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by Beth Manes Lax
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov is quoted as saying: “Gauge a country’s prosperity by its treatment of the aged.” In 18th century Ukraine, where Rabbi Nachman lived, there was a large Jewish community that could care for its elderly population. Today, fewer Jews remain there. It is this fact, combined with the Jewish mission to care for the aging, that propels Women’s Philanthropy to support Jewish communities not just here at home, but also overseas in Eastern Europe and Israel. Through key partnerships such as those with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest is able to offer humanitarian assistance for vulnerable populations like the elderly.
One city in which our efforts are particularly visible is Cherkassy, Ukraine. Greater MetroWest members first recognized a need in Cherkassy when they saw the mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, living in isolation without sufficient nutrition. Wendie Ploscowe, a Women’s Philanthropy past president and past UJA Campaign chair, helped develop programming for the elderly there. Her father was born in Ukraine, so she felt connected to the project. “At first, Federation established ‘warm houses’ which were designed to provide not just the physical comforts of heat and food, but also the necessary comfort of community,” Wendie explained.
Later, the Mickey Fried Day Center was established within Cherkassy’s Chesed Center, its Jewish community center. The day center was named for Mickey Fried, father of Paula Saginaw, a past president of Women’s Philanthropy. Paula is the current chair of Global Connections, a division of Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest that is committed to building links among the Jewish people around the world. Paula recalls her parents having a soft spot in their hearts for the elderly. Therefore, when her father died, creating the senior center was the perfect way to honor his memory. Now, some of our dollars go to support the programming for the day center. Senior citizens from the region are transported once a week to the center where they socialize, eat, watch television, do crafts, and more. It is a place for them to come together and feel like they are part of a community. On one of her many visits to Cherkassy, Paula recalls speaking to the senior citizens: “They told me that their best day of the week was when they were able to spend time at the center.”
Federation also provides food, medicine, home-care workers, and other life-saving provisions to the hundreds of thousands of elderly Jews living elsewhere throughout the former Soviet Union. Our dollars provide tangible goods such as walkers and canes. When we go on missions to understand overseas needs, the time we spend with the seniors we serve is a far more valuable gift. It is confirmation that there is a lifeline out there for them.
Federation also supports programming for the elderly in Israel, in such places as Kibbutz Erez, a 500-resident kibbutz on the Gaza border in the northern Negev.” Kibbutz members wanted a place where their seniors could come together – somewhere to play cards, share their history, and just socialize. When Paula’s mother passed away, this seemed like the ideal project to fund in her memory. In December 2016, the Sylvia and Mickey Fried Senior Lounge became that perfect place. The Makom program funded $9,000 to purchase equipment to establish an archive of the collective memory of the kibbutz founders. This multi-generational project will help brand the kibbutz and attract young families.
Part of caring for the elderly means keeping them connected to our community, as we do in Cherkassy and Kibbutz Erez. In recent years, Federation has gone even further to bridge the gap between our oldest and youngest generations – a post-war gap created by history that left many older European Jews without family and many younger European Jews without religion. Anna Fisch, another past president of Women’s Philanthropy, went on the national Campaign Chairs and Directors mission in 2010 that visited Budapest and Israel. In Budapest, Anna said she “saw many renewal projects and young people reclaiming their Judaism.” She explained that the youngest generation, “whose parents grew up under communism, had no Judaism at all and were demanding it.” Our overseas dollars funded a program through the JDC and JAFI that matched teens and 20-somethings with Holocaust survivors and brought them to Israel to learn about each other and connect. According to Anna, “this program had a dual purpose because it enabled the younger generation to enhance their Jewish identity and it was incredibly beneficial to the elderly people as well.”
In Judaism, we often rejoice in the passing down of our religion, our traditions, and our heritage from generation to generation: l’dor v’dor. One of the tenets we pass down is the commandment to honor our mothers and fathers. Judaism does not necessarily interpret that to mean that we must do what our parents tell us to do, but rather that we must respect them and make them the focus of our affections and care-taking. Jewish oral law instructs in Tosefta Kiddushin 1:11, “What is honor? Giving food, drink, dressing, covering, leading out and bringing in, and washing face, hands and feet.” It is clearly in this vein that Federation has set out to care for our elders around the globe.