Local resident collects pennies for good causes
Ruth Wolf is known in Raritan Township, New Jersey, as the Penny Lady.
For many years, Wolf, 86, has collected pennies as part of the fund-raising efforts of her Conservative synagogue, the Flemington Jewish Community Center, in New Jersey. She has now become a full-timeBroward County resident after more than20years as a snowbird.
Ruth has collected more than two million pennies and is now working on her third million collection here in South Florida. Through this penny collecting, she has given away nearly $40,000 to the synagogue in NewJersey, for cleft lip surgeries and for a well to be dug in Africa for a needy village.
“This gives me great satisfaction because lately I’ve given the money to children with cleft lips in Africa and the next collection will go to trees in Israel as they’ve had so many fires and they need the trees so badly,” Wolf said while interviewed inside her Deerfield Beach apartment.
Currently, Wolf collects pennies fromfamily, friends and neighbors and puts them in a canister in her condo. Once the canister is filled, she puts the money in the bank. People have already started bringing her pennies to her condo. She said she has gotten “very sincere thank yous” from the people who have benefited from her collection project.
“I have gotten letters from the doctor that does the operations in the jungle,” she said.
Wolf also noted, “For my birthday, I don’t want gifts. Collect money. Whoever wants to giveme a gift, they can send it there [to the penny collection]. It’s more important.”
Wolf was born in Germany and fled the country, along with her family, after her family’s small department storewas trashed during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) in 1938 when it was ruled by the Nazis. The family moved to what was then Palestine before it became Israel in 1948, and Wolf spent the rest of her childhood there before coming to the United States at the age of 18.
Wolf and her late husband Manny decided to start collecting pennies as a way to illustrate the value of saving when her now adult grandson was asked by her to pick up a penny fromthe floor ofher carwhenhewas a child.
“When my grandson picked up the penny, he asked, ‘What am I going to do with a penny?’ And I said ‘Everything you do in life starts with a penny.’ It doesn’t start with a dollar, and that’s how my husband and I spent that night, figuring out how we can explain to children howto pick up a penny, which they don’t do anymore,” Wolf said.
When asked how her project exemplifies Jewish values such as tikkun olam (repair the world), Wolf responded, “We have to help each other. If we don’t help each other, who’s going to help us.”
Her son StevenWolf said about his mother’s efforts, “We allwondered whenmy mother said she was going to try and collect one million pennies if this was a little over the top. But sure enough she set her mind to it, arranged all the details and got it done.”
“Many people were so supportive and helped her. Itwas amazing. I remember going to their house one morning and there were sacksandjars full of pennies on the front step that people had dropped off. We are so proud of what she has done.”
scarmona@tronc.com