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From the president, Kenneth R.
Heyman
Among the white supporters of the Civil Rights movement led by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jews were highly present. Rabbi Joachim Prinz (Temple B’nai Abraham, Livingston), while serving as president of The American Jewish Congress, represented the Jewish community and worked with King and other black leaders to organize the August 1963 March on Washington. |
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| A new senior
center honors Ronald I. Coun, great leader of JVS Ronald I. Coun, former executive director
of the Jewish Vocational Service (JVS) of MetroWest, died at his Livingston home
on Dec. 25, at age 68, after having battled cancer for 11 years.
Coun had retired as executive director of JVS in June, after a 41-year career
with the agency that began in 1965 as a job counselor. Credited by many
colleagues with having built JVS into a social service powerhouse, Coun
transformed the JVS into a $7.2 million agency that annually serves more than
15,000 clients. | |||||
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For Dr. Gilbert Mayor of Morristown, the
heart of involvement in the Jewish community is not just in making donations but
in participation, in becoming personally engaged. “I believe in community,”
Mayor explained. “I want to do my part, and giving money is just not enough.”
When asked why he feels that way, he continued, “It’s too easy. It gets you
off the hook. You really aren’t being counted. You’re not a soldier. Life is a
participation sport. I need to do more than buy myself out by appearing generous
to other people. When I get involved personally, my participation becomes an
internal thing. No one knows how little or how much I do." | |||||
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An experiment in conflict resolution The experiment was a two-day encounter workshop, held in Neve Shalom-Wahat
al Salam, a planned community in Israeli that is home to both Jewish and Arab
Israelis. The workshop was funded by MetroWest community residents Drs. Jed
Kwartler and Carol Barash, and was organized by Nedal Jayousi, director of the
Palestinian Center for Alternative Solutions. | |||||
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A celebration of a continuous struggle
On Jan. 15, we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It is a
day for the commemoration of freedom and equality, a day for celebrating
essential American values and of which all Americans can be proud. But it is
also a day about which we as Jews should feel particularly proud.
Among the white supporters of the Civil Rights movement led by Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Jews were highly present. Rabbi Joachim Prinz (Temple
B’nai Abraham, Livingston), while serving as president of The American Jewish
Congress, represented the Jewish community and worked with King and other black
leaders to organize the August 1963 March on Washington. He also introduced Dr.
King for everyone to hear King’s “I have a Dream” speech. Jews made up more than
half the young people who marched in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Perhaps
most emblematic of our involvement and our dedication to the cause of equal
rights, both The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were
drafted in the conference room of The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
in Washington, D.C.
The reason so many Jews found common cause with other Americans seeking to
achieve their rights is something we can understand and feel today, because it
is something central to who we are. Our dedication to repairing the world, to
Tikkun Olam, makes us the relatives of oppressed people everywhere in the
world, of all those who have had their rights denied. It is a central value of
who we are as Jews – we must be there to defend them as we would our own
brothers and sisters, for they too are members of our family.
The struggle to make the world right continues today, particularly in our
work to end the genocide in Darfur. Our Community Relations Committee (CRC) has
been directly and pro-actively involved in creating “The New Jersey Coalition
Responds to the Crisis In Darfur, Sudan,” which uses education and advocacy to
help end the persecution and includes numerous political and religious groups,
among them the Anti-Defamation League, N.J. Region; Darfur Rehabilitation
Project, Inc.; NAACP, Newark Branch; and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of
Newark, Interreligious Affairs Commission.
The coalition is tireless in its efforts. It has developed and delivered to
every New Jersey high school a toolkit for teachers on teaching students about
genocide in an age-appropriate manner. And, later this month, very close to
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the CRC will be holding its “Do The Right Thing”
Conference, in which student attendees will have the opportunity to develop the
media skills to be activists fighting for social justice.
As Jews, we have a long history of involvement in that struggle, a struggle
that is always ours regardless of who is being victimized. As we celebrate this
month the first achievements of a group of Americans seeking their equality, we
should remember not only that we helped, but that as Jews, we must always be
there to help.
Kenneth R. Heyman click here to return to Speak E-Z
President
United Jewish Communities of
MetroWest NJ
A new senior center honors Ronald I. Coun, great
leader of JVS
Ronald I. Coun, former executive director of the Jewish Vocational Service
(JVS) of MetroWest, died at his Livingston home on Dec. 25, at age 68, after
having battled cancer for 11 years.
Coun had retired as executive director of JVS in June, after a 41-year career
with the agency that began in 1965 as a job counselor. Credited by many
colleagues with having built JVS into a social service powerhouse, Coun
transformed the JVS into a $7.2 million agency that annually serves more than
15,000 clients.
Coun died in his sleep, leaving his wife of 42 years, Dorothy; his daughter,
Rachel of Manhattan; his sons, Jonathan of Midland Park and David of Brooklyn;
and two grandchildren, Alex and Charlie.
He was buried on Dec. 27 after funeral services at the Bernheim Apter
Kreitzman Funeral Chapel in Livingston.
Contributions can be made to the Ronald L. Coun Center for Creative Maturity,
c/o Dr. Leonard Schneider, 111 Prospect Street, East Orange, NJ 07019.
Shortly before his passing, JVS honored him with a singular distinction. On
Dec. 4, the agency held a dedication ceremony for a new center whose mission is
to help seniors maximize and redefine life’s potential as they move into their
later years. The new center is named the Ronald I. Coun Center for Creative
Maturity.
The Ronald I. Coun Center for Creative Maturity is located at JVS
headquarters in East Orange, with the Wallerstein Foundation for Geriatric Life
Improvement underwriting an endowment fund. Its purpose is to promote strong
relationships among employment, purposeful activity, and health, and to offer
programs in response to the needs of the maturing members of the MetroWest
community, helping them remain active, vital, and capable of contributing to the
community for as long as they wish and of remaining gainfully employed for as
long as they need.
The dedication ceremony for the new center was attended by Coun, who spoke
along with four experts in the field of professional services and the elderly.
The speakers talked about the need for professional services for an aging
population and the importance of the new center.
Schneider, who was a long-time colleague of Coun at JVS and has succeeded him
as executive director, spoke about the joy of working side by side with the man
who was being honored that day. Along with his professionalism and dedication,
Schneider spoke of Coun’s good nature and sense of humor, which brought joy to
every day of their work.
The highlight of the ceremony was the brief talk given by Coun himself. He
thanked JVS and his colleagues there for the honor of having a new center
established in his name, and he called that moment “the happiest day I have ever
worked in this agency.”
He then spoke about his disability and about his attitude to continue living
his life in the face of his long struggle with cancer. From a wheelchair, he
finished his talk by reading, in its entirety, the famous poem by Dylan Thomas,
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
Kathy Krepcio, executive director of the John J. Heldrich Center for
Workforce Development at Rutgers University, presented the keynote address. She
spoke about the need of the aging baby-boomer population to continue work well
into the traditional retirement years, due to a decrease in the rate of personal
savings.
Thomas G. Jennings, director of the New Jersey Division of Vocational
Rehabilitation Services, was also a close colleague of Coun, and spoke of his
friend’s dedication to a cause of providing vocational training, technological
assistance, and job placement, services of increasing importance to the growing
population of seniors.
Karen Alexander, director of eldercare services for United Jewish Communities
(UJC) of MetroWest NJ, spoke about the demographic shift of a population growing
increasingly older, lengthening life spans, changing attitudes toward aging, and
expectations of working for pay throughout retirement, as well as a shrinking
base of younger workers. Overall, the senior years promise to be ones of new
opportunities for growth but also of challenges to independence and quality of
life.
Among the programs available to the community’s mature individuals:
click here to return to Speak E-Z Donor Spotlight: Dr. Gilbert
Mayor
For Dr. Gilbert Mayor of Morristown, the heart of involvement in the Jewish
community is not just in making donations but in participation, in becoming
personally engaged.
“I believe in community,” Mayor explained. “I want to do my part, and giving
money is just not enough.”
When asked why he feels that way, he continued, “It’s too easy. It gets you
off the hook. You really aren’t being counted. You’re not a soldier. Life is a
participation sport. I need to do more than buy myself out by appearing generous
to other people. When I get involved personally, my participation becomes an
internal thing. No one knows how little or how much I do.
“If I give a generous gift, everyone says that you’re generous, that you’re a
participant, and you get the external kudos. But internally, it’s not the same
as really doing something, really standing up and being counted – working and
giving of yourself.”
Part of the value of personal involvement is the change it brings to the
individual, and that it has brought to Mayor.
“Every good thing that you do, every legacy that you create by having a
positive influence of any kind, actually changes you for the better.”
Mayor’s personal involvement in federation began early, when he was teaching
at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. It started when he made a serious
effort to offer a donation and he was challenged to “put your money where your
mouth is.”
“And I did it,” he recalled. “I was in Ann Arbor, and I contacted the local
federation several times so that I could make a donation, and they never got
back to me. There was an emergency meeting, and I attended it. I went up to the
president of the Ann Arbor federation – Henry Applebaum, a wonderful man and a
renowned doctor – and I said, ‘You run a lousy organization. I’ve been trying to
be included. I’ve been trying to give money, and you don’t even call me back.’
Henry asked me, ‘What’s your name.’ I told him and he said, ‘You’re on the
board.’”
Mayor’s direct involvement since then has been extensive. Not only was he a
member of the board of Ann Arbor federation, but he served as president of the
federation in Lansing, Mich. In United Jewish Communities (UJC) of MetroWest, he
has served on the UJC board, the UJA Campaign Cabinet, the Cherkassy Committee,
the UJA Benefit Concert Committee, and contributed his efforts to much more.
Mayor is also the current president of the Mount Freedom Jewish Center.
The influence that has moved Mayor to become personally involved and remain
so is his family background. It is a tradition he values and intends to
continue.
“I came from a family that valued participation in the welfare of the
community,” he observed. “The Jewish community is not the only community I’m
involved in, but it is the community I identify as of extreme importance to me
and my family and my children, especially at this critical moment in the history
of the world. I want to set an example for my children.”
Mayor feels that the value of and the need for participation are never
ending.
“There is no end to the road for the work we do,” he explained. “I do as much
as I can, and as soon as you finish the last task, it is in the nature of this
kind of interaction that someone will then have something more that you’re
needed to do.”
As much as there is a personal value in direct participation, a way in which
it changes you, Mayor also notes that personal commitment creates a force that
brings in other people, that acts like a force of gravity to draw in a
community.
“The hope and the reasonableness in my telling my story,” he said, “is that
it will involve other people, because it’s only by a little bit of involvement
by everybody, or by many people, that we will really move forward. A lot of
involvement by a few is not the best formula. The power of many is very, very
strong. It is huge.”
Even though the focus for Mayor is on involving the community at large, on
engaging as many people as possible, the importance of the work we do, he feels,
must always remain on the individual.
“The most important work we can accomplish together,” he explained, “relies
on not losing sight of individual tragedy, on not neglecting the little problem.
You have to think about a hungry child in the Ukraine, for example, or a child
in trouble anywhere. As you deal with larger general issues, don’t forget the
smaller particular ones.”
For Mayor, it always is a matter of becoming personally involved, of giving
of oneself, one person at a time.
“I invite everyone who’s been thinking about being involved to stop thinking
and do it. If not now, when?”
click here to return to Speak E-Z An experiment in Israeli/Palestinian conflict
resolution
Just over a month ago, an experiment was conducted in Israel to see how well
Israeli and Palestinian high school students could relate to each other. The
experiment was a great success.
The experiment was a two-day encounter workshop, held in Neve Shalom -Wahat
al Salam, a planned community in Israeli that is home to both Jewish and Arab
Israelis. The workshop was funded by MetroWest community residents Drs. Jed
Kwartler and Carol Barash, and was organized by Nedal Jayousi, director of the
Palestinian Center for Alternative Solutions. Attending the workshop were 11
female Palestinian students from East Jerusalem and 12 female Israeli students
from Sha’ar Hanegev High School.
Near the end of the workshop, a concluding discussion was held. There, the
students reflected on the entire workshop and assessed its value to them. All of
the students emphasized that the encounter allowed them to get to know and
understand the other side better. They pointed out that it is important to have
more workshops so as to include many students from both sides of the conflict.
The idea of the workshop grew out of an educational enrichment program on the
principles of democracy that was developed by the College for Reconciliation and
Development (www.mecrd.org) and is being
studied in high schools in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Sha’ar
Hanegev – as well as Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. Aware that they were studying
in a parallel Palestinian/Israeli program, the students themselves requested the
opportunity to meet with their peers.
Barash attended the workshop with her two daughters, Talia (age 16) and
Eliana (age 13). In her estimation, the workshop was a success and worked
equally well for both sides.
“The girls went from hostility, anger, and mistrust in the beginning,” Dr.
Barash recounted, “to saying to each other at the end ‘I don’t want harm to come
to you.’ And these were not extremely liberal girls. The Israelis, some
religious and others not, live in kibbutzim near the Gaza border; their school
has been attacked by Kassam rockets, so they have felt the conflict first hand.
On the Palestinian side, they were mostly religious girls. When it came time for
evening services, two-thirds of them plus their teacher left the room to go and
pray. But they were quite open as well; they talked about the importance of
‘thinking independently’ so they can change things in their own communities.”
Barash thought this workshop succeeded particularly well because “it was
designed to get past the point at which similar programs often get stuck.
“There is a level at which everyone says all the right things but doesn’t
really give voice to the values that prevent us from trusting each other.
However, what we saw here was really different, with lots of innovative ways for
addressing challenging problems. For example, they used a number of exercises
that dealt with the idea of stereotypes and that didn’t require the students to
talk about their own out loud, exercises like a game in which everyone had a
label stuck on their forehead and had to be treated as if they were that thing,
and they did not know what the label said, what they were supposed to be. But
everyone else in the room knew.”
Barash noted that the workshop operated out of a core assumption: that
education is capable of altering behavior permanently. In her judgment, the
assumption is accurate and, in fact, was taken into account in the structuring
of the educational enrichment program out of which the workshop was developed.
When asked whether there is a limit to how much education can do to alter
behavior, Barash confessed a high degree of optimism.
“I am an extremely optimistic educator. Obviously, many good things take a
lot of time. But, even though I’m an optimist, I’m not a Pollyanna. Could I or
you turn around Osama bin Laden? No, he’s stuck in a position that requires
killing other people. Can the innocent young people who become suicide
terrorists be turned around? Can they see something better and more hopeful?
Absolutely.”
Barash sees the changes in attitude that she observed in the workshop as the
beginning of a permanent change in the participating students, rather than
something that will dissipate as they enter adulthood, becoming ultimately a
form of lost innocence.
“The girls were coming out of the workshop saying that one meeting’s not
enough. They were asking what they could do to get the message to other people,
what they could create so that the message goes further. They really wanted to
do something positive together. That was a beautiful thing.”
Asked what the next step is, without hesitation, Barash agreed with the
students who attended the workshop. “We’ve got to nurture lots of these groups,
not only throughout the Middle East. We need them in this country. So many
people here speak in a politically correct way, but they are stuck in
oppositional and even prejudiced ways of thinking about Muslims. Our hope is to
encourage honest, pluralistic discussion around complex issues.”
click here to return to Speak E-Z Volunteers show strong support for Super Sunday
2007
On Dec. 3, nearly 900 volunteers of all ages thronged the Alex Aidekman
Family Jewish Community Campus, Whippany, to help with Super Sunday 2007. This
year, the annual phonathon raised more than $2.1 million through contributions
from 2,682 donors for the 2007 United Jewish Appeal of MetroWest NJ campaign,
bringing the UJA Campaign to a current total of $14.3 million.
The day-long event, which ran from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., included a blood
drive, a kosher food drive, craft sales, an Israeli marketplace for Hanukkah
shopping, and activities for children conducted by JCC MetroWest and The
Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life. The event was supported by eight
corporate sponsors; numerous local businesses donated food for the volunteers
and prizes to be awarded through a raffle.
Along with the crowd of enthusiastic volunteers, several dignitaries came to
demonstrate their support, among them Essex County Freeholder Patricia Sebold,
Sussex County Freeholder Susan Zellman, Morris County Freeholder Jack Schrier,
West Caldwell Mayor Joseph Tempesta, U.S. Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen,
N.J. Assemblyman Tom Giblin, and N.J. State Senator Tom Kean, Jr. Gov. Jon
Corzine sent written greetings of support and an apology for being unable to
attend this year.
click here to return to Speak E-Z Elderlink provides referral services for the
elderly
On Super Sunday, Jewish Family Service (JFS) of MetroWest, in partnership
with sister agencies in the United Jewish Communities (UJC) network, launched
Elderlink, a new community program that provides telephone information and
referral services on eldercare issues and concerns, and that will soon make
web-based services available.
The phone number for Elderlink is (973) 467-3300, ext. 511.
Karen Brand, LCSW, has joined JFS in the new position of Elderlink
Coordinator, based in the Springfield JFS office. Brand explained that Elderlink
has been created as a one-stop referral service that functions as a
comprehensive resource for all issues of eldercare services. “This new project
will insure older adults and their families receive appropriate information,
resources, and referrals in a timely professional manner.”
The idea for Elderlink began with MetroWest CARES (Coalition for Addressing
Resources for Eldercare Services), a committee that addresses the needs of the
elderly in our community. Eight community agencies participate in MetroWest
CARES: JFS, JCC MetroWest, Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest, the Jewish
Community Housing Corporation, Daughters of Israel, the Joint Chaplaincy
Committee of MetroWest, and the Jewish Service for the Developmentally Disabled.
UJC is the coordinating body.
Web-based Elderlink services are scheduled to go online later this year and
ultimately will provide interactive programming with which community members can
obtain information on eldercare services entirely through the web site.
click here to return to Speak E-Z
The workshop was conducted in English and its main theme was Conflict
Resolution. Over the two days, the workshop took the students through three
“channels,” or topic areas: interpersonal acquaintance, focusing on issues of
personal identity and tolerance, and learning and implementation of principles
of conflict resolution.
“The innovative part of the program is in working not only with middle
school students and high school students, but also with their parents. Working
with two generations at once is the factor critical to success. If you teach the
students one thing, and they go home and what they experience there just feeds
the old hatreds, it’s a lot harder to change things. However, if you approach
two generations at the same time, the parents as well as the children, there’s a
much higher likelihood of getting past some of the prejudices and inequities.”
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