Out of the Numbers, the Individual Stories- Updates from the FSU

This is the time of year when I receive progress reports on the overseas programs that THE ASSOCIATED directly funds.  In the next couple of weeks I look forward to sharing with you some of the amazing work that our partners do around the world thanks to the support of the Baltimore Jewish community.  It is easy to get lost in the numbers of people who benefit or simply survive from the programs we support, and those numbers are jaw dropping, but on the most fundamental level we are helping one person at a time.


Today I am going to focus on the welfare work that is being done throughout the former Soviet Union by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).  Across 11 time zones in the FSU, JDC is providing welfare and relief to 168,000 elderly (down from 248,000 just 2 years ago) and 25,000 children.  In a region where there is no social safety net since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the services provided are essential to day-to-day survival.  So far this year, nearly 3.5 million  hours of homecare have been provided to the homebound elderly, nearly 250,000 food packages delivered on a weekly or monthly basis, more than 300,000 communal dining hall meals served that provide nutrition and socialization, and almost 400,000 meals on wheels deliveries to immobile elderly.  Each of these numbers is down compared to last year, because of budget cuts but the needs are just as great now as they were before.


The newest population served by JDC are children- close to 25,000 today, including 7,400 in Ukraine through the Partnership for Children.  From January to August, these children have collectively received: 10,500 hot lunches (sometimes the only meal they will get during the day), 4,500 food packages to take home, 2,200 holiday food packages, 3,500 monthly food cards for families, and 10 children received close to 4,000 hours of homecare assistance.  The children who benefit from the Partnership come from a variety of homes, some where parent(s) are struggling to work, some where parent(s) struggle with addiction, and some where the parent(s) are essentially absent.  If children are the future, then we are on the most basic level keeping that future alive.


As I said, the numbers are astounding, but not as incredible as the stories of the people who benefit and survive through these programs.

Bertold and Albina: Struggling with Poverty and Disability 

Bertold and Albina, a childless couple residing on the outskirts of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, have no living relatives. Bertold sums up their desperate existence, "My wife is an invalid. I live only to take care of her." However, Bertold himself is disabled - due to polio - and cannot walk without crutches.

The two live in the house that Bertold inherited from his parents. While it was one of the nicest in the area, today, it is in utter disrepair. The front porch is rotting and the walls are beginning to fall apart. The roof is water-logged, and as a result, the ceiling leaks whenever it rains. Bertold fears that a heavy storm will cause the entire house to collapse. 

Despite the home's many problems, Bertold is convinced that their neighbors, an unsavory lot, are determined to steal it from him. They recently broke in, stole chairs and broke the windows. Whenever Bertold attempts the trudge to the neighborhood water pump – the house has not had running water in nine years – the neighbors stalk him, calling names and throwing rocks. Recently, they grew even more violent, throwing Bertold to the ground and breaking his tooth. He cannot afford to go to a dentist to get it fixed.

Even without the neighbors' harassment, collecting water is no easy job. The pump is a half mile from the house, and, as he explains, "It is very hard maneuvering with my crutches and the buckets of water. I cannot carry very much. By the time I get back to the house, the buckets are practically empty."

Nevertheless, he keeps making the trek because Albina depends on him. She cannot leave the kitchen of the couple's home, because her rusted and twisted wheelchair cannot fit through the door frames.

Though their situation often seems hopeless, Bertold and Albina are grateful that they have some food to eat. Hesed Yehoshua of Tashkent provides them with food packages and hot meals, typically their only form of sustenance.  

As JDC’s client base ages, homecare hours take on even greater importance, and accordingly, JDC is making homecare a priority in its welfare work. However, most Hesed clients are desperate for both homecare hours and food. As is apparent from the account below, JDC's conscientious homecare workers alleviate the client's discomfort, while stretching their budget to ensure maximum nutrition. 

Maxim's Story

Six year-old Maxim's mother is sick with cancer and has not been able to work for the last three years.  The family receives a tiny disability pension from the state, of $60 monthly. Together with some alimony from Maxim's father, the family's total monthly income is just $95 a month, most of which is used to pay for medications for Maxim—who has a heart ailment and bronchitis—and for his mother. They are fortunate at least to have the support of Maxim's 15 year-old sister, Galina, who helps care for Maxim.

The family lives in Evpatoria, in Southern Ukraine.  They live in a crumbling Soviet Era high-rise, in a two-room apartment that hardly even has regularly running water due to the building's aging water and sewage system. They lack the most basic furniture; Maxim's mother sleeps on a broken couch and Maxim sleeps on the same baby bed he had since an infant, which he has long since outgrown.

The high cost of their medications leaves them without enough income for food, clothing and other basic needs. Neighbors came together to provide the family with a refrigerator, a chair, and an ancient washing machine.  But Maxim's mother has to spend so much time in the hospital and the burden for caring for Maxim falls on Galina.  

The Partnership for Children in the former Soviet Union provides Maxim with a food card so Galina can regularly shop for food at their local grocery, as well as purchase vitamins for him.  Partnership staff took Maxim to buy warm clothing, to ensure he could stay healthy as possible through the winter.  Maxim's mother says,

"I don't like to accept so many things.  But I realize that if the Partnership did not give warm clothes for Maxim, he could become seriously sick.  The Partnership has become like our family.  I fall into total despair from time to time.  If it were not for the Partnership…I don't even want to think about it." 

Israel Engagement Summit: Executive Summary

Below you will find the Executive Summary from last month's Israel Education & Engagement Summit.  There were many tremendous conversations that occurred at the Summit and many conversations since.  What was important from the inception of the Summit was that it would not just be an evening of talking about how we can make Israel relevant for the next generation of Baltimore Jews, but actually making it happen.


Before sharing the Executive Summary with you, I am happy to finally post the videos that Michael Weiger (from Melitz) and Jonny Ariel (from MAKOM/JAFI) used in their presentation.

Israel Education & Engagement Summit

Executive Summary

On Monday, November 16, 2009, more than 100 members of the Baltimore Jewish community participated in THE ASSOCIATED’s Israel Education & Engagement Summit.  The purpose of the summit was to open a community dialogue about the future of the relationship between the next generation of Baltimore Jews and Israel.  Representatives from more than 20 organizations participated in the summit, bringing their knowledge and investment in a vibrant relationship with Israel to the table.  During the summit, seven facilitated roundtable discussions took place focusing on the following areas: Maximizing the Value of Existing Resources, Connecting to Israel through Advocacy, Connecting to Israel through Volunteerism and Leadership Development, Using Technology to Facilitate Israel Connections, Connecting to Israel through Environmental Issues, and Connecting to Israel through Arts, Sports, and Culture.  Each discussion identified a series of actionable items that could be implemented; many common themes emerged and are described below.

The concepts presented here are only the beginnings of ideas.  Further community input to further develop the ideas is essential before moving forward in developing detailed action plans.

Create an Israel-focused website that can serve as a centralized clearing house for information and creating connections to Israel, which would include:

§         Community Calendar

§         Develop a curriculum for Israel advocacy- Utilize technology, such as Skype, to maximize reach of such an initiative.

§         Information about Israel travel

§         Israel news

§         Israeli cultural, sports, and environmental links

Create a community Israel desk.

§         Convene a Coordinating Coalition for Israel – Involve all of organizations that have Israel as part of their agenda in an ongoing conversation to create a culture that allows different organizations to communicate with each other.

§         Serve as an in-person access point for local Israel information.

§         Develop and implement social and cultural Israel programs for the community that do not exist.

§         Provide support to community organizations that want to have or strengthen Israel programs, including linking them to local, national, and international resources.

§         Create a local speakers bureau- Identify speakers who for little or no cost will speak in the community on different Israel-related issues.

Improve follow up engagement among Israel trip participants.

§         Create a central database of Israel trip alumni, including teen/school trips, Birthright Israel, and MASA programs.

§         Create structured follow-up model to connect people after returning from Israel to the local community and ongoing Israel programming.

§         Connect Israel trip alumni to advocacy initiatives and educational programs.

The goal in the coming weeks is to develop these ideas more and begin work on actions plans for each of these areas so that they may be successfully implemented.  Community volunteers, the next generation populations that we seek to engage, and professionals will be involved in this planning as an extension of the discussions begun at the Israel Education & Engagement Summit.

What We Can Learn from Israel Working to Rescue Gilad Shalit

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  And if I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when?

-Pirke Avot 1:14

It has been more than 1,000 days since Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner by Gaza-based Hamas terrorists.  During the past week there have been an increasing number of reports that the Israeli government is working on details of a prisoner exchange that will bring Shalit home to his family.  Few countries in the world are willing to negotiate with terrorist organizations or enemies to bring one person home, but Israel is.  In a country where military service is mandatory, it is one of the things that forges the deepest bonds and promotes the sense that as a country and people.  We are fortunate that in our daily lives that we do not confront issues like those of Gilad Shalit, but on a daily basis we struggle to deal with taking care of the one.


In the past 18 months we've had to deal with the ramifications of the economic crisis here at home.  People who have never been jobless are now out of work, families that could afford beautiful homes now struggle to pay their mortgages, adults planning to retire are reconsidering or delaying that decision, and the stories go on.  As a Jewish people we have taken care of our community members in trouble for centuries.  We have created community infrastructure so we can respond to these needs in times of trouble, because we know from history that nobody else will.  This is the sense of collective responsibility that Israelis feel towards Shalit; he is everybody's son or brother.


This value is the same as we have historically had for Jews around the world from a philanthropic/tzedakah perspective.  Right now, through JDC, there are 168,000 elderly in the former Soviet Union who we provide food and medical relief for, but there are easily another 100,000 who are in need of help.  Additionally, there are 25,000 children who we are providing relief to in the FSU who would otherwise be living on the streets without any family; there are at least just as many children who are still in need of help.  If it wasn't for our grandparents or great-grandparents emigrating from the Pale those would be our parents, grandparents, or even us who would be in need of assistance.


And then there are the Jews in Yemen, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela, South Africa and many other countries where the Jewish Agency is helping to rescue Jews from anti-Semitism and bring them home to Israel.  Despite the fact that this is the first time in more than a century that Jews can live freely in every country in the world (including Iran), it does not mean that their quality of life is good.  Seventy-five years ago there was no Israel when Hitler preparing to eliminate the Jewish people; countries would not provide a safe haven to Jews, and sadly we know the rest of the story.  Out of the flames we said, "Never again."  We made that promise to ourselves and every generation that will come in the future.


So back to Israel and Gilad Shalit...Is one life worth the exchange for hundreds of prisoners?  It is a difficult question and an answer either way comes with consequences.  If it is yes, then how great a sacrifice to security is Israel making?  If it no, then what do we tell the Shalits or all of the young Israelis who put their lives on the line for the sake of the Jewish homeland?  We too have to make difficult decisions, the answers to which are often unsatisfying.  Do we support the elderly Jew in the FSU without any family or rescue the Jew in Iran who is trying to escape anti-Semitism, or is there something else that we need to do at home with our resources?  What is clear is that we have a responsibility to care for others, because we live in world that we are not isolated from nor can we ignore.  What are the sacrifices we are willing to make in our own lives to help another?  A month's worth of Starbucks can help feed that person who is hungry, train the unemployed to find work, or allow a victim of anti-Semitism find their way to Israel.  We pray for the speedy and safe return of Gilad Shalit and remember that we are all responsible for each other.

A Story of Survival and Perseverance

This posting originally on the JDC Ambassadors Circle blog.  I am reposting it here, because not only is it timely in this season of Thanksgiving (what we are thankful for in our lives and what we are thankful for that we can do for others), but also tells a story about the critical work that we are doing around the world. 

From Asher Ostrin, Executive Director of JDC FSU Programs

In this briefing, Asher shares a story from Stanley Abramovitch, Director of former Soviet Republics of Asia, based on a recent trip to Belarus:

"Two Jews survived the Grodno ghetto in the Second World War. One of them left a few years ago for Israel where he died recently. The other is Gregory (Hersh) Hassid who still lives in Grodno. I met him in the Hesed office where he told me in fluent Hebrew learned in the Jewish school before the war, his story, about life in the ghetto and his many escapes from death.

The Germans occupied Grodno on the day after the war broke out. The few people who tried to escape towards the east of Russia away from the invading army where caught by the German army which moved very fast across Belorussia. Gregory was seventeen years old that September. There were about thirty thousand Jews in Grodno at the time. Another thirty thousand lived in small towns and villages around and near Grodno.

Soon after Grodno was occupied, the Germans set up the ghetto, in fact, two ghettoes in different parts of the town. Gregory and his family were moved into the larger ghetto. The Germans spoke of labor camps to which all Jews would be finally moved. When they announced that they needed four hundred volunteers for the labor camp Gregory and his father joined the group. They were locked up in the large Grodno synagogue and from there put on a passenger train that was to bring them to Treblinka.

Gregory heard some young men talking about jumping from the train. The only way was to jump out of the window. The young people queued up ready to jump. The first one out was shot at by guards stationed on the platforms of the train. The others hesitated to follow. Gregory told his father that he would jump. The father who was fifty years old encouraged him and told him to leave him, the father, to his fate, as he was an old man. When none of the other young peopled dared to jump out of the train, Gregory jumped. He too was shot at but he was not hurt.

His odyssey through the villages and woods started for him as soon as he was safely out of the train. He walked alone, begged for food, and stole some slices of bread where he could. On a few occasions, Polish young people stopped him and wanted to deliver him to the German police. A group of young Poles once caught him on a bridge. They decided to throw him into the half-frozen river. Luckily an older peasant passed by who convinced the young men to leave him alone. 

He escaped death many times. He somehow managed to run away each time when a peasant wished to hand him over to the Germans. He walked at night since it was too dangerous for him to move through villages in daytime.

One day walking through the woods, he came across a man lying in the snow. Gregory spoke to him in Polish but the man just looked at him without answering. When Gregory asked him in Yiddish if he were a Jew the man jumped up, embraced him and kissed him. The man's name was Yitzhak Pepco from Wasstilishok, Belorussia. Yitzhak told Gregory that the Jews of his village were taken to a death pit and shot. He jumped into the pit a few seconds before the shooting began. The shot bodies fell on him. When night fell, he managed to crawl out from under the dead and dying bodies and leave the village. He had been on the road for over two weeks. He had a few gold rings, which he had taken with him when the Jews were collected by the Germans. He received food from farmers in exchange for these rings. By the time Gregory found him lying exhausted in the snow he had no food and no rings left.

Gregory and Yitzhak continued together. They stole vegetables from the fields; occasionally they received some bread from a farmer's wife. During the day, they hid in the wood, at night they tried their luck at farmers' houses that stood outside the village so as not to be seen by other neighboring peasants. Sometimes they were lucky; mostly they were driven away. They walked near Bialystok, Kuznica, and Suchin until they came across the Bielski group of Jewish partisans. The same group recently featured in the movie called "Defiance". They stayed with the Bielski partisans until the Russian army arrived in July 1944.

Gregory Hassid returned to Grodno. There he was mobilized and assigned to the prison police. He worked for a time in the office of the prison. The police wanted to send him to a police college for him to work later with them. He knew that he would never be able to leave the police (NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB), if he agreed to go to that college. He managed to refuse the offer. He then completed his high school studies interrupted by the war and continued in college to study physics and mathematics. This qualified him as a teacher, a profession in which he worked all his life until 1993.

He married in Grodno. His first wife died young. He remarried but the second marriage was not a happy one. When a little girl was born, Gregory was overjoyed. He dreamed of this girl being with him and looking after him in his old age. He thought that he found some happiness in his life. However, it was not to be. When the child was not yet two years his wife left him and took the girl with her.

Gregory now lives in Grodno, the last surviving Jew from the ghetto. The pension he receives is far from adequate for him to live on. He gets food packages from Hesed. Once a week a woman from Hesed comes to clean up his home and to cook him a warm meal. He used to visit friends but he recently suffered a stroke, which left the right side of his body semi paralyzed. Therefore, he can no longer walk as he used to in the past. He can still read and watch television. His biggest problem is loneliness. His friends died. Therefore, he has no one of his age he can talk with. He sits in a dark room, to save electricity, and thinks of his life, the loss of his mother, his father, his sisters, the cruelty of human beings, of peasants who were always ready to hand him over to the Germans. He remembers how many times he miraculously escaped from the Germans, from the Belorussian and Polish peasants. On the one hand, he feels fortunate for having survived. And yet he is not happy.

He thanked me profusely for listening to his story, for giving him a chance to speak in Hebrew for a couple of hours.

We took him back to his lonely dark apartment. Gregory Hassid stood a long time at the door of his house waving to us until we disappeared from his view."

This briefing was circulated Erev Rosh HaShana 5750. For us as Jews, this is a time of Heshbon Nefesh, of reflection. It's an opportunity to create a context for our own lives, and to reexamine our commitments and responsibilities as Jews.

I hope that Gregory Hassid, and the story of his life, contributes in some small way to that.

The Case for the Collective

E pluribus unum- Out of many, one.  We see this on US currency and symbols every day.  It's not far off from the Hebrew phrase am yisrael ehad- the people of Israel are one.  The question is how closely to we believe in and fellow these words?  On a local level, are we individuals that happen to live in a community or do we band together to make a single community?  On the national and global levels, are we each a distinct community are are we one people with a common destiny and sense of shared responsibility?  Finding the balance in these questions is nothing new.  When the Founding Fathers of the US were forming the country they struggled between the roles of the states versus the national/federal government; arguably, the answer is still evolving.  So why does this matter to Jewish communal and institutional life today?


This week the inherent tensions in these questions emerged out of the discussions on how JAFI and JDC would divide the core overseas allocations given by Jewish communities via federations.  Historically, the Jewish Agency has received 75% of the core allocation while JDC received 25%.  I will not attempt to come up with a solution to this question or make any assumptions about if there will be a change.  The reason that this question emerged can be attributed to two reasons: first, the needs JAFI and JDC are in constant evolution as the world changes; and second, and more significantly, the total core funding available has shrunk over the past few years.


The drop in core allocations have happened for two independent reasons.  As community's have seen a decline in their overall financial resources (campaigns, endowments, etc.), the overall allocations pool has shrunk, which has impacted local and global agencies; additionally, as the US has struggled through the recession, members of the Jewish community have not been immune from the pain and more resources are being directed to local needs.  The second reason is the desire of some communities to entirely abandon their core allocations and move to an entirely designated process of giving.  The abandonment of the core in its entirety erodes the values of am yisrael ehad and collective action.


JAFI and JDC have been forced by some communities to submit funding requests for things that are basic and core to their operation in attempts to recoup these funds.  The result of these actions are an increase in the use of human resources devoted towards fundraising and the resulting costs to do this, a decreased ability for our partners to strategically plan for long-term goals and needs, and an increasing fracture in our collective impact.  While a vast majority of communities maintain a core allocations structure as well as an elective/designated structure that help achieve goals in target areas, the abandonment of the former for the latter hurts not just our partner organizations but the people that they serve.


There is a legitimate need to balance the needs and interests of federations and donors by engaging them directly allocating funds to have a strategic impact in a community or area of needs with the overall needs of the organization; this isn't different from local agencies that still need to turn the lights on before providing services.  The desire though to "spread the wealth" among a large number of organizations creates more work to assure accountability and maximizing impact.  During the past decade we saw innumerable little organizations emerge in the Jewish community that were not designed to endure the type of economic challenges we face today; we have seen many of these organizations shut down and as a result leaving the people that they serve in a lurch.  The value of our collective action and support, whether it is in a local community or globally with JDC and JAFI do not just embody our value of am yisrael ehad, but also make common business sense.


This week's parsha, Toldot, begins the saga of Jacob and Esau.  They each have their own personality and struggle with one another, but in a few weeks we will read of their reconciliation when they both come to realize that what makes them family is stronger than what divides them.  As the decisions about allocations are made, it is important to remember the good work that we can do together and remember that we are not doing this work for ourselves, but the Jews in the world who have no voices, no support, no safety at home, or any other need that we can help address.

Israel Engagement Summit Highlighted in Baltimore Jewish Times

Summit For Israel Engagement Launched

Community leaders convene to craft a new relationship to Israel in an uncharted era.

November 20, 2009

Neil Rubin
Editor
The familiar scenes of the 20th century’s tragedy and trauma flashed across the video — Palestine’s Jewish pioneers, Holocaust survivors, Israelis at war, Soviet Jews being liberated and so on.

But when the lights came back on and the speakers approached the microphone, those present were told they were facing a profound dilemma: What’s next? What will be the scenes on the screen in 20 or 30 more years?

Welcome to the current predicament of American Jewish life.

With that in mind, about 100 diverse community leaders — including teens, young professionals, veteran community leaders and representatives of about 20 organizations — converged on the Park Heights JCC Monday, November 16, for the Israel Education & Engagement Summit.

The effort, coordinated by the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Blatimore, the Center for Jewish Education and the Baltimore Jewish Council, was intended to kick-start Jewish Baltimore’s redefining its relationship with the State and people of Israel.
Click here to read more

Israel Providing Direct Support to JAFI- What might it mean?

Today's Jerusalem Post reported that a deal is in the works for the government of Israel to provide direct financial support to the Jewish Agency for Israel.  This could be a game changer, because Israel previously only provided support to specific programs that JAFI operated, such as MASA.  As Federation contributions to overseas causes, including JAFI and JDC, have declined over the past few years, JAFI has seen its budget cut by nearly 25%.  The result has been a cut in staff and services, including camps in the FSU, aliyah support services, and helping youth at-risk in Israel.  These are programmatic areas that are typically funded with core dollars, not designated giving.  Obviously, the increase in funding will have a direct impact in reversing the contraction that these programs experienced, but there are other potential broader implications.


This summer, the Jewish Agency went through a major governance restructuring.  One of those changes was a revision in how JAFI's Board of Governors is composed.  In particular, the issue was historically how Israelis were selected through the World Zionist Organization to sit on the Board.  The move was made to make sitting on the Board less of a political placement than it had previously been.  This was a major push from North American donors and leadership who provide more than $150 million annually in core and designated financial resources.


This nearly came to a head this summer when Prime Minister Netanyahu announced Natan Sharansky as his choice to serve as Chair of the Executive (the professional head) of JAFI.  In the past, the prime minister named the head of the WZO who would also serve as the head of JAFI.  Wanting to de-politicize this process, Sharnsky went through a nomination process and was named head of the Jewish Agency and required that future heads of JAFI not also serve as the chair of the WZO.  The end result is a less politically aligned Jewish Agency, which is what makes the government's decision to provide core funding all the more interesting.


JAFI has and continues to provide many core services in Israel.  The most easily identifiable is facilitating aliyah for thousands of people every year.  This includes providing emergency evacuations in some communities (like Iran and Venezuela), running absorption centers, operating ulpan (Hebrew language classes for recent immigrants), and providing housing and job training/placement.  These services have been particularly intensive and expensive in regards to helping the Ethiopian Israeli community.  With this infusion of money, will the government's role in the management/leadership of the Agency changed?


A few years ago, when the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews began giving millions of dollars a year to JAFI, their president joined the Agency's executive committee, which has a major influence over budgeting and policy.  Will there be a similar governance representation change now?  We don't know yet.


From an American donor perspective, the fact that JAFI will now receive direct operating support from Israel shows that Israel's involvement in the Jewish Agency will change to being one of an "investor," similar to the role of Jewish communities around the world.  We still need to see if this deal will be finalized, but in thinking about the philanthropic relationship between Israel and the global Jewish community this would be a huge step forward.