“Many families in Northeast Pennsylvania were blessed to have Alfred involved in their accounting and business planning. He would vacation at Jewish resorts in the Catskills and, later, Miami Beach. After he got home, he became a CPA and opened his own practice. Army Signal Corps during World War II, based in Calcutta. According to an obituary, he was a lifelong resident of the Scranton area who dropped out of college to enlist in the U.S. Since Reich’s donations came to light, more details of his life have emerged. “While he appeared very officious and all business, he had a deep concern for the welfare of others.” “He was very much concerned about poor people unable to provide food for themselves and their families,” another close friend, Rabbi Samuel Sandhaus, wrote in a tribute to Reich after his death. I only wanted to do what is right and bring honor to my parents.” Cutler recalled that Reich would say, “I am never about public accolades. The donation was one of many he made - including to a range of local Pennsylvania Jewish groups - in his will.Ī close friend of Reich’s, Harris Cutler, wrote in an email to Mazon that Reich always refused to be honored for his charitable giving. He gave of his time and money to local charities during his lifetime, and that commitment continued after his death. So what led him to Mazon? Reich’s friends and neighbors told the organization that generosity defined their newest donor: He built a successful accounting practice but lived frugally. Haviv and Leibman did so the next Shabbat in synagogue. He had one request of Mazon: Because he had no one to mourn him, he asked the employees to say Kaddish for him.
Reich was not married and had no living relatives. That led them to Beth Shalom Congregation in Scranton, Reich’s longtime synagogue, and subsequently to two close friends.
Mazon staff then contacted Reich’s estate lawyer and did some Googling. During his lifetime, he hadn’t made any gift to Mazon.” “Had he ever donated to Mazon? Had we had any contact with him?” Naama Haviv, the group’s vice president of community engagement, told eJewishPhilanthropy.
#FEDEX ENVELOPE FULL#
That discovery set off a detective search at the nonprofit, whose full name is Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger. When CEO Abby Leibman opened the package, she found a letter from a lawyer saying Mazon had received a $1 million bequest from the estate of Alfred Reich, a Scranton, Pa., accountant who had died in May 2021 at 95. The unexpected windfall came this summer in a FedEx envelope to the group’s Los Angeles office. and Israel, that dream literally came true. For the leadership of Mazon, a Jewish group combating hunger in the U.S. Most nonprofit executives probably dream of walking into their offices and finding $1 million lying around.
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