What have we done?

Because of you ... we've been able to help Israel's most vulnerable, stimulate economic recovery and strengthen resilience in Israel these past few weeks.

Trauma support and counseling
Strengthening support to 22 communities hit hardest by the conflict
Relief and support for Israel's bravest - IDF soldiers, hospital workers, and more
Economic recovery for small Israeli businesses
Helping the disabled and most vulnerable in the line of fire

... And much more.

Here's one look at the work we're supporting, from our colleagues in JDC ... if you supported the Israel Emergency Campaign, this is what we're able to do because of you. Not too late to give.

And if you supported the Annual UJA Campaign (ready? We're about to start again) you should know that we're able to do this because of the infrastructure you helped put in place.

So ... thank you.

My last day

This is it.

My last day at JDC. I've been here for nine years. It's been an amazing, inspiring, meaningful time. I've seen unforgettable things, met incredible people and have never felt I was doing just a 'job.'

I'm grateful for every experience. For the incredible leadership I've seen - lay and professional, working in partnership. For the inspiring field staff and leaders in countries near and far. And for the donors, funders, federations and supporters who love the work of the Joint and its values.

They are our values.

On JDC's archival pages there is a special section, dedicated to those who lost their lives in service to JDC and the Jewish People. You should take a look: it's a beautiful, meaningful and touching expression of these values. Of our gratitude to "the few who saved the many." One of the most moving stories is that of the life, death and fate of Israel Friedlaender, which you can read here, especially the "eighty years later" story. As his grandson said, much much later, we remember not only those who fell, "but also the goals, the ideas and the mission that they filled in the service of the Jewish people."

Over the coming weeks I'm going to continue blogging here. I have a few more things to say. I'll start at the Jewish Federation in a month and I'll figure out the transitioning of my social-media-presence as well.

Recommendations, ideas, suggestions, comments, advice, guidance and wise experience welcome ...

Transitions - stuff I've learned

A colleague asked me the other day "what did you learn at the Joint?"

I had to think about this. There were some intensely personal things about the kind of Jewish communal professional I've become, about my learning and development. And about the incredible opportunities I've had these past nine years to see the Jewish world and meet amazing leaders.

I'll get to that side at a later date. But I also learned some pretty amazing things about the Jewish world, leadership, and about how Jewish communities develop. 

1. We're a migratory people. One quarter of us live in a country other than the one in which we were born. Think about that when we talk about the Jewish world, our horizons and our challenges.

2. We've consolidated into a small number of cities. So we have increasing economies of scale. Not always a bad thing. But there are awful challenges when it comes to welfare and peripheries.

3. ‎Hebrew unites us. 

4. Leadership is the key factor. And vision underpins leadership.

5. ‎You can't draw a radius around being Jewish. If you start restricting yourself to one program, one building, one small geographic area ... you'll never feel connected to the passion and vision of what we have. In Ukraine, in Israel ... doesn't matter where. We don't draw borders around caring.

Transitions - stuff I'm taking

I'm clearing out my desk and shelves from the collected memorabilia of nine years in the Joint. And there's a growing pile of things I'm taking with me:

1. My cigar-box covers from Cuba. So the story is ... you can't really "buy" empty cigar boxes in Cuba anymore, because the government is afraid of counterfeiters getting good boxes and putting bad cigars in them. But the artwork is beautiful. And having staffed over 20 missions to Cuba I picked up some lovely art; the cigar-box covers are my favorites. Incidentally, did you know why some cigars have the names of famous works of literature? Because cigar-rollers were illiterate, and they would have the news, stories - and great books - read to them at times. Hence "Romeo and Juliet" and [The Count of] "Montecristo."

2. My Kassam rose. Created by a terrific Israeli artist, Yaron Bob, who was helped by JDC to set up his business. Yaron turns the pieces of kassam rockets that fall onto Sderot into beautiful metal rose sculptures. It is literally turning the worst things you can imagine into works of art and beauty.

3. A bottle of "Red Moscow" (Kraznaya Moskva) Perfume.  I kept going into the homes of elderly women in former Soviet republics and smelling the same spicy floral fragrance. After a while I figured out what it was, and then I learned that pretty much everyone smells that way because that was pretty much the only perfume you could buy for much of the Soviet era. So everyone's mom, grandma, neighbor, smelled like Red Moscow. 
And because the alcohol content is so high ... well ... we'll leave that story for another blog post.

4. A nametag from a JDC educational conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. There were 1000 participants at this conference - a local Limmud - and JDC was helping to put it together. The conference was in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Lithuanian, with a massive array of subjects. Israeli history, Lithuanian Jewish history, Jewish gastronomy, culture, the weekly parasha, public speaking, fundraising, you name it. It was an amazing experience, and a privilege to see the rebirth of Jewish life in Vilnius. 

Code Red

I'm so proud of my colleagues in Israel. Having seen this song (you can check it out here) and its amazing impact I know that JDC-Israel is doing an incredible job to help kids facing rocket attacks. 

If you're a supporter of our work, directly to the Joint or through your federation, you should see what amazing things you're supporting ...

Rocket alert song in Israel goes viral

Song developed by Joint Distribution Committee in 2008 for children of Sderot proves as relevant as ever in wake of barrage of Hamas rockets.

By Haaretz

| Jul. 11, 2014 | 2:38 PM

The recent barrage of rockets fired by Hamas at Israel has revived the fortunes of a video developed in 2008 as part of a trauma intervention effort in Sderot by the Joint Distribution Committee.

"The Code Red (Tzeva Adom) Song," named for the code word for rocket attacks in Israel, is going viral on YouTube, with over 43,000 hits as of Friday morning for the version that was uploaded in 2012.

"Four years ago a kindergarten teacher wanted to do something to help the children in her class deal with the ongoing air raid sirens and rocket attacks against Israel," reads the text accompanying the vehicle.

According to the JDC, its Ashalim division came up with the song as part of a series of therapies it developed in the wake of studies conducted in the Sderot region indicating that 90% of children between the ages of 4-18 living in the region were showing signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"The song combines lyrics that allow the children to express their anxiety and fear with hand and body movements that help distract their minds to something more positive," stated the JDC on its JDC Ambassadors blog. The project is a partnership between the JDC, the Israeli government and the UJA Federation of New York.

Sderot teacher and art therapist Shachar Bar is credited for composing the song.

 The Lyrics read:

Color Red, Color Red

Hurry, hurry, hurry, to a safe area

Hurry, Hurry cause now it’s a bit dangerous

My heart is beating, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom

My body is shaking, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom

But I am overcoming

Cause I am a little different

Falling down – Boom

We may now stand up

Our body we shake, shake shake, shake, shake

Our legs we loosen, loosen, loosen, loosen, loosen

Breathe deep, breathe out far

Breathe deep, we can laugh

It's all gone and I feel good it's over – Yesssss!

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.604498 

Do you even leave the shelter?

I was privileged to listen in to an Israel Crisis update with some of my colleagues. Once again we’re in a crisis mode, and once again the question is how do we help those who need us most. 

My colleague Yossi Tamir, Director-General of JDC-Israel, pointed out that this time, it’s different:

First, the residents of Southern Israel are under attack again … but they can’t send their kids north like last time, because Tel Aviv is also under attack. 

Second, we’ve learned from experience what works and what doesn’t, how to run programs with a wider nonprofit and government partnership, running emergency preparedness meetings with our colleagues in the Jewish Agency and the Government. The programs we’ve been running on an ongoing basis have set the foundation for today.

And finally, Hamas has also learned from the past and has greater capabilities. 4 million Israelis are under fire, and not just in the South.

My colleague Sigal Shelach made the point that the elderly and the disabled are the most vulnerable. If you have 30 seconds to reach shelter, or 15 seconds in Sderot, what happens if you’re handicapped or you're elderly? To leave the house is out of the question. Do you even leave the shelter? Meals on wheels, emergency programs, Community Caseworkers.We're going to need all these and more to provide aid for elderly and disabled Israelis.

All the overnight and most of the day camps are cancelled. So what do you do with kids stuck at home? You have scared, stressed, rockets, parents need to go to work. We’ve learned about the benefits of makeshift camps in emergency shelters – we provide huge activity kit-boxes, volunteers to operate the camps, the incredible Chibuki program

The coordinator of Better Together in Kiryat Malachi noted the stress of taking children to safety, especially during the night hours. When the siren goes off, she and her husband have only 35 seconds to get their three small children to safety! The helplessness she feels when deciding in a split-second which child to wake first, is even worse when she thinks of all the families going through the same thing. In Kiryat Malachi, 30% of families are raised by single mothers! Moms who have no assistance when the siren sounds. The feeling of vulnerability in these communities runs strong.

We're grateful for those federations and donors who are standing up and helping us help the most vulnerable. Those who need us now more than ever.

We're grateful for our amazing colleagues on the ground - some of them taking real risks to help the vulnerable, while worrying for their own children and families.

And my colleague Alan Gill, JDC’s CEO, pointed out that the reason we were able to mobilize so quickly this week in Israel was that we were there yesterday. And we’ve been there for a hundred years. And if you’re supporting our work through your federation or directly, then know how grateful we, and the people of Israel, are for you, too.

Transitions

I'm proud and excited to have been selected to be the next Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Metrowest, NJ.

I've lived in this community for seven years now. And for the past six years, I've watched my kids grow up in a thriving, vibrant, dynamic Jewish community. It's a community with strong connections to Israel and the Jewish world. And it's a community with an amazing history - and future - of taking care of the vulnerable, and showing leadership and Jewish values.

I'm proud to be part of it, and honored to be selected as the next Federation Exec.

Over the coming weeks I'm going to transition out of JDC. It was a difficult decision - I've loved the Joint, I've loved working for the Joint, and I've loved every single day of my "job." Now that it's coming to a close, I can say openly that I'm grateful that they paid me for something that I would have done for free.*

Thank you to all of you who have reached out with kind words of support. Keep reading my blog for transition thoughts, experiences ... and please reach out with your comments and suggestions.

I feel incredibly fortunate, and honored, to move to this next stage.

Dov


*But, you know, good that they did. Kids, food, mortgage, etc. 

The depth of commitment

I was glad to be in Rhode Island the other day with my colleague, JDC's CEO Alan Gill, for their Annual Board meeting. The "Jewish Voice" published a nice piece on our visit ....


Alliance annual meeting recognizes progress, honors JDC partnership

By Fran Ostendorf

Thursday, 19 June 2014 18:36 Sharon Gaines welcomed the crowd June 16 to the third annual meeting of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island by taking a moment to recognize the plight of the three kidnapped teenagers in Israel. At the entrance to the Dwares JCC Social Hall was a table with iPads so that the audience could sign a virtual message to the families of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaar and Naftali Frenkel from the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). “We hope this will offer some comfort that we are supporting these efforts,” Gaines said. As a prelude to the annual awards presentation, members of Pastrami on RI blended their voices for “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Hatikvah” as well as “Bilvavi.”  Pastrami on RI, a post-collegiate coed Jewish a capella group, is a (401)j cluster that performs locally. Awards presented       The Jenny Klein Memorial Teacher Award, established by the Alperin-Hirsch Family Foundation to recognize outstanding teachers who have excelled in teaching and demonstrated a commitment to Jewish education in a synagogue religious school was presented to Nitza Attali. Attali, who teaches second-, third-, fifth- and sixth-grade students at Temple Beth-El in Providence, transmits her love of her homeland of Israel to her students. “In Israel, our national treasure is our children. Keep on loving our nation,” she said. The Riesman Leadership Development Award, created by Robert and Marcia Reisman to inspire and encourage emerging leadership, is awarded to individuals who have demonstrated leadership and commitment through significant service with the Alliance. Recipients attend the General Assembly of the JFNA. Rabbi Barry Dolinger, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Sholom, is this year’s recipient. A member of the board of directors of the Alliance, he served as lead educator for the New England Region of the March of the Living and is a founding member of (401)j. “Outside of your congregation,” presenter Doris Feinberg said, “you have embraced our community. You are already on a path that will cement your leadership in our community.” Dolinger had particularly kind words for the Rhode Island community where, he said, “Everyone gets along and cooperates … more than anywhere.” The Norma D. & Flo Tilles Community Relations Council Award was established to stimulate and encourage leaders and emerging leaders who have performed significant service to the Community Relations Council (CRC) of the Alliance. Sharon Gaines, a previous recipient, presented this award to Richard Glucksman, chair of the Government Relations Council of the CRC and a senior staff attorney at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island. As the Government Relations Council chair, Glucksman reaches out to government officials at the federal, state and local levels to raise awareness of Alliance priorities and goals. Glucksman thanked his high school teacher for inspiring him and his mentors at the CRC for providing an unparalleled model of service. The final award of the evening, the Joseph W. Ress Community Service Award, recognized an individual who has demonstrated exemplary leadership at the Alliance, local or national Jewish agencies and the general Rhode Island community. Joan Ress Reeves presented the award to Alan Litwin, whom she deemed “a regular Joe Ress Junior,” referring to her father, after whom the award was named. As she listed Litwin’s many contributions to the community at large, she mentioned the similarities to her father’s activities. Litwin, managing partner of Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co. Ltd., has served on the boards of the Jewish Seniors Agency, Jewish Home Corp., Jewish Family Service, Brown RISD Hillel, Temple Emanu-El, Miriam Hospital and The Miriam Hospital Foundation. He is a past president of the JCC and served on the board of the Alliance. In accepting the award, Litwin said, “It’s such an honor to be named in the same sentence as Joe Ress, let alone get this award.” He said that the real reward is to be able to instill the same values of service in his children. Alliance report Jeffrey Savit, president and CEO of the Alliance, offered an encouraging report of growth and renewal at the Alliance, highlighting several initiatives underway. “I hope, a year from now, we’ll be sitting in our renovated social hall,” he said, referring to the ongoing renovations to the Dwares JCC. He said that fundraising has resulted in more than $2 million so far, and that the result will be a “lovely inclusive user-friendly community center.” Savit also told the meeting about the Living on the Edge Initiative, explaining that almost one-half of our community is living on the edge of financial insecurity. “We are committed to helping those in need in our community, “he said. Fundraising has reached $1.4 million of the initial goal of $1.8 million for this initiative. “We are beginning to raise an army of people to help,” he said. Commitment to community was the theme of the evening as the meeting celebrated the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s 100 years of service and its impact around the world. “It’s wonderful to share in this anniversary with Alan Gill and Dov Ben-Shimon,” Savit said. “For 100 years, there’s been one worldwide address for Jews in need. We cherish our relationship.” “I’ve seen the depth of commitment you have in this community,” the JDC’s Ben-Shimon responded. “I’m proud of the partnership we have.” In an earlier conversation, Ben-Shimon said that he and Gill value the deep and meaningful tie that the JDC has with the Jewish community of Rhode Island. “We see the impact that Jewish philanthropy has around the world.” Gill, CEO of the JDC, and Ben-Shimon, executive director-Strategic Partnerships, are well-known to members of the Rhode Island Jewish community, where support has been high for the work of the JDC around the world. Ben-Shimon has accompanied many Rhode Islanders on missions around the world. From the JDC Gill delivered a brief history of the JDC, from its beginnings in 1914, and a “brief snapshot of the Jewish world through the JDC lens. “Here we sit as brother and sister. We, as a Jewish people, will be there to help. The 100th anniversary is a time to consider where every dollar you give us is spent,” he said. He explained that the JDC’s mission hasn’t changed though the years. He stressed that all Jews are responsible for one another. “We are the only Jewish organization that holds itself accountable.” The JDC is active throughout the world – in Russia, in Hungary and Ukraine, in Greece, in Germany, and in Israel and in many other countries. Wherever there are Jews who need food, medicine, financial help or help staying safe, the JDC is there. Israel is one example. Gill said that 36.5 percent of Israeli children are living below the poverty line. “We’re fighting poverty. We can’t afford a social fabric that’s frayed.” Ukraine is another example. Gill mentioned the work that the JDC is doing there to make sure that Ukraine’s Jewish population, which numbers more than 300,000, is getting the help it needs. “I talk about the history to remind us of what happens when we stay focused on our mission,” Gill said. “Our mission is our business plan.” His compelling stories of housebound elderly in communities under stress, worldwide, held the attention of the crowd. They were meant to illustrate the work done by the JDC, said Gill, so “am Israel chai” … the Jewish people shall live. Following Gill’s speech, Edward Feldstein installed the newly elected boards of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, the Federation Foundation and the Alliance Realty. Gaines ended the evening with remarks echoing those of Savit. “Change is never easy,” she said. But, showing what Feldstein had termed her positive outlook, she said, “We will continue to move forward.” She cited the Living on the Edge Initiative as a defining moment and said that the Alliance is positioning itself for a great future. FRAN OSTENDORF is the Editor of The Jewish Voice.

http://www.jvhri.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5577:alliance-annual-meeting-recognizes-progress-honors-jdc-partnership&catid=41:community&Itemid=62

Knowledge

Mazal tov to my colleagues in Myers-JDC-Brookdale, JDC's applied social research center, on their 40th Anniversary.

To celebrate the occasion, they put out this lovely video.

If you support the idea of understanding Israel's pressing social issues, how we can find decent information and research, how we know what we know ... this is a good place to start ...

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Impact

I'm in Baltimore today, presenting with JDC's CEO Alan Gill, about the work we do around the world. Which is why I was particularly struck by this video. 

It was made by my colleagues to show the areas in which we work and the people whose lives we make better ... because of the support of our funders. Makes me proud. 

If you support our work, you should feel proud too.

If you want to receive this blog on a regular basis by email, sign up in the top-right box where it says "follow" ...

President Peres

President Peres' moving and lovely speech, with tribute to JDC's Ralph Goldman, speaking to the JDC Centennial Board of Governors, May 2014.

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People need people

My inspiring colleague Oksana and I spoke at the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County earlier this month. The New Jersey Jewish News did a nice piece about our briefing there.

JDC officials describe Ukraine relief effort

by Debra Rubin
NJJN Bureau Chief/Middlesex

May 20, 2014

Despite months of turmoil, Ukraine’s Jews have continued to receive lifesaving medicine, food, and other vital services through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

“During the last five months we have never interrupted our services,” said JDC Ukraine Government Affairs director Oksana Galkevich.

Galkevich and JDC colleague Dov Ben-Shimon appeared May 2 at a leadership briefing at the South River offices of Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County. At the meeting, it was announced that the federation had made an emergency $11,700 donation to JDC, a federation partner, for its Ukrainian efforts.

Federation executive director Gerrie Bamira said the donation was made to “ensure the uninterrupted delivery of vital services to poor and isolated elderly Jews as well as at-risk children and their families. This ongoing partnership and relief effort is possible because of the generous donors in Jewish Middlesex.” 

Galkevich said JDC representatives have braved sniper fire, crossed dangerous checkpoints, and devoted countless extra hours to ensure the health and safety of Ukraine’s 300,000-350,000 Jews, 17,000 of whom live in Crimea, the area taken over by Russia in March.

The Kharkov native, who came to the United States to update her organization’s community partners, said that support has been stepped up at its hesed welfare and community centers in affected areas of the country. Security and food and medicine deliveries had been increased, additional counseling services provided, and a round-the-clock emergency phone chain had been set up to monitor clients. Additionally, situation rooms throughout the nation have been established to provide constant updates on the local situation even as contingency plans have been prepared in case of emergency. 

JDC operates 32 hesed centers in Ukraine, including three in Crimea, and serves Jews in more than 1,000 locations. 

“People are scared, and when they need someone to talk to they call or come to our hesed centers,” said Galkevich. “We thought with all the disorder, people would not come to the centers, but we were wrong. People need people. Our social workers try to comfort them.” 

Particularly vulnerable are the elderly who live on meager monthly government pensions and are suffering because of Ukraine’s devalued currency and sharp spike in prices for goods and services. She said many are survivors of the Holocaust and the privations of the communist regime.

“People literally have to make a choice between heart medication and a carton of eggs,” said Galkevich. “The JDC has such deep infrastructure, we were able to help every single person” who approached the centers, said Galkevich.

The aid given to the Jewish community has produced a situation rife with irony. Ben-Shimon, JDC’s director of strategic partnerships, said Jews tend to live longer than non-Jewish Ukrainians because of the food, medical, and homecare services made possible through the JDC and its partners in the North American federation system, but “they live longer, lonelier lives” because in many cases, their children have left the country.

And while there is “no institutional anti-Semitism on the state level or government level,” said Galkevich, widespread violence has left the community frightened.

“So far the Jews have not been targeted,” she said, but downtown Kiev “is in ruins” with cobblestones ripped from the streets for use as weapons. In Odessa, with 40,000 Jews — and where JDC serves 7,000 clients — a flare-up of violence between pro-Ukraine and pro-Russian factions has had a chilling effect on the population. 

Galkevich said JDC staff members are committed to continue serving their clients. She told the story of Irina, a homecare worker in Kiev who stayed at the home of one of her clients, a disabled Holocaust survivor terrified of spending the night alone.

Realizing she had another elderly client nearby who depended on her for meals, Irina cooked enough for both women. Between bursts of sniper gunfire from rooftops, Irina ran back and forth from one apartment to the other. 

In Sevastopol, a city with about 5,000 Jews on the Crimean peninsula, the hesed center remained the only “fully functioning” Jewish organization after the Russian invasion. Galkevich said its director gave every worker traveling to a client a signed letter explaining they were doing humanitarian work for the center. 

In a testament to its reputation, when the letters were shown to Russian soldiers turning away vehicles at roadblocks, many would say, “Ah, hesed — you can go through.”



 http://www.njjewishnews.com/article/22989/jdc-officials-describe-ukraine-relief-effort#.U30IDPldWyU

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For us, it was just help

Speaker of the Knesset Yuli Edelstein in a moving and lovely address to the JDC Centennial Board of Governors, May 2014, in the Knesset building.

"The Greatest Jewish Humanitarian Organization on the Planet"

Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to the JDC Centennial Board of Governors in the Knesset building, May 2014

Get involved

I spoke the other day at an event in Philadelphia and talked about what's happening in the Jewish world. There were some terrific questions, both during the event and afterwards. Someone came up to me at the end and asked me "how can I get more involved in what the Joint is doing?"

So ... good question. Here are some initial thoughts ....

Sign up at our website to get monthly updates from the Joint.

Sign up at the top of this blog to get these stories and random musings straight to your email.

Join us on facebook and twitter

Check out the amazing archives online and see the history.

Support our work either directly or by getting involved through your Jewish federation.

Serve, learn and participate through JDC's Entwine next generation initiative.

Be a philanthropic Ambassador

And there are more ... if you're interested, contact us and we'll talk ...

Distance

My colleague Oksana and I spoke the other day at the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex about the situation in Ukraine.

One thing really struck me - she made a comment about how long it took her to get here. "I crossed seven time zones to get here from Ukraine," she said.

"But from one end of the former Soviet Union to the other, it's eleven time zones. And we're working in both ends ... and in all the space in the middle. Even in the farthest reaches - we've reached deeper. Even if there's one Jew, alone, the last in his or her town or village. No one gets left alone."

It's not the first time we've talked about time in our work in the Joint.
Just one example: the timezone in Crimea has switched from Ukraine-time to (Moscow's) Russia-time (an hour different). But cellphones keep reverting back to Ukrainian time.

In the meantime, no matter what the timezone may be, the work continues.

How much stuff costs

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day from a nearby Jewish federation about "how much things cost" for JDC services around the world.

Bearing in mind that costs differ from community to community, and equivalencies aren't as simple as you'd hope ... here nonetheless are some basic illustrative 'unit costs' that give you a good sense of the kind of tzedaka (charity) opportunities you can have when you make a donation.

$180 sends an Israeli with a disability to an independent living skills workshop, like computer skills, healthy living, household management.

$300 send an at-risk Israeli kid to a business entrepeneurship program, helping ease his or her transition into society and keeping them safe and off the streets.

$1000 sends one kid to the Szarvas summer camp in Hungary, changing lives and renewing Jewish community across Europe.

$1750 can cover the cost of an elderly client with food, medicine, home care and winter relief in the former Soviet Union.

$2150 can allow an Israeli woman to take part in a 'Woman of Valor' Employment program, shifting her from economic dependence to independence, and changing the face of Israeli society.

If you're looking for a way to make a difference - a real, powerful, personal difference - in one person's life, consider these ideas when you go to make a gift.
And if you've already made that gift, directly to the Joint or through your federation, then know how grateful we are - on behalf of the people above, and all those whose lives you've enriched, empowered and rescued.

Ukraine and the hardships

JDC's President Penny Blumenstein wrote a good letter to the New York Times the other day about the situation in Ukraine. You can read it here. What I think was most striking was her comment that the economic side of the crisis is a whole other area that people aren't thinking about.

My colleagues in Ukraine continue their inspiring and life-saving work. Some of the general macro-economic updates are worth noting here:

-          Since the beginning of February through the beginning of April 2014, the price for 95 octane gas has increased by 20%.

-          Price surveys for the 25 most frequently purchased medicines (in Kiev) have increased in a range of 7% - 71% since mid-January and the end of March.

-          A survey of the mostly purchased food stuffs shows the following increases:  (cooking) oil - 22%; rice - 20%; chicken - 43%; flour - 20%; beets - 23%; cabbage - 55%; potatoes - 19%; sour cream - 25%; milk, cheese and eggs - 7%; sugar and tea - 12%.

-          Increases in energy costs are being reported.

-          Layoffs and redundancies throughout Ukraine are growing.

You can find more information and backstories here and you can sign up in the top right-hand box on this page to get the blog delivered direct to your email.

Three miles of shelves

A wonderful, inspiring report on my colleague Linda and our dedicated archival team. One hundred years of history. Their website is superb, and well-worth checking out too.

The Jewish people’s 911

Local archivist collects a century of JDC photographs

Larry Yudelson • Cover Story NJ Jewish Standard

Published: 18 April 2014

Twenty-six serious men sit around the table.

Two of the men have long beards; half wear mustaches. Scattered between them are two women, one of whom, of course, is the stenographer, known only as Mrs. F. Friedman. The other is the comptroller.

The year is 1918, and the men are leaders of the Jewish community. Most, like the host of the meeting, banker Felix Warburg, and his father-in-law, banker Jacob Schiff, are Reform Jews of German origin. A couple, including those with beards, are Orthodox and from Eastern Europe. Some are rabbis; one is novelist Sholem Asch. The comptroller is Harriet B. Lowenstein.

Meet the founders of the Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers, the organization now known as the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and variously as JDC or “the Joint” for short.

The men had formed the group four years before the photograph was taken. That was after Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador to Turkey, who was Jewish, had cabled Mr. Schiff asking for money to aid the Jews in Ottoman-ruled Palestine. The Great War had erupted in Europe a month earlier, and now the Jews of Palestine were cut off from their traditional Eastern European supporters because the Turkish Ottoman empire was at war (alongside Germany and Austro-Hungary) against the Russian (and British and French) allies.

At first, American Jews formed two separate relief organizations in response to Morgenthau’s plea; one by the new Orthodox immigrants, one by the Reform old guard led by the American Jewish Committee. But by November of 1914 they had merged into the joint relief body that would dispense the funds raised by their separate campaigns. (In 1915, a third group joined — the socialist People’s Relief Committee, backed by Workmen’s Circle.) The war hit the Jews of Europe hard. Hundreds of thousands were displaced, many by their own governments.

The (mostly) men of the JDC had reason to pose on that July day in 1918; they had mobilized the Jews of America to aid their overseas relatives. They had led Congress to proclaim a Jewish War Relief day in 1916. And when their wartime contributions would be tallied three years later, it would turn out that by 1921 the Joint had raised $15 million for relief in Europe and Palestine and had facilitated the transmission of $10 million in personal direct aid to the war zone.

In the century of whirlwind Jewish history that followed, the JDC’s work continued around the globe, through the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel, to the mass migration of Jews from the Middle East and the Soviet Union, to fragile Jewish communities in Ethiopia and Sarajevo and Argentina and beyond.

Its actual fundraising, however, was put on pause for many years. After competing after the Great War with Zionist fundraisers over whether Jews should be helped in Europe or in Palestine, the two groups joined forces on the eve of the Holocaust in 1938 to form the United Jewish Appeal, whose funds were allocated between the JDC and the Zionist Jewish Agency.

More recently, as the flow of money slowed from the Jewish federations that funded the United Jewish Appeal and its successor organization, the Jewish Federations of North America, the JDC, like the Jewish Agency, began its own independent fundraising again.

The JDC now spends half of its $360 million budget in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, feeding elderly Holocaust survivors and supporting a revival of Jewish communal life for those Jews who remained after the Holocaust and mass emigration to Israel. Another 40 percent of the budget is spent in Israel, where the JDC funds a range of social service projects.

Now, as the JDC marks its centennial, that 1918 photograph of the JDC’s founding leaders fills the first page of a new commemorative book: “I Live. Send Help.” The book is subtitled “100 Years of Jewish History in Images from the JDC Archives.”

It is edited by Linda Levi, who heads the JDC’s archive and lives in Teaneck with her husband. The couple, who have two grown children, are members of Congregation Keter Torah.

Ms. Levi grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. She went to nearby Brandeis for college, and spent her junior year abroad at Hebrew University. It was in Jerusalem that she took a course with Dr. Michael Rosenak, called “Issues in Contemporary Jewish Life.” In later years Professor Rosenak would become known as the premiere philosopher of Jewish education. In those years, his class already was packed, and Ms. Levi was far from the only student who left the classroom wanting to devote her life to a career helping the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

She went on for a graduate degree in contemporary Jewish studies and Jewish communal service at Brandeis, and then, when she finished, she moved to Israel.

“My dream job was to work for the Joint, which was in my eyes then and still is the premiere organization that was helping Jews in need around the world,” she said.

Her first job was the Jerusalem Y. Then she spent four years with Eshel, a partnership between the Israeli government and the JDC that provided social services for the elderly.

Then, when family concerns brought her back to America, she found a job with New York’s UJA-Federation.
In 1989 she joined JDC as associate director of program planning and budget.

“We were helping large numbers of Soviet Jewish transmigrants who were leaving the Soviet Union and deciding not to go to Israel,” Ms. Levi said. (Transmigrants are people moving from place to place, before they arrive at their final destination.) “Our offices in Vienna and Rome were caring for Soviet transmigrants as they were waiting for paperwork to enter the U.S. We were working in Eastern Europe in countries that were still under communism. We were trying to find those openings that would help us revitalize Jewish life.

“And then, with the end of Communism, the JDC began to operate in the Soviet Union, in a place that was vast, as a community that was cut off from its Jewish heritage for so long, and we had to figure out how to begin.

“Unfortunately, the economic dislocation following glasnost and perestroika led to the end of the safety net that Soviet citizens had been able to depend on. We began addressing the needs of the Jewish elderly. A lot was done with the help of the Claims Conference” — which receives money from German reparation — “to fund those programs for victims of the Nazis. We developed a major welfare program, providing food packages and home care for needy Soviet elderly, and later for children at risk,” she said.

Her role in the budgeting process gave her a top-level view of the JDC’S decisions, and “its funding allocations in response to global needs around the world,” she said. During this time, she traveled around the world, “visiting many, many communities, seeing the needs.”

In 2009, the JDC’s longtime archivist retired and Ms. Levi took over the job. She turned her attention to the JDC’s history, and “how the treasures of our archives could be used for the benefit of the JDC today.”
All told, the JDC’s documents span three miles of shelving, some in Israel and some in a climate-controlled facility in Long Island City. The archive boasts some hundred thousand photographs, about 160 sound recordings, and more than a thousand films.

An oral history project features transcripts of interviews with JDC staff and leaders “who were involved in major historical events of the work of the JDC from the time of the Holocaust and later,” Ms. Levi said. “Many of the oral histories of the Holocaust are of survivors. Ours are of the caregivers. It gives a whole different insight.”

Much of the archives have been digitized and are accessible online at archives.jdc.org, a website that showcases the organization’s photos. A name search provides easy access to records that contain more than a hundred thousand names. It is a great boon for people researching their family history.

“In the archives of the Joint I have found correspondence from my great grandfather, who was a leader in the Jewish community of Vienna in the 1920s,” Ms. Levi said. “He was corresponding with the Joint about the visits he took to see the situation of Jewish refugees from Galicia who were in Lemberg, and about the help the community was extending to the refugees.

“I also found records in our archives of when my grandfather came to America. There are notes about two different times he came to meet with JDC leaders to impress upon them the terrible situation of the Jews in World War II, specifics about particular problems that needed to addressed with and dealt with at the time,” she said.

“We indexed some very historic lists. We have a list of over 9,000 refugees who were being helped by the JDC around 1940 in Vilna, refugees from Poland who had moved to Vilna. That list has the names of many familiar rabbis like Aron Kotler, and Zionist leaders like Menachem Begin,” she said.

After the war, “JDC was very active in the DP camps,” she continued. “We had an emigration service working out of Vienna and Munich. We had an index card of everyone we helped. All those cards, something like 80,000 of them, have been indexed.”

And this reporter discovered that one of his great grandfathers had been a vice president of a national Jewish organization that had corresponded with the JDC and whose letterhead had been digitized into the archives.
“When you delve into our archive system, you get a sense of the enormous length the JDC went through and continues to go through to help Jews, particularly during crises,” Ms. Levi said. “When you read some of the field reports of what was witnessed and done, both in reaction to World War I and World War II, and the number of countries we worked in, the efforts to get papers for people coming from different countries, trying to match people’s backgrounds with countries that had some openings, the array of countries — particularly during World War II — refugees in Casablanca and Tangiers and Shanghai, refugees sent to Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, India, all over the world — it’s really quite astounding.

“It makes me very proud to be part of an organization that has this kind of illustrious history.”

The archives have provided her a window of what Jewish rescue required back in the days of telegraphs and steam ships. “When you read some of the old reports and you understand what it took to get to places and communicate about it — the operation had the same alacrity in trying to respond to problems, but the effort was so much greater and the communication about it was so much slower,” she said. “Today you send an email. Things go so much faster.”

The JDC describes itself as “the 911 of the Jewish people” — a phrase that would have been incomprehensible to the men sitting around that table a century ago. But though the situation has changed, and one of the three Rs in its description has morphed over the years, from “reconstruction” to “rehabilitation” to “renewal,” its core mission “has remained constant: rescue and relief,” Ms. Levi said.

We suspect that Mr. Warburg and Mr. Schiff would have approved.


http://jstandard.com/content/item/the_jewish_peoples_911/30485


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You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time*

Lovely story about my amazing colleague Dr. Rick Hodes, JDC's Medical Director in Ethiopia ...

Doctor With Heart Of Gold Is Saving Lives

Dr. Rick Hodes doesn’t put barriers between himself and his patients.

Talk Radio News, March 10, 2014

I took my 18th trip to South Sudan this week. For several months I’ve been told that while I’m in the “neighborhood,” I should stop in Ethiopia to see the work of Dr. Rick Hodes. We did, and it was not a disappointment.

Dr. Hodes is the Ethiopia medical director for the American [Jewish] Joint Distribution Committee, a 100-year-old organization based in New York that is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian organization.

Dr. Hodes completed his medical education in 1982 and went straight to Ethiopia on a Fulbright Scholarship to teach medicine. He effectively never left.

We visited his Saturday clinic at the Cure International Hospital, a Christian hospital that let Dr. Hodes use its space in Addis Abba this week, where he saw 53 patients. His focus has evolved over the years from being the primary care doctor for the tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews and assisted their evacuation to Israel, to a current focus on a diverse population including mostly Christians and Muslims. As he says, he spends his days treating diseases he had little formal training in, but he says, “Need is the mother of invention.”

Most of the patients he saw on Saturday were “crooked.” Their spines were shaped like saxophones – the etiology of these deformities ranged from infectious (TB), to congenital to idiopathic. They all shared a common smile in which the origin seemed to stem from a deep appreciation for Dr. Rick. As some struggled to breathe due to the loss of lung capacity from not being able to fully expand their lungs, their eyes sparkled with hope – especially when Dr. Hodes told them to be sure to have their passport up to date.

Dr. Hodes relies on donors to fund each one of these spinal surgical lifeboats to the tune of about $18,000 a surgery, a cost one-tenth of the procedures performed in U.S. The surgeries are performed by Dr. Ocheneba Boachie-Adjei at the FOCOS hospital in Accra, Ghana.

Currently he has 36 patients in Ghana at FOCOS, and they begin the treatment not with surgery but by beginning with ambulatory traction for months at a time. It is only then that they operate. This method has expanded spinal surgery to another level and, because of the success in Ghana, there will be great benefits in the United States as well as the rest of the world. One surgery straightened a patient who had three angles in their spine greater than 100 degrees each.

Dr. Hodes has also arranged several heart surgeries for his patients whose valve and congenital cardiac conditions are life threatening. A heart surgery can range from $1,500 to $5,000. A donor can effectively give a heart for the cost of an Apple computer. These surgeries are performed in India for a fraction of the cost of the procedure in the U.S.

After seeing 53 patients, Dr. Hodes took us to a local Catholic mission to check on more of his patients. Dr. Hodes has been working with the sisters and their patients for over 20 years. Like Dr. Hodes, this mission takes patients without considering race or religion. Dr. Hodes is an observant Jew.

Dr. Rick also provides pre- and post-operative care for these surgical patients. The patients are ultimately “healed with steel,” as surgeons say, but there’s more involved. The patient has to be selected first. Scarce resources must be allocated, and they must be cared for to afterward. His fundamental question after listening to their concerns is, “What are you doing with your life?” It is not just a clinical visit. He wants to know how his patients are doing in school, or his older patients are doing with their work lives. One young girl patient says she wants to be a doctor and he not only encourages her, he asks her if she thinks girls can be doctors. He makes sure he breaks through cultural stereotypes by encouraging girls who want to be doctors.

Part of this pre- and post-operative care requires a great deal of “mission creep,” as they say in the military. A man came in who had a post-operative infection from a facial reconstruction surgery. He was living on the street, too sick to work and pay his rent. Dr. Hodes reached into his own pocket and gave him money for a room and food for a month, a prescription for antibiotics and told him to return next Saturday. Another man came in with his child. They had been living in a small hotel waiting for an MRI. Dr. Hodes invited them to stay at his house to save them the money while they waited for pre-operative diagnostic tests.

He doesn’t put barriers between himself and his patients. He adopted his first three spine patients so they could get on his health insurance and have spine surgery in Texas. I had the opportunity to have dinner with one of his sons in New York over the holidays. When he met Hodes, he only spoke his tribal language, and now he is fluent in English and studying engineering in Boston.

Visiting his home in Addis, we met many of his patients now recovering so they can go back home to their villages. One girl, 14 years old, is the sister of a patient who had a spinal operation. She fled her husband and village to find Dr. Hodes. She is now in school in Addis.

At the end of our visit, I asked Dr. Hodes about his dreams for the future.

“My dream he said is to have a spine center here in Ethiopia, where we can evaluate, provide surgery and also train others,” he said.

I asked him what makes him get up in the morning, and he answered, “Wow, I should be grateful that today I saved lives no one else is going to save.”

http://www.talkradionews.com/opinion/2014/03/10/doctor-with-heart-of-gold-is-saving-lives.html#.Ux5mofldWa9

*Charles Bukowski