In the former Soviet Union, a man named Simeon, a Nazi victim, receives food packages five days a week, medical aid and other assistance.
Sarah, an elderly Jewish woman in Siberia receives food packages about once a month and only occasional medical care — and may have to be told that even this will stop.
In Argentina, once middle-class Jews are standing in line for food vouchers.
In Israel, Ethiopian soldiers who have no families to visit for the weekend sometimes end up sleeping in bus stations.
These were some of the stories about Jewish needs around the world that three guest speakers told to about 30 staff members and lay leaders of Milwaukee Jewish community organizations last week at a meeting organized by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
The speakers represented the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) and the United Jewish Communities (UJC).
They came as part of a UJC effort to have representatives of these agencies visit the 40 largest American Jewish communities and explain how important it is that American Jews remember and help Jews the world over.
“I believe it is the responsibility of Jews to help other Jews,” said Penny Blumenstein, a member of JDC’s board of directors and a past president of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. “I am also aware … that local communities are in great need.”
Yet American Jews must remember that there are Jews throughout the world who are “far worse off than we are, and we are their people,” she said.
In speaking of the JDC’s work, Blumenstein said the organization follows “three operating principles.” It is “non-partisan and apolitical,” it trains local leaders eventually to take over its projects, and it builds ‘coalitions with strategic partners,” she said.
In the two crisis areas of Argentina and the FSU, Blumenstein said that:
• Of the some 200,000 Jews in Argentina, about 36,000 are being helped by the JDC and some 60,000 now have incomes “below the poverty line.”
• In the FSU, there are some 250,000 Jews who are elderly, disabled or sick and “need help. They have no one else to depend on.”
“There is really no tzedakah that compares to the work of the JDC,” said Milwaukeean Bruce Arbit, a member of the JAFI board of governors. “It is the closest thing to pure tzedakah that we do.”
Speaking for JAFI, Arbit described how the process of immigration to Israel, which JAFI assists, is more complex than most know.
That process comprises three stages: pre-aliyah, which is “to explain what it means”; then the actual move; then “post-aliyah” or absorption, which may involve bringing the person “either 3,000 miles or 1,000 years” to become part of Israeli society.
That process can leave some walking wounded behind. For example, Arbit said that some 2,500 soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces have no family members in Israel, having had to leave family members behind in Ethiopia, the FSU or elsewhere.
Moreover, about 5,000 children of immigrants are failing at their education and are dropping out of school for lack of tutors to help them. Without a high school degree, their chances of success in Israel are as low as they would be in the U.S., Arbit said.
The group also heard Morton B. Plant, chair of the UJC executive committee, explain the role of the UJC, the “federation of the federations” owned by the some 150 Jewish federations in North America.
This organization provides both services and “at times” leadership to federation efforts, Plant said. It also organizes national efforts, like Jewish population studies, the annual general assembly, leadership development projects and lobbying in Washington, he said.
With Plant was Jim Lodge, director of the “ONAD process.” The acronym stands for the UJC’s Overseas Needs Assessment and Distribution committee, of which MJF executive vice president Richard H. Meyer and Milwaukeean Allan Samson are currently members. Part of the ONAD process is to explain the overseas needs to local federations.
In response to a question, Lodge reminded the group, “Let none of us forget the power of pooling and spending strategically,” he said.
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