Marina Maller, the new membership director of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, knows something about being Jewish in the face of adversity.
Since last December, Argentina has been in a deep economic crisis, a situation that has caused the primarily middle-class Jewish community to slip into poverty. The thriving Jewish community that once boasted many Jewish day schools has seen several of those schools forced to close and community debt grow (see story, page 11). “These are hard times in Argentina,” Maller said.
More than that, life felt “unsafe,” explained Maller in an interview in her new office next to the Peck desk at the entrance of the JCC. Two bombings directed at the Jewish community in 1992 and 1994 took 115 lives and wounded more than 350. Afterward, concrete columns were placed at the entrance of all Jewish schools, and political and communal organizations.
“It felt unsafe to send your kids to school,” she said, but “you kept doing that [being Jewish] because you knew that you shouldn’t make your life change. Personally, we tried to deal with that for many years, but the last year became really unsafe,” she said.
So when Maller heard from her cousin, Cantor Ruth Berman Harris of Congregation Sinai, about the job opening at the JCC, she was immediately interested. It seemed a perfect fit for her, personally and professionally.
Maller has worked both in and outside the Jewish community, focusing primarily on Jewish communal work and marketing. Most recently, she ran her own market research firm, Emedos, whose main client was the largest Jewish community center in Latin America.
So after interviews, including a visit in July, Maller was offered the job.
She arrived here on Oct. 6 with husband Leo Huck, a dentist who plans to begin medical studies to practice here, and their two children, Tamy, 3, and Matias, 6 months. The following day, she began her work as JCC membership director.
She describes her position as “attracting people, keeping people happy and listening to them. “I’m the first door you see when you come into the JCC,” she explained.
For Maller, that’s both responsibility and opportunity. “[They] go together. You can’t have one without the other,” she added.
“We’re delighted to have her,” said JCC executive vice president Jay Roth. “She wanted to leave Argentina, to come to Milwaukee, and we needed a membership person with both relationship skills and a good background in marketing. It’s a good match for the JCC, for her family and hopefully for the community,” he said.
Maller’s happy to be here. “For us, this is the land of opportunity, just like it was for your grandparents…. I want to give to my kids the feeling that most Americans have that they can do or be whatever they want and be proud of who they are…. You can be Jewish, Latin American and you can be proud,” she added.
Maller and Huck have found the Milwaukee community warm and welcoming, she said. She feels a “strong Jewish life here,” she said. “We know that we’re going to feel like we’re at home.”
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