American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

Building on a legacy of hope

Dr. Oheneba Boachie, left, and Dr. Rick Hodes, centre, with patients. The JDC spine program in Ethiopia is seeing patients full-time and has evaluated more than 5,000 patients with spine deformities. (photo from Gary Segal)

The two previous Bring Back Hope events “were vital to getting us to where we are now,” Dr. Rick Hodes, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) medical director for Ethiopia, told the Independent. “They raised interest in our work and the financial gifts we received allowed us to expand, to operate on hundreds more patients, and to become the most important spine centre in the entire country of 120 million.”

Bring Back Hope III will take place Oct. 22 at the JW Marriott Parq Vancouver. The event, which was conceived by local businessman and philanthropist Gary Segal, will honour Hodes and raise funds to secure Hodes’ legacy by establishing a dedicated spine centre in Ethiopia and training doctors and medical staff.

Segal met Hodes on a Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver/ JDC trip to Ethiopia in 2007. From Hodes, Segal learned about Tesfaye Anagaw, then a teenager, who had an extreme deformity in his spine that could not be operated on in Africa. Segal managed to get Anagaw the life-saving surgery he needed at Vancouver General Hospital in 2009. The experience inspired Segal to help others in similar circumstances by supporting Hodes’ work. Segal launched the Bring Back Hope Initiative (BBH) in 2012.

It wasn’t intended to be annual event, Segal told the Independent. “As a new cause with its somewhat unique origin, it took some time and thoughtful analysis to deploy the funds in a strategic manner – not just to fund the immediate and ongoing need for life-saving spine deformity surgeries, but also to increase training and capacity within Ethiopia. In addition to BBH working with JDC, the newly established BBH partnership with the UBC Branch for Global Surgical Care was unfolding methodically.

“As a result, the appropriate timing for BBH II just naturally turned out to be a five-year anniversary of the initial launch. With the similarly inspiring and even larger amount of funds raised at BBH II, I would say that, around three years later, the rumblings of a BBH III 10-year anniversary event began running through my head, only to be derailed by a couple of unforeseen ‘best laid plans of mice and men going awry’ events: COVID, followed by an outbreak of civil unrest and war in Ethiopia. So, here we are.”

One of the prominent aspects of Hodes’ work, which has been highlighted at previous BBH events, is the interfaith cooperation.

“It is not exactly a revelation to say that extremism, especially of political and religious beliefs, has historically led to much discord in the world,” said Segal. “In stark contrast, underpinning these BBH events, you have this remarkable story – rare humanitarian Jewish physician Dr. Rick Hodes, partnering with devout Baptist Ghanian-born spine surgeon Dr. [Oheneba] Boachie, working with the Catholic nuns of Mother Teresa mission in Addis Ababa, saving Muslim and Christian children. What an uplifting and powerful example of what interfaith cooperation can achieve.”

photo - From left to right: Dr. Oheneba Boachie, Gary Segal and Dr. Rick Hodes in the clinic office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — From left to right: Dr. Oheneba Boachie, Gary Segal and Dr. Rick Hodes in the clinic office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. *(photo from Gary Segal)*

An important development since the first BBH event is that the Ethiopian Ministry of Health has recognized the importance of the spine program.

Boachie and Hodes have been working together for almost 20 years, having met in 2005.

“In spring of 2006, we sent five patients and one staff person to Accra, Ghana. At the same time, Dr. Boachie and his team arrived from New York, and they operated on our patients and many others,” said Hodes. “The Ethiopian government was not making spine a priority, but now that we are seeing patients full-time and have evaluated well over 5,000 patients with spine deformities, they realize that this is a major cause of disability. They now are in favour of a national spine centre and are working with us to get this done. Their endorsement has shown us, and our donors, that we have ‘buy-in’ from the Ethiopian government.”

While the majority of surgeries took place in Ethiopia this year, Hodes said, “We also send patients to FOCOS Hospital in Ghana and Ganga Hospital in India for traction and for surgery.

“We are sending Ethiopian surgeons to India for training, as well. Over the years, the majority of our difficult surgeries have been performed in Ghana, often preceded by months of ambulatory traction. Having our own centre will allow us to provide better care and to be in control of the process and the facility.”

Currently, they operate in a government hospital as well as in a private Christian hospital, said Hodes, “but we believe that a full-time, 100%-spine centre would provide better care to Ethiopians suffering from spine issues.

“I am the main doctor in the clinic, but, in the end, this must be a program run by Ethiopians for Ethiopians,” he stressed. “A national spine centre will allow this to happen. This means having a dedicated facility, as well as fully trained Ethiopian physicians, nurses, physical therapists and others to be able to evaluate, treat, operate on and rehabilitate our patients. It is a great opportunity to provide great care to our patients, and I would love to find an Ethiopian doctor to direct it.”

Hodes was in Vancouver more than once this summer, talking about his hopes for the spine program.

“I was here,” he said, “meeting people, speaking about my work and trying to interest people in our activities in Ethiopia, which involve identifying patients, evaluating and treating them, choosing people for surgery, coordinating care and arranging surgeries – and following them afterwards for years,” as care needs don’t end after the surgery is complete.

“The Dr. Rick Hodes/JDC spine program – over the last 20 years, part of JDC’s tikkun olam non-sectarian work – has not only saved and transformed countless lives, but has also served as an inspiring example and message to both the Jewish and non-Jewish world,” said Segal, who has been on the JDC board since 2012.

Hodes has been recognized for his work in various ways. Most recently, he was given the 2024 Walter P. Blount Award by the Scoliosis Research Society, whose membership “includes over 1,000 of the world’s leading spine surgeons, researchers, physician assistants and orthotists who are involved in research and treatment of spinal deformities.” The award honours “an individual who has provided outstanding service for those with spinal deformities, through their generous actions out of a sense of service to larger social and professional goals.”

Segal and others have called Hodes “tireless” in his humanitarian work.

“I am surrounded by suffering, and it is my challenge to deal with this daily, to provide compassionate care and to raise funds for all of this,” Hodes told the Independent. “I realize that I can only help a small percent of the people who seek my care, and have to deal with that. I am motivated by my goal of helping people for whom there is no other alternative. It’s not easy. I lose sleep over this. It is never-ending.”

Hodes will return to Vancouver for BBB III. Also attending, said Segal, will be “Tesfaye, with his wife and son (whom I can’t wait to meet for the first time); two other patients whose lives were transformed through the Dr. Rick Hodes/JDC spine program; some JDC professionals from the USA, Israel and Ethiopia; and a senior Ministry of Health individual. There is also a special entertainment surprise with its own unique story and link to the evening.”

For tickets to BBH III, visit bringbackhope.com.

JDC’s Ukraine efforts

Marina Sonkina shares her experiences as a volunteer with the JDC in Poland last year, helping Ukrainian refugees. (photo by Masumi Kikuchi)

This year’s annual Raoul Wallenberg Day in Vancouver honoured the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) for “its courageous support for Ukrainian refugees.”

“In addition to vast internal displacement, from a population of 41 million Ukrainians, eight million (mostly women and children, and some seniors) have fled to Europe and other parts of the world,” said Alan Le Fevre in his opening remarks.

Le Fevre is on the board of directors of the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society, which hosts the Wallenberg Day commemorations. This year, the event was presented in partnership with Congregation Beth Israel, and it took place at the synagogue on Jan. 22.

The JDC’s work helping Ukrainian refugees “continues its illustrious history,” said Le Fevre, noting that, “since its founding in 1914, the JDC has provided support for refugees whenever and wherever needed, propelled by Jewish values and a commitment to mutual responsibility.”

The City of Vancouver’s proclamation of this year’s Wallenberg Day was read by Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung, attending on behalf of Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim. She was joined by Councilor Mike Klassen.

Kirby-Yung had helped celebrate the start of the Lunar New Year that morning, and still had on the red jacket she had worn for that event because the Asian community “has suffered much in the past few years, [with] anti-Asian hate and, sometimes, that plight has been very analogous to what our Jewish community has suffered” and one of the best things about the city, and what she sees in the work of the JDC, is “communities and cultures, and people of different faiths and backgrounds, who come together to stand against injustice and to support each other.”

photo - Vancouver Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung reads the city’s proclamation of this year’s Wallenberg Day, the framed copy of which is being held by Councilor Mike Klassen — Vancouver Deputy Mayor Sarah Kirby-Yung reads the city’s proclamation of this year’s Wallenberg Day, the framed copy of which is being held by Councilor Mike Klassen. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

WSCCS board member George Bluman introduced the afternoon’s guest speaker, Dr. Marina Sonkina, a local educator and writer. “Soon after Russia attacked Ukraine, Marina applied to volunteer with the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, as someone who speaks Russian, Ukrainian and other languages and as someone who has been a refugee herself,” he said. “Almost immediately, she was accepted and flew to Poland at the end of March.

“After arriving in Warsaw, about five hours later, Marina was at the Polish-Ukrainian border, where she served in a camp as a frontline responder, offering fleeing refugees medical and psychological support.”

Sonkina, who has relatives in Russia and Ukraine, said most of her family is out of Russia at this point.

“If we are talking about why didn’t Russians resist,” she said, “I think those more than one million people who left Russia when the draft, conscription, was announced, that is the only accessible form of not revolt, but saying no to Putin. Otherwise, it is pretty much a fascist state.”

While Putin is the person who launched the war, she wondered about others’ culpability: all those who overlooked Putin’s actions over the 22 years of his being power, which has seen him poison his opponents and annex Crimea, among other things. What was the West’s role, she asked, as they worked with Putin as a business partner first, putting his authoritarianism second?

In Warsaw, Sonkina was one of the people who met Holocaust survivors being extracted from Ukraine, to be housed in Germany. The next day, she worked in a refugee camp, where there were already more than two million refugees. (For more on Sonkina’s experience in Poland, read her account at jewishindependent.ca/helping-ukrainian-refugees.)

JDC helped everybody, said Sonkina. A moral responsibility to repair the world, tikkun olam, is part of JDC’s mandate and she saw this responsibility in action. She remarked on the goodwill of people from around the world, of a range of ages, who were helping in different ways, including taking refugees into their homes. The strength and independence of the refugees also left an impression on Sonkina – they didn’t want to take handouts, she said, and they wanted to know whether they could get jobs in the country that harboured them.

“One of the things that I quickly realized – a part of persuading them to go to this country or that was just the human contact that was so important,” she said. The refugees she met had experienced such trauma, and her acknowledgement of what they had gone through allowed some of them to cry. “It was sometimes hard,” Sonkina admitted, visibly emotional. “But there were also funny stories,” she added, sharing a couple of those stories before WSCCS board member Gene Homel took the podium.

An historian teaching about Europe in the 20th century for many years, Homel had been in Ukraine eight or nine years ago, and he echoed what Sonkina had said about Ukrainians’ “intense loyalty” – “the attachment to the land, culture and language” – but, he said, “I want to make the point that, in Ukraine today, the focus of loyalty is a civic one, it’s on the national state rather than ethnicity, it’s a pluralistic and multiethnic society that’s being created, forged largely as a result of Russia’s criminal attack on Ukraine.”

Homel provided a brief overview of the JDC’s work from its founding in 1914 to its current work with Ukrainian Jews and non-Jews, and he introduced businessman and philanthropist Gary Segal, who became familiar with JDC’s work in 2007, on a Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver trip to Ethiopia, led by JDC professionals. He’s been a board member since 2012.

“I marvel at the compassion, intelligence, resourcefulness and resolve with which the dedicated staff and volunteers carry on their sacred work,” said Segal, noting that JDC helps communities of all backgrounds and faiths, and doesn’t just respond to acute situations, but also to endemic poverty, food insecurity and the plight of refugees, as well as antisemitism.

“Since 1914, we’ve rescued more than one million Jews in danger, from places like Ethiopia, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine,” said Segal, who spoke about various JDC initiatives, including its medical programs in countries like Ethiopia.

photo - Gary Segal, a board member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, speaks about JDC’s history and his involvement with the organization — Gary Segal, a board member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, speaks about JDC’s history and his involvement with the organization. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

It was on that 2007 trip that Segal met Dr. Rick Hodes, JDC’s medical director in Ethiopia, whose care for kids with severe spinal deformities (with Ghanaian spine surgeon Dr. Oheneba Boachie-Adjei) inspired Segal to get involved, too. He brought a young Ethiopian to Vancouver for back surgery and established in Vancouver the organization Bring Back Hope, which has raised some $3 million to support spine surgeries, preventative screening, and more. (See jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/jan11/archives11jan14-02.html and several articles on jewishindependent.ca.)

Returning to JDC’s work in Ukraine since the war began, Segal noted that, to date, the organization “has cared for 35,000 vulnerable and elderly poor; it evacuated 13,000 Jews from Ukraine; provided over 40,000 refugees with food, medicine, trauma support; received over 19,000 incoming calls at the emergency centre; and provided over 1.3 million pounds of humanitarian assistance.”

Segal then brought his talk around to Raoul Wallenberg, Sweden’s special envoy to Hungary in 1944, who saved tens of thousands of Jews from deportation and death. “The original fund of $100,000 that [Wallenberg] received from the War Refugee Board came from the American Joint Distribution Committee and, when that was finished, he received additional funds from the JDC,” said

Segal, who concluded, “I would say, so much of what JDC does is giving hope. Hope is a powerful word, an essential element in everyone’s life…. Hope can give us the strength and the will to continue in our darkest moments, to aspire and believe that things can and will be better.”

On behalf of the JDC, Segal accepted, with thanks, the Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Award from Le Fevre.

Other components of the afternoon included a few words from Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, a short documentary on Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen, who received the 1922 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of displaced persons after the First World War, and a compilation of JDC’s work in Ukraine since the Russian invasion.

WSCCS board member Judith Anderson introduced the videos, giving more of Nansen’s background and achievements, including “the repatriation of 450,000 prisoners of war, mostly held in Soviet Russia” and “[in] response to a severe famine in Soviet Russia, Nansen directed relief efforts that saved between seven million and 22 million people from starvation.”

Anderson said, “The Nansen story is directly relevant to Ukraine. The headquarters for Nansen’s mission to Russia was in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, and Nansen donated part of his Nobel Peace Prize money to establish a major agricultural project in Ukraine.”

She thanked the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Nobel Peace Centre for permission to show the videos about Nansen and JDC staff members and directors – Shaun Goldstone, Solly Kaplinski and Alex Weisler – for compiling the material for the Ukraine Crisis video.

The Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society is named after Wallenberg for his actions during the Holocaust, and Chiune Sugihara, who, as vice-consul in Lithuania for Japan during the war, issued transit visas that allowed thousands of Jews from Poland and Lithuania to escape. For more information on the society and to see videos of the Jan. 22 event, visit wsccs.ca.

A hard-earned +1 year

Every time I put together one of these special five-year anniversary issues, I am both thankful for and awed by the community’s commitment to this newspaper. Even though I have owned it now for a quarter of its existence (!) and have experienced everything it has taken to keep publishing it, I still feel like it’s a miracle that, while so many other newspapers have folded, the Jewish Independent continues.

image - Cover of the Oct. 12, 1933, JWB — Cover of the Oct. 12, 1933, JWB

When I look back at old issues of the JI and the Jewish Western Bulletin, I get to see time move in almost an instant. In one sitting, I can follow the creation, the lifetime and, often, the transformation, or occasionally even the end, of a communal organization. I can see how a cohort of community members transitions into a whole new generation of dedicated volunteers and generous philanthropists. I can relate to the financial and other challenges that every former publisher and editor has gone through. I can feel the support of community leaders, readers and advertisers, who consistently have come to the rescue of a paper that has pretty much always been on the edge of solvency. I can share in so many people’s happinesses and sadnesses, their kudos and their complaints. I can appreciate the hard work of the paper’s publishers, writers and staff in every decade and that of countless community members, which has gotten us to today.

The community and the JI/JWB have survived the Great Depression, the Second World War, numerous recessions and other hardships. Currently, we are in the midst of surviving a global pandemic together. It has been a difficult year for all of us, to say the least. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to having moments of despair and fear, and not just during COVID. I know how privileged and lucky I am, both personally and professionally, but, sometimes, I need reminding.

During this past year, as my few staff have switched to working at home or semi-retired, I have had more opportunities to speak and email with community members and others. While not a replacement for face-to-face encounters, it has been one of the pluses of this hard-earned +1 year of the newspaper, which had to postpone our special 90th anniversary issue until now. It is no exaggeration to say that we have only made it to 90+1 because of you. And not only your financial support, for which I am extremely grateful, but your indomitable spirit. We have pages to print because there are events to cover; classes, lectures and performances to attend; opinions to share; ambitious projects to promote; endeavours for which to raise funds; people offering help and people in need of assistance; people and milestones to celebrate; and losses to mourn. In this very newspaper you are holding in your hands or looking at on screen, there are stories on all of these aspects of our community.

Every time I prepare an issue of the JI, I’m buoyed by the promise that each paper holds – that there is a future, unknown as it may be, towards which we are all working. And, every time I look at past issues of the JIand the JWB, I am inspired by all that we’ve accomplished; by the no small feat that we are still here, showing up for one another and trying to make the world at large, or at least our small corner of it, a little bit better.

image - Cover of the Feb. 8, 1934, JWB — Cover of the Feb. 8, 1934, JWB

In my forays into the newspaper’s archives for this special edition, I came across, by chance, a few pithy sayings, no doubt intended to be motivational but, more pragmatically, to fill the small spaces that, in the olden days of typesetting, were hard to fill at the end of a column of news. From 1933 and 1934, they impart messages that could apply to any generation: “Resolve to be thyself, and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery”; “Some people can’t have a word together without having words”; “Better is one smile from the living than fountains of tears for the dead.”

I have no idea from where these aphorisms came, but they made me smile when I came across them. This newspaper never fails to surprise me. I just love it. And I thank all of you for helping me fill its pages and keep the presses rolling. May we all go from strength to strength.

Supporting Israelis in need

Dr. William and Ruth Ross (photo from Canadian Associates of Ben-Gurion University)

Dr. William Hy Ross tears up talking about the motivation behind his philanthropic activities in Israel. Sitting behind a desk in his room at the medical clinic he runs, over which hangs a watercolour painting of the Mount of Olives, Ross said it is because of the grandparents he never met, both of whom died in the Holocaust. “If we had a state back then, that wouldn’t have happened,” he said. “I would have grandparents.”

Ross met with the Jewish Independent last week to talk about the projects the Ross Foundation has undertaken in Israel, projects aimed at lifting up the underprivileged on the fringes of society there. He was accompanied by Sagie Shein, senior program manager of the Jewish American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). Shein has acted as philanthropic advisor to Ross, and was recently made the fund manager of the Ross Family Foundation, in which role, he told the JI, he identifies projects that will achieve the foundation’s goals in Israel, whether through JDC or otherwise.

Ross and Shein met after Rabbi Shmuel Birnham, formerly of Congregation Har El, introduced Ross to Prof. Jack Habib of the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem. Shein has now been working with the Ross foundation for six years.

Ross is a surgeon and a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia. In 2012, he established the Morris and Sarah Ross International Fellowship in Vitreo-Retinal Surgery, which funds the training of ophthalmologists from Israel, including, so far, 12 Israeli Jews, three Israeli Muslims and three Israeli Christians.

Also in 2012, he and his wife, Ruth, established the Ross Family Scholarship Program for Advanced Studies in the Helping Professions, which funds education for nurses and social workers serving in the underserved peripheral communities of Israel. Their contributions have gone to select students at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) and they have been recognized as founders of the university, in honour of their contributions. The Ross Foundation appears on the walls of BGU’s Marcus Campus in Be’er Sheva.

In 2016, the Ross Foundation

extended its activity to another initiative – the Project for the Advancement of Employment for Ethiopian Immigrants, which supports the education of engineers, web developers and others.

“Israel is a fantastic success story,” said Ross. “You hear about the start-up companies, etc., but there is a whole fringe society who doesn’t have any of those advantages.”

Ross spoke to the JI about the particular importance of supporting Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel. “When they’re done serving in the army, they often end up in dead-end jobs,” he said. “We are providing living expenses for them in a way that is a game-changer, allowing them to get jobs as practical engineers and in other needed industries.”

Ross and Shein explained that, even when given support to pay for education, many underprivileged Israelis cannot afford to stop working and go to school full-time. The Ross Foundation’s initiatives give recipients a stipend that allows them to stop working and complete a course of education. The foundation is also supporting other communities facing challenges in the workplace, like Arabs and Charedim.

“JDC empowers all Israelis as a social innovation incubator, developing pioneering social services in conjunction with the Israeli government, local municipalities, nonprofits and other partners to lift the lives of Israel’s children at risk, elderly, unemployed, and people with disabilities,” Michael Geller, JDC’s director of media relations, told the Independent.

Operating since 1914, JDC has provided “more than $2 billion in social services and aid to date,” he said.

The JDC funds and organizes experimental programs in the hope that the government will see their success and launch similar efforts.

“We’re looking to pilot programs that can be adopted by the Israeli government,” Ross said.

“In 2020,” added Shein, “the foundation is expected to further expand its activities to additional programs based on the foundation vision.”

“Hy and Ruthie Ross really get Israel,” said David Berson, executive director of Canadian Associates of BGU for British Columbia and Alberta. “They speak the language of social impact and they lead by example. I am so impressed and moved by their understanding of the human equation for social change. Great training, proper guidance and supportive accompaniment can lead to gainful employment.

“As a social worker who trained and worked in Israel with some of her significant social challenges for two decades years, I know that Hy and Ruthie really understand the most critical needs of Israel. It is also an honour for me to be able to partner with JDC Israel, one of Israel’s most noteworthy agencies of real social mobility and empowerment for Israel’s most at-risk populations.”

Ross summed up the strong belief that drives his philanthropy in Israel simply: “I believe every Jew has an obligation to support Israel in some way.”

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.

Jewish history’s next chapter

The JDC’s Zoya Shvartzman is part of the FEDtalks lineup Sept. 16. (photo from JFGV)

In returning to Vancouver, Zoya Shvartzman is retracing the route that has seen the Moldova-born woman help “write the next chapter of the history of European Jewry.”

Those words, while spoken by Shvartzman, are not about herself – she was crediting North Americans and others who support the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) with helping revivify communities that were almost annihilated under Nazism and then suppressed by communism. But the work Shvartzman does in her role at the JDC means she could rightly claim to be among a number of authors altering the future for Jews in Europe.

Shvartzman and her parents made aliyah from the East European nation when she was 8 years old. At 15, she and her mother migrated to Vancouver. Here, the family had some hard times and they turned to the Jewish community.

“The Jewish community welcomed us with open arms and gave us almost a second home,” she recalled recently in a phone interview with the Independent. “It was a very, very fond memory of my time there and it has a lot to do with the Jewish community that became our family.” She will speak about this time when she presents as one of four speakers at FEDtalks, the opening event of the 2018 Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, Sept. 16.

Shvartzman chose to pursue a degree in international development studies and political science at McGill University and so, after four years on the West Coast, she and her mother decamped for Montreal.

“After that, I decided to move to Budapest to pursue my master’s in political science because I was focusing on Eastern European politics and transitions from communism to democracy,” she said. “Because I’m from that part of the world, it made sense to go back and be there, be where it’s taking place.”

She completed her studies at Central European University, which was founded and funded by the democracy philanthropist George Soros, and, after graduation, worked for the Canadian embassy in Budapest. In 2007, she was offered a position at the JDC, where she is now director of strategic partnerships.

Shvartzman’s role is to identify on-the-ground needs of Jewish communities in Europe and convey those needs to potential funders, primarily in North America. Federations, foundations and philanthropists then contribute to help the JDC complete its projects.

“In Europe, basically, our main mission is that we build resilient communities,” she said. “We help build communities where they were shattered after the Holocaust and after communist regimes.

“In Eastern and Central Europe, we help poor Jews with basic services like food and medicine and winter relief, help to pay their utilities,” she explained. “Most of the elderly are Holocaust survivors. We work extensively with Holocaust survivors together with the Claims Conference funding. In the last 10 years or so, we developed services for children and families, modeled on the JFS [Jewish Family Services] model that you’re familiar with in Canada and the U.S., addressing the needs of poor children and families.”

Examples of projects that the JDC has spearheaded or supported include a Jewish community centre in Warsaw and a summer camp in Hungary, where children from 25 countries come to strengthen – or, in some cases, learn about for the first time – their Jewish identity. But the work is not limited to Eastern and Central Europe.

In France, the JDC has opened a “resilience centre,” to help Jewish schools, social workers, teachers, children and families respond to threats experienced by Jews in the country. Several acts of anti-Jewish terror in recent years in France have compounded existing anxieties about the security of its Jewish population and institutions.

The decade-plus that Shvartzman has been with the JDC has been a time of challenge for Jews and others across the continent.

“Especially the last four or five years have been particularly tumultuous for Jews in Europe,” she said. “There are different threats – external, internal threats. We see communities that have nearly collapsed, like the community in Greece, in terms of the economic crisis that really, really shattered it.”

In addition to the generalized economic challenges experienced by people in many countries, Jews have faced particular difficulties. Rising antisemitism and political extremism in places like Hungary and Poland have stoked once-dormant apprehensions.

Even so, Shvartzman is bullish about Jewish life in Europe and plans to share her enthusiasm with Vancouverites.

“There are many causes for optimism,” she said. “When you look at the revival of Jewish life in Europe and how these communities have gone from survival to really thriving Jewish communities, I think that’s a big cause of optimism.

“This is quite remarkable when you consider the history and some of the deep, deep traumas that this community has suffered and, today, Jews are reclaiming their heritage and are proud to be Jewish,” she continued. “All of this gives us great causes of optimism that Jewish life in Europe is thriving.”

Shvartzman’s Moldovan childhood and her current work both reflect and embody the JDC’s mission to save and build Jewish lives, said Michael Geller, the JDC’s North American director of communications.

“In her professional life and her personal life and in her life’s journey, she understands quite deeply the importance, the critical importance, of the work we do every day to ensure that needy Jews have the basic needs to continue to live their lives and, in addition, to have a strong Jewish identity, one that is their own, that they make themselves, and one that we help strengthen and empower through the kind of work that we do,” he said.

Returning to the theme of writing the next chapter of European Jewish history, Shvartzman credits overseas allies with making possible all of the achievements she and the JDC have realized.

“It’s only possible because of the support of the North American communities, North American Jewry, that chose to invest in that part of the world over the past 20, 25 years,” she said. “If I had to underline one message, it would be that: North American Jewry helping to write the next chapter of the history of European Jewry.”

FEDtalks features keynote speakers Rabbi Irwin Kula, Pamela Schuller, Arik Zeevi and Zoya Shvartzman. The event takes place at the Vancouver Playhouse on Sept. 16, 7 p.m. Tickets ($36) are available from jewishvancouver.com.

Critics peek under the Conference umbrella

President Barack Obama meets with leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the state dining room at the White House on March 1, 2011. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Since the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted April 30 to reject the membership application of the self-labeled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby J Street, the umbrella group has come under siege with accusations of not being adequately representative of U.S. Jewry’s views and for being controlled by a faction of right-wing members.

Yet a closer look at the Conference’s makeup reveals the prevalence of politically centrist or apolitical organizations – particularly among its largest members – such as Jewish National Fund, Hadassah, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, Jewish Federations of North America and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Also included in the Conference are openly liberal groups such as Ameinu and Americans for Peace Now.

“A majority of the groups voting against J Street were secular, centrist groups, not religious or right-wing,” Zionist Organization of America national president Morton A. Klein suggested, noting that by his count there are no more than 11 religious or right-wing groups among the Conference’s 50 members.

“To say it’s not inclusive when you have Peace Now, Ameinu, [American Friends of] Likud and ZOA in the Conference, is an absurd statement,” Klein added.

J Street responded to the vote with a letter on its website addressed to Conference of Presidents executive vice-chairman/chief executive officer Malcolm Hoenlein, stating, “Dear Malcolm: Thank you for finally making it clear that the Conference of Presidents is not representative of the voice of the Jewish community. We recognize the need for an open and honest conversation on Israel in the United States. We appreciate you being honest. Now we’ll work on the openness.”

To gain membership in the Conference, J Street needed the support of two-thirds of the body’s members. Forty-two members showed up for the vote, whose final tally was 22 against J Street, 17 in favor and three abstentions.