Madison — When the Soviet Union collapsed into what appeared would be political and economic chaos, Natalia Dobrorez and her family decided it was time to leave and start afresh. But where?
Her brother, Alexander Alexandrov, went in 1990 with his wife and two children to Italy. They spent three months in a transit facility there because, as Dobrorez said, “Nobody would give a warrant for him” that he and his family would eventually be able to support themselves.
Nobody, that is, until the Jewish Social Services of Madison offered to do so if they moved there. So Alexandrov and his family went. He later sent back word that Madison was wonderful, so Dobrorez and her mother, husband and son joined him two years later.
Dobrorez said she never will forget her arrival in Madison at midnight after a 14-hour flight. She was met by “four or five” JSS volunteers carrying flowers. “They were so friendly, we were all crying. We did not expect it.”
The volunteers brought Dobrorez and her family to an apartment, with rent paid for three months, furnished with food and household supplies, and they found jobs for the adults. Eventually, JSS helped Dobrorez obtain training to become a certified nursing assistant.
And the support didn’t stop once Dobrorez and her family got settled. Her husband died about two years ago, and Janice Fiksel, JSS resettlement coordinator, remains a friend of Dobrorez and her mother. Fiksel helped with the arrangements for Dobrorez’s husband’s funeral, and continues to provide advice and referrals.
“I will appreciate [JSS] for the rest of my life,” said Dobrorez. “I don’t know what I would do without them.”
Dobrorez is one of the some 200 Jews from the former Soviet Union whom JSS helped resettle in Madison, according to Steven H. Morrison, executive director of JSS and the Madison Jewish Community Council. And that accomplishment is just one of many that will be celebrated this year to mark the 25th anniversary of the organization’s creation on Feb. 9, 1978.
“There aren’t many Jewish communities in the world that are our size that have a full gamut of social work services available,” said Morrison. “Here there is,” because in JSS Madison has a “fully functional social service agency.… That’s a gratifying thing.”
Facing tough issues
Indeed, the officials of the agency are proud of the range of help JSS offers to individuals and the community. Barbara Spierer, JSS’s associate executive director who oversees the organization’s daily activities, listed some of them, including:
• A task force on domestic abuse and efforts to battle drug and alcohol abuse. This is “one of the things I’m most proud of,” said Spierer, “that we’ve tried to confront some of these tough issues head on and let people know that we’re really here for them.”
• The Hand in Hand program, which “provides and coordinates services and resources for individuals experiencing life challenges” such as “loss, illness, dying and grief.”
• The Lechayim weekly luncheon, which provides a kosher lunch and a program for seniors on Mondays that Morrison called “the largest weekly nutrition site” in the city.
The agency started out with seniors as its “primary target population,” and still strives to help seniors live as independently as possible. Madison attorney Jim Youngerman, a former JSS board member and president, saw this work first hand when his own mother, Lucile Levy, became a client.
In 2000, Youngerman moved her from Florida to Madison into an independent-living facility and later into an assisted-living facility. JSS provided him with advice on available facilities and what to look for in them, “which I wouldn’t know on my own,” he said.
JSS also arranged for a volunteer student at the University of Wisconsin to visit her periodically, and it sponsored a once-a-month Sabbath observance at her facility. Most recently, JSS took over management of Levy’s finances, paying her bills and dealing with care providers.
“Now I’ve had the opportunity as a client to see [JSS staff] in action and confirm what I knew to be the case,” said Youngerman. “They’ve done an excellent job.”
The agency serves some 800 individual clients each year, said Morrison. Moreover, it serves more than the Madison-area Jewish community of approximately 5,000 people. The agency’s annual report for 2002 said that some ten percent of its clients are African-American, Hispanic or Asian-American.
Volunteers honored
Last but hardly least, JSS mobilizes community volunteers — some 400 a year — to help provide its services and assist its professional staff of nine, not counting Morrison.
In fact, the volunteers are so important that the first event in the 25th anniversary celebration will honor them. The Liesl M. Blockstein Annual Memorial Program (named after JSS’s second president) is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 16, 11 a.m. at Temple Beth El.
Stefanie Kohn, current president of the JSS board of directors, started with the agency as a volunteer, as have many other board members, she said. In 1992, she began by doing nursing home visits, then participated in the MJCC’s leadership development program.
Though she now has three children and less time for volunteering, Kohn said she “can’t wait to get back to what I was doing earlier, visiting with people. In the final analysis, it is the quality of relationships we have with members of our community that matter. And that’s just part of taking care of each other, especially in a small community.”
JSS was unusual when it was created in that the MJCC executive director headed both organizations. This was done so JSS itself wouldn’t have to “spend a lot of time and energy raising money for overhead. It could spend its time and resources to provide services,” said Morrison.
Today, JSS receives some 25 percent of its $400,000 budget from the MJCC campaign, United Way provides 15 percent; the rest comes from “fund-raising and grants,” said Morrison.
For more information about JSS and the celebration, contact 608-278-1808 or jss@mjcc.net.
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