her classmates Sarah Weissman, and Sarah Abeshouse, be the first three B’nai Mitzvot services in the newly renovated PJC. That was a moment I won’t forget, as Bob and I were on a deadline to get the shul up and running for the High Holidays that year. Phew!
I participated in quite a few smaller collaborations over the years; Midnight Runs, a Hanukah Gift Shop (something I replicated from the holiday shop at Siwanoy School, where the kids could buy holiday gifts for their families), packing and delivering Mishloach Manot bags, sending care packages to our PJC college students over the high holidays, packing and delivering boxes of food to the elderly, and lots more. Each time I donated my time; I found I had really enjoyed the company of all my new PJC acquaintances.
Since I spent so much time at the PJC during the early 2000s, it was a time where we became more familiar with a larger group of people, which have become our dear friends - more accurately, we think of them as family. We have traveled with, celebrated with, mourned with, and held them close through life’s twists and turns, for the last twenty plus years. And growing up with three brothers, and myself the only girl, I always wished for a sister – and now I have several! Along with some extra brothers, as well.
Who knew that the PJC would bring such joy into my life?!? I cannot overstate the richness that both Judaism and the PJC have brought to my life, and the life of my family…, even my Catholic mother thought the PJC was fantastic!
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio with the contradiction of American Judaism of that era: on one hand, very assimilated yet attending an Orthodox Hebrew school three days a week. Bnai Brith and United Synagogue Youth (USY) offered Cleveland Jewish teenagers ample social opportunities. I became the Treasurer for Central Region USY, which encompassed a five-state region. I believe it was my experience in USY that additionally solidified my Jewish culture. My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe with contrasting levels of religious observance. My maternal grandmother had a large family, who mostly assimilated into their New World in Cleveland, Ohio, yet retained some of the cultural aspects of the Old World. I fondly remember my mother’s family renting a large hall for the Passover Seder, with 150 relatives in attendance. Finding the afikomen was always an incredibly fun competition amongst all of us young cousins! In contrast, my paternal grandparents were quite religious, living next to and devoting much of their life to the Orthodox Taylor Road Synagogue. I remember the low flame underneath the large pot of cholent that simmered all through Shabbat.
I became a veterinarian and left Ohio to do an internship at the Animal Medical Center in NYC in the 1980s. My Cleveland family mostly dispersed, and my path took me from Ohio to New York to Arizona and then back to New York permanently in 1992. My wife, Diane and I bought a house in Pelham by chance, and at the first newcomers gathering sponsored by the local realtors, we met Joel and Shelli Peck, two of our dearest friends to this day. We joined the PJC in the mid-1990s, knowing we would want a landing spot as we had two young children. My earliest memory of the PJC is of the engaging and moving singing on Friday nights with Rabbi Borodowsky.
The PJC gave us a community to love and, I believe, gave my family the grounding in our Judaism that we may not have otherwise embraced. We found community, religion, ritual and tradition, family and friends. Diane became quite involved during our kids’ Learning Center years and I have held many roles at the PJC. I was first on the Board of Directors as the House Chairperson, then I served two terms as President. My first term as President saw our Board and membership deeply engaged in developing our core vision, mission and values statement. This was a very large undertaking that included everyone at the PJC. The Aspirations pamphlet still guides the PJC and is on the table in the hallway. My second term involved a time of rabbi transition, always a challenge. It has been an honor to be a member of this community and to serve on the Board in various capacities.
Recently I was on a tour of the Tenement Museum in Manhattan. Before the tour began, our tour guide asked us to think of something other than our actual house and nuclear family, that came to mind when she said the word ‘home’. For me, that was the Pelham Jewish Center: a focal point of our world for the past 25 years. The PJC is my comfort food: safe, reassuring, grounding, warm and embracing.
I want to acknowledge those who came before us, starting in the 1950s, and their struggle to create and then sustain this wonderful place. I do hope that we all do our best to ensure its future. Thank you for this honor.
MICHAEL AND MICHELLE DVORKIN We met on an American Zionist Youth Foundation trip to Israel in the summer of 1989 when we were 21. The following year, Michelle came to New York for a visit, and she's been extending that visit ever since! Despite our Jewish beginnings, like most young Jews, for years we never even thought about joining a synagogue. We’d go to the reform synagogue Michael’s family belonged to on High Holidays and, as far as we knew, that was all we would ever need out of a synagogue. However, things change when you have children. You start thinking not just about yourself, but also about how you want to raise them. Eventually, we decided we wanted our daughters, Alana and Lynn, to have a Jewish education and experience. That’s what led us to the PJC in 2006.
At first we’d drop Alana off at Junior Congregation on Saturday mornings and go back home to finish our coffee before picking her up later. Neither one of us had ever attended Shabbat services on any basis whatsoever and attending services ourselves simply hadn’t crossed our minds. But it didn’t seem right to make our daughter go without going ourselves so we started attending Shabbat morning services on Junior Congregation days. Even then, we fully intended to be faces in the crowd. We didn’t have the slightest expectation that we would “get involved” in the PJC, let alone join synagogue leadership.
But there’s no crowd at the PJC and once you start showing up, it’s hard to stay in the background. The community was so welcoming, and everyone is so dedicated to making things happen, that you naturally feel drawn to get involved. With so much going on and to do, it didn’t take long for Michelle to start volunteering for various activities. Michelle encouraged Michael to get involved as well, and while he was more of a quiet presence at first, when Michelle became chair of the Nominating Committee and needed to fill seats, she “encouraged” him to take a more active role. Michelle served on the Board from 2011 to 2017 as Youth Chair, Secretary and Vice President and Michael served from 2015 to 2024 as Social Action Chair and President.
Both of our daughters went through the LC and each became a Bat Mitzvah at the PJC, with family members and PJC members reading Torah at both. Our daughters participated in PJC social action activities like service trips and Midnight Runs and even worked in the office. Through the years we ourselves led and participated in all kinds of PJC stuff, from manning the hot dog stand at the flea market to leading Midnight Runs, Thanksgiving in a Box, food drives, Learning Center events and various other things, and we served on the Board in the Shuck, Salzburg and Resnick administrations. We don’t consider ourselves special for that. Most PJC members have found (or will find) themselves doing the same at one time or another, the PJC couldn't function otherwise. But we do consider the PJC special for that, because it’s only at a synagogue like the PJC - where there’s no in crowd or elite - that we would have been in a position to be honored for service.
We confess that the service we’re being honored for was done more out of a sense of obligation than philanthropy. But while the original intention was to give our daughters a Jewish education, the PJC ended up giving us one too, and one of the things we learned is that Judaism places the highest value on fulfilling one’s obligations. We wholeheartedly thank the PJC and every PJC member for giving us the opportunity to do so.
Thank you for attending the PJC Annual Gala to celebrate all our Honorees.
Gala Committee Members: Marjut Herzog, Liz Tzezto, Rebecca Schwarz, Barbara Saunders-Adams, Jessica Winquist