**Press Release**

Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Michael B. Oren to Speak at UJA MetroWest’s Super Sunday

Michael B. Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, will be visiting the MetroWest community and speaking at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus on Super Sunday, December 6, at noon. There is no admission charge, and all are welcome to attend.

Super Sunday is United Jewish Appeal’s biggest annual community-wide fundraising event and day of festivities for all ages. The all-day celebration will run from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

“We are delighted that Ambassador Michael Oren will be joining us on Super Sunday,” said Max L. Kleinman, Executive Vice President of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. “He learned about the importance of Israel in our lives from his wonderful parents, Lester and Marilyn Bornstein, who have been stalwart supporters of UJA for many decades. It is therefore fitting that the Ambassador will be addressing hundreds of volunteers, raising dollars to support Israel and our local community on Super Sunday.”

Along with fundraising phone calls conducted by volunteers from throughout the MetroWest Jewish community, Super Sunday will be filled with activities for children and adults. The key activity, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., will be a community-wide Hanukkah Celebration. Great for families and especially for children 11 years and younger, the festive holiday kick-off will be filled with activities for all ages. There will be a chance to YouTube Yourself, Music and Movement with Carol Berman, an olive oil press, Story time with PJ Library, Dreidel Trivia, candle making, a New Jersey Jewish News Art Contest, Make a Bracelet for an Israeli Soldier, Hanukkah picture frames, sand art, Hanukkah painting, Decorate a Hanukkah Bag, and more.

In addition, there will be many other activities throughout the day:

• Football Party, from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — come and watch the big game on the big screen while making calls to the community to help support Jews in need, sponsored by the Young Leadership Division of UJC MetroWest
• Israeli vendors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Babysitting (drop in), six months or older, 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
• Blood drive, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Canned food drive

Raised in West Orange, New Jersey, where his parents still reside, Ambassador Oren is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia Universities. Dr. Oren has received fellowships from the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and from the British and Canadian governments. Formerly, he was the Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel Aviv University, and the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown.

Ambassador Oren has written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East and Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, were both New York Times bestsellers. They won the Los Angeles Times’ History Book of the Year prize, a National Council of the Humanities Award, and the National Jewish Book Award.

In New Jersey, he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold medal winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War, and an IDF spokesman during the Second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009. He acted as an Israeli Emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations, and as the government’s director of Inter-Religious Affairs. He has testified before Congress and briefed the White House on Middle Eastern affairs.

Ambassador Oren is married to Sally, and they have three children — Yoav, Lia, and Noam.