American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

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.