This is one in a series of articles intended to paint a cumulative portrait of our Jewish community through interviews with randomly selected individuals. Today, we focus on Ziona Amir.
The word “sensitive” came up often when several people talked about Ziona Amir, 50, an Israeli who has lived in the Milwaukee area for about 11 years. But the word in her case has several meanings.
Primarily it seems to mean “sensitive to other people.” Her daughter-in-law, Sahar Amir, 24 and a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, recalled the wedding of one of the family’s friends. The groom got emotional and started to weep while saying the vows — and Ziona started crying along with him. “She cries very fast,” Sahar said.
Her sensitivity is also displayed in ways that are not so dramatic. Ziona is a religious and Hebrew school teacher at Congregation Shalom, working for education director Dr. Sherry H. Blumberg. Blumberg said that she and Ziona often speak Hebrew together to help Blumberg practice her modern conversational Hebrew.
When Blumberg makes a mistake, Ziona “gets a big smile and helps me through it.” But Amir “never embarrasses me publicly. She tells me about it later.” Moreover, “if I lead a service and she’s touched by something, she will make sure that I know it,” said Blumberg.
Blumberg said Amir shows the same sensitivity to her students. “She is unbelievably loving,” said Blumberg. “Most teachers find one or two kids [in a class] that they don’t like; but Ziona has never found a child she doesn’t love. It’s wonderful and genuine…. And she’s patient beyond measure.”
This appears to be a trait she had early on. This daughter of immigrants from Yemen gravitated to nursing in Israel. “I like to help people and I was interested in medical stuff,” she said in an interview at her family’s Glendale home. But she couldn’t account for why; she just shrugged and said, “Nature.”
She worked in a surgical unit, then changed to pediatric nursing because the hours and scheduling enabled her to spend more time with her family. She eventually became the head pediatric nurse at a clinic before she and her family moved to the United States.
She met her husband Yosef, 51, who was born in Morocco, when they were both in high school. “She fell in love before I fell in love,” Yosef said laughing. They were married in 1973, just a month or two before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. They have three sons: Eilon, 26, who works in marketing and finance in San Francisco; Liran, 25, a tax consultant and Sahar’s husband; and Elad, 17, who will graduate this year from Nicolet High School and start pre-medical studies at UW-Madison.
They ended up in Milwaukee because Yosef, an engineer, got a job at G.E. Medical Systems. To take advantage of this opportunity, Ziona “had to drop her profession of nursing,” said her husband. “She did that for the benefit of the family, and we really appreciate it.”
Ziona found another outlet for her drive to help people, by studying at what was then the Milwaukee Association for Jewish Education to become a Judaic teacher. She grew up Orthodox, had attended a Mizrahi (religious Zionist) high school in Israel and “I observe a lot and have a lot of knowledge.” (Her family belongs to Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah.)
Yet she said that teaching in a Reform synagogue “does not bother me. I like the people and I respect them. I feel I can … share knowledge…. It is not my job to convince them to be Orthodox.” She also works for the Children’s Lubavitch Living and Learning Center.
Amir is sensitive in another way, also. She is a talented sculptor in ceramics, and while in Israel created several pieces — all of people, either full-figure or busts — that are displayed in her home. But she hasn’t created new pieces while here, saying she hasn’t had the time. Her daughter-in-law and Blumberg add that Ziona likes to cook and has prepared meals for families in crisis and made baked goods for Shalom.
Amir said she has enjoyed her time in Milwaukee. “I love the community; the people here are very nice and warm … and always helpful,” she said.
Eventually, she said she and her husband will return to Israel after he retires. As much as they enjoy Milwaukee, “we still believe we belong more in Israel than here,” said her husband.
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