Okay, we are definitely in a long stretch of gray here in MetroWest, at least weather-wise, and from what the forecasters are saying, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. From where I’m sitting however, looking at what’s going on inside Women’s Philanthropy rather than outside my window, there is plenty of excitement, warmth and color. In just the first two days of this week, Women’s Philanthropy has had a get-together of the women about to leave for Cuba (that’s where the warmth comes in!), we’ve had the first Women’s Awareness Day committee meeting (our speaker is Dani Shapiro, whose new book, Devotion, is a big hit – excitement!), and the planning for Spring Fling continued at a meeting held in the café of the Cooperman JCC – wait until you see the eye-catching invitations – bright green lettering lets you know that spring really is lurking around a corner somewhere! And we’d all like to be able to attend the MetroWest Florida Reunion in two weeks – it’s got to be warmer there than here, even if it’s been chillier than normal in our southern outposts.

In addition to bringing warmth, excitement and color to a dreary February and March, all of these endeavors have something else in common. They are all being chaired by wonderful lay leaders, supported by our amazing staff. I am so excited to be working with all of them. As president of Women’s Philanthropy, my job is to envision the big picture, set the tone for the year and then empower the vice presidents and the chairs to put it all into action and bring it to life.

Wendie Poscowe, Anna Fisch and honorary chair Betty Feinberg have devoted great effort and thought to make the Cuba mission meaningful and memorable – and it will be, in no little way because of Sarabeth Wizen and Neimah Tractenberg’s attention to detail – and Sofya Iosiovich’s emails, keeping us all on track.

Cynthia Geller and Brenda Golombeck are off and running with Women’s Awareness Day, with Shay Rodney at their side and we can’t wait to see all of you on Friday April 30. Many more exciting details to come about one of Women’s Philanthropy’s signature days, which will include the presentation of the Maxine Fisher Scholarship Award.

Spring Fling has four women at the helm – Jodi Murnick and Melody Fuhr from Young Women B’Yachad and Jamie Ramsfelder and Stacey McGarr from Young Leadership Division. After meeting with them this week, I can promise that the night of April 15 will not only be a great night to honor Cohn Award winners Adina Brownstein and Jonathan Ramsfelder, but will also take us on an exciting new path. Rebecca Hoffman and Robin Leitner are helping make their dreams into reality.

And finally, Esther Rosenberg Simon and Fran Ticker, two of my absolute favorite MetroWest women, who have been friends and mentors since I first got involved in both federation and synagogue life, readily agreed to chair the MetroWest Florida Reunion when I asked them. (If you’ve ever asked anyone to take on a volunteer job, you know how good it is to hear “Yes, of course” at the other end of the phone line!!!) The reunion is an effort by all of the MetroWest campaign staff and at some point in the life of this blog I plan to write about all of the work they do to keep our community running – except that there really are no words to describe how hard they work and with what devotion they serve.

So that’s a small piece of what’s happening here in MetroWest and some of the women making it happen. There’s always room for more and if any of the committees above sound like something you’d like to be a part of, just let me know!

Stay warm, dry and safe – and get excited for the spring!

Leslie

There are so many women I met on the Heart 2 Heart Mission last month that I still have to tell you about – young women studying for their MBA degrees in a new one-year intensive program at Tel Aviv University, the fabulous Ethnic Empowerment women from our Partnership 2000 community of Ofakim, who have their own restaurant after only four years of working together and made us an amazing lunch, young Druse women who envision a bright future for themselves, Ethiopian women who work together to make sure there are afternoon programs for their teenagers, women members of the Knesset – that I could go on and on. And that doesn’t even touch on the wonderful women from across North America who participated in this mission, all of whom left behind families, jobs, and all of the myriad obligations of daily life to participate – and I mean really participate, not merely observe – in connecting with the land of Israel and its people.

On our very last morning, we heard from two more women, Ora Merrin and Judy Amit, who really brought together the meaning of the mission and what we, as part of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), do as part of the Jewish people. Let me explain who Ora and Judy are, their connection to each other and to each of us.

Ora and Ofer Merrin

Missions like Heart 2 Heart are planned and produced by the amazing, superb, tireless staff of JFNA in conjunction with inspired and driven lay leadership, but all of this still requires a presence on the ground of a tour operator to hire the buses, make the restaurant arrangements, and so on. For this mission, JFNA worked with a company called Giant Leaps, a woman-owned and woman-staffed Israeli company. Ora Merrin is the owner of Giant Leaps and she was with us every step of the way. A tall, striking figure, Ora seemed to be everywhere at once, making sure everything was going smoothly. Even in the middle of our “treasure hunt” through the muddy Galilee, while we were running around like crazy people (and seeing wonderful sights), Ora kept up with us, unfailingly cheerful and encouraging us to the finish line. What we found out on our last morning was that, while Ora was busy running around with us, her physician husband Ofer was commanding the Israel Defense Force field hospital in Haiti. In fact, the field hospital was Ofer’s idea. When the IDF is defending Israel, wounded soldiers are brought to hospitals in Israel, either by ground transport or by airlift. So there is no need for Israel itself to have a field hospital. But, because the IDF has responded so often to disasters around the world, Ofer saw the need for a field hospital that could be a part of Israel’s disaster response, and helped make the field hospital a reality.

And the connection between the IDF field hospital and Judy Amit? The first thing to know is that Judy is the chief operating officer for program and budgets for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). As the JDC operates in more than 70 countries around the world and in Israel, Judy’s job is a big one. If I had known more when I was younger – okay, MUCH younger – I would have gone to work for the JDC. You need to be young, because these men and women work in very difficult, demanding circumstances, dealing first-hand with the emergencies and ongoing needs of Jews around the world. I’ve met JDC staffers in every corner of the globe, from Gondar in Ethiopia to Cherkassy in the Ukraine to Beersheva in Israel. In their hands rests the work we do of rescuing Jews in need or at risk. The JDC staff also represents the Jewish people to the rest of the world, in non-sectarian efforts that range from the Agohozo-Shalom Youth Village for teenage orphans of the Rwandan genocide to the current Haitian relief effort. It is the JDC’s Haitian relief work that connects Ora, Judy Amit and us.

Part of Judy’s global responsibility includes overseeing the JDC’ non-sectarian programs (and Will Recant, who was our speaker at last year’s Women’s Awareness Day, is the direct supervisor for disaster relief). Judy came to speak to us that Thursday morning to tell us the other half of the Haiti story. While the IDF created the field hospital and funded the IDF personnel who went to Haiti, it’s the JDC who provided the incubators and other life-saving equipment for the field hospital. In fact, it was Ofer Merrin who called Judy Amit to tell her what was needed. And, as you will see and hear Ofer say in the video, within 12 hours of his request, the necessary equipment was on the ground, in the IDF field hospital. And where did Judy and the JDC get the money to buy that equipment? From me and from you, through our responses to the online mailboxes set up on our UJC MetroWest website, and similar mailboxes throughout the federations across North America. As of a few days ago, this system has raised $4.8 million dollars for aid to Haiti. This is one person at a time, clicking on an online mailbox, writing a check, making a difference. We can’t all be on the ground, saving lives and making miraculous rescues. But we do stand behind Dr. Ofer Merrin and Judy Amit and the work they do. We hold them up and they hold up the world.

Thanks for making a world of difference –
Leslie

When you go on a federation mission to Israel – or anywhere, for that matter – you are always in for a set of experiences you will never forget. The only problem is that you are moving so fast, it’s hard to keep them all straight sometimes! There is one experience I had on the Heart 2 Heart Mission two weeks ago that really has "staying power," in that I can remember many, many details of my visit with Hedy Resnick.

Hedy hosted about 10 women from the mission at her home in Savion, outside Tel Aviv, for dinner after a long day spent in Jerusalem. Hedy is an Israeli Lion of Judah, and was one of several Israeli Lions who hosted groups from Heart 2 Heart. Home hospitality is often a feature of missions to Israel; I’ve had wonderful meals and met wonderful Israelis this way, so I was looking forward to this evening.

As we approached the ranch home through a lovely garden, we were greeted at the door by Hedy – a small, elegant woman in a lavender sweater and long black skirt. She had a shock of thick white hair and bright, twinkling eyes. As she spoke to each one of us, we could detect a European accent, but it was heard to place, exactly. We were introduced to Hedy’s granddaughter Keren and another Israeli Lion named Selena. We sat down to dinner at the long dining room table, set with china, silver and a beautiful tablecloth, with Hedy serving from the head of the table.

We all introduced ourselves, sharing our experiences of the mission with Hedy and her guests. Hedy wanted to tell us about the work of the Israeli Lions of Judah. The Jewish Agency for Israel works with this group of between 90 and 100 women to identify projects that benefit women and girls in need. The Israeli Lions investigate the various programs and then allocate their pooled money to the ones they select. Once a project is selected, they continue to visit and monitor its progress. Normally, this would have been more than enough for an interesting discussion, but Hedy was clearly a very interesting person in her own right. At 82 years-young, she had prepared the entire delicious meal of salmon, mujaderrah (a Sephardic rice and lentils dish that happens to be a favorite of mine), eggplant and cole slaw. Her granddaughter revealed that Hedy was working on a cookbook – and then really let the cat out of the bag when she revealed that Hedy has already authored two other books.

At that point we couldn’t let Hedy talk to us about anything other than the stories she tells in her books, one about her late first husband, and the other a memoir of her life. Both books started as letters that were parts of care packages to her grandchildren when they served in the IDF. It really took quite a bit of urging on our part to get Hedy to share her history, but it was so worth it. We sat spellbound as Hedy shared her story of a sheltered, comfortable childhood in Slovakia and the encroachment of anti-Semitic restrictions on that life when the Nazis moved into her small town. When Hedy was 14, her father sent her and her brother over the mountains of Slovakia into Hungary to live with the oldest daughter, a newlywed. What ensued from there was an unbelievable journey for Hedy’s entire family, back to Slovakia, imprisonment in a Nazi prison, escape from there to France, back to Slovakia after the war ended, then Toronto and finally Israel.

Hedy speaks seven languages as a result of her world travels; she was so eloquent in English that I can’t even imagine what she would be like in her native language – although I’m not sure she could identify which that would be. We all wanted a copy of Hedy’s memoir, but found out that she only had a few copies printed for family and friends. We are in the process of investigating a new printing – if you are interested, please contact our Women’s Philanthropy Development Officer, Jocelyn Gilman at jgilman@ujcnj.org and we will put you on the list – we need at least 50 people to make it worthwhile to the printer.

I have to admit that I was pretty tired the night we went to Hedy’s and almost wished that we could have stayed in Jerusalem rather than running back to Tel Aviv – but once I met Hedy, I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything. Her elegance, eloquence, humor and grace will be with me for a long time. Here’s Hedy and me:

Wishing you the opportunity for the same kind of great experiences,

Leslie

After I return from a trip to Israel, I find that when I download the pictures from my camera, there are pictures that I think I took but are instead consigned to my memory alone. (Sometimes this is a good thing. When we visited an IDF training base and rode in an armored personnel carrier, we were required to don a flak jacket and a helmet. This is not a good look for me, but fortunately there don’t seem to be any pictures to prove it.) I thought I had a group shot of our MetroWest group of 19 women, but that must be on someone else’s camera. All I have to do, however, is close my eyes and I can picture the enthusiasm and curiosity of our participants as we visited each project and I can hear the great questions everyone asked.

Then there are the pictures I did take, that capture the faces of the amazing Israeli women that we met. In addition to seeing the projects that we support in partnership with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the “Joint” or JDC) and the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), we met some amazing Israeli women. Over the next couple of weeks, I want to introduce you to some of them.

On our first day in Israel, we went south into the Negev by train – in the pouring rain! We went first to the Center for Independent Living (CIL). Funded by a coalition of the JDC and the Government of Israel, the CIL is located in Beersheva and serves the differently-abled population of the surrounding area, including Jewish Israelis, the Bedouin population and Christian Arabs. The driving force behind the CIL is a powerhouse of a woman named Dahlia. This photo is Dahlia (left) with Paula Saginaw, immediate past president of Women’s Philanthropy of MetroWest and incoming general campaign chair.

What you can’t see from the picture is that Dahlia herself has a disability; she walks with a limp. Dahlia is living proof that being differently-abled is no hindrance to making enormous change for the better in the world. After participating in a national rally to improve the rights of the differently-abled in Israel, she approached the mayor of Beersheva for a piece of property for the CIL. When he turned her down, she organized a protest that shut down the main street in front of the mayor’s office. She “received” one of the most decrepit, falling-down buildings you could imagine and, with the work of the disabled community she was seeking to serve, has transformed it into a beautifully decorated place for meetings of the community. In addition, there is a Bedouin-style tent on the property, also painted and decorated by the CIL participants, which is a café – also run by the CIL participants. Because the CIL is very near Beersheva University, the tent is filled day and night with students using the wi-fi service and enjoying the delicious pizzas, salads and soups. Dahlia started with a dream and made it into a reality – the current mayor of Beersheva calls her “The Bulldozer” – and isn’t that what we all have to be sometimes, in order to make our dreams come true?

Wishing you a week where you dream big –

Leslie