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The 23rd annual “Evening of Roses” fundraising event of The Sister Rose Thering Fund will be held on May 1 in the Jubilee Auditorium.
While teaching Jewish-Christian studies full time at Seton Hall University starting in 1968, Sister Rose Thering realized that professors participating in summer programs should be granted academic credit, which would further advance their own personal studies, according to the SHU website.
The Sister Rose Thering Fund was created in her name in 1993. The fund now contributes more than $60,000 per year in scholarship funding to teachers, the website stated.
The Evening of Roses is a key fundraising event for the scholarship fund. The 1:30 p.m. event will honor three women as Women of Valor, two of which are former Sister Rose Thering Fund trustees.
Mary Vasquez and Ellin Cohen were two former Sister Rose Thering Fund trustees who both passed away last October, according to Deborah Lerner Duane, a board chairman of the fund.
Devorah Halberstam, writer and activist, also will be acknowledged as a Woman of Valor during the Evening of Roses.
On March 1, 1994, Halberstam’s 16-year-old son, Ari, was aboard a van traveling across the Brooklyn Bridge. The van was suddenly sprayed by bullets, killing Ari.
The van was filled with yeshiva students, which reaffirmed Deborah’s conviction to label the shooting an act of terrorism instead of a homicide. In 2000, the FBI found that the shooting was indeed an act of terrorism.
Subsequently, Halberstam has been appointed by the governor to serve on the first New York State Commission on Terrorism. She has advocated for the passage of Ari’s Law as part of a comprehensive gun-control bill, which prohibits interstate gun trafficking.
Ari’s Law is pending in Congress, and would ban the sale of gun kits, according to the FBI website.
Along with Halberstam, a Sister Rose Thering Fund scholarship recipient, Karen Pomerantz,
has been invited to speak during the event.
“Through the Sister Rose Fund and the generous donors together they have made it possible for me to attend Seton Hall University,” said Pomerantz, who is currently attending SHU for Holocaust certification while teaching in Paterson, N.J.
“Teacher-Scholar Karen Pomerantz will make a short presentation, during this year’s Evening of Roses program, describing her own experience as a student of Jewish-Christian Studies, a Sister Rose Thering Fund scholarship recipient and a teacher in a public school,” Duane said.
According to Duane, the event hosts anywhere from 100 to 225 people each year. General admission tickets are $75 each and student tickets are $25 per person.
Alan Petukh can be reached at alan.petukh@student.shu.edu.
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