“Giving Back"

Dan Abelon is an alumnus of programs run by two Coalition affiliates: American Jewish World Service and Livnot U'lehibanot.  Dan spent the summer after he graduated college in Ghana and Ukraine, through AJWS’ International Jewish College Corps (predecessor of Volunteer Summers).  In Ghana, his group lived in a rural fishing village where they worked alongside Ghanaian laborers to lay the foundation for a new school building.  The group then traveled to Ukraine to refurbish a synagogue that had once been occupied by the Nazis and Soviets.  Dan also attended a Livnot trip, during which his group volunteered to help celebrate Hanukkah at several Ethiopian immigrant absorption centers.

Ever since he was a child growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, Dan has had a strong interest in social justice.  He was inspired by his mother’s activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry during the 1980s.  Dan believes that engaging in Tikun Olam is one of the most important and fulfilling activities that Jews can engage in.

Dan currently resides in San Francisco, California, where he runs www.SpeedDate.com, the world’s first online speed dating site.  Prior to SpeedDate.com, Dan worked as a management consultant at the World Bank and IBM.  Dan earned his MBA at Stanford and his undergraduate degree at Columbia, where he studied economics and philosophy.

In his “spare” time, Dan co-founded the SmartVolunteer organization.  SmartVolunteer’s mission is to connect skilled professionals with volunteer opportunities that utilize their professional expertise while at the same time providing nonprofits and charities with a venue in which to acquire the experienced and expert individual volunteers necessary to fill the critical needs of their organization.   To-date, over 250 local, regional and national non-profits and charities have partnered with SmartVolunteer to offer volunteer opportunities, including: the American Red Cross, ASPCA, Big Brothers, Big Sisters of New York City, Doctors Without Borders, Housing Works, and the Jewish Coalition for Service.

For further information on SmartVolunteer, please visit the website at: www.smartvolunteer.org
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“Continuing the Journey"
Leslie Kornreich Feldman graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2003 with a BA in History and a concentration on Modern Central Europe and the Holocaust). As the 2003-2004 Smith Fellow, Leslie became further involved in speaking against genocide, particularly in the Darfur region of Sudan. 

Leslie cites a Darfur rally that PANIM attended during Summer JAM 2004 that catalyzed her passion for speaking about this genocide.  Today, Leslie is the program assistant for Survivor Affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.  There she has further interactions with PANIM students, as for the last two years she has been giving presentations on the genocide in Darfur to PANIM groups who visit the Museum. 

The idea of combining her love for Judaism, social action, and working with youth is incredibly appealing, and she continues her involvement with PANIM through the Madrichim program.  Madrichim serve as role models and chaperones for the high school students on Panim el Panim and JCI (Jewish Civics Initiative) Seminars throughout the school year. Leslie loves being able to get to know the students on an personal level, and as she says that giving the monument tours to PANIM students as a Madricha, “proves is possible to find Jewish content in anything!”

Leslie also remarks, “Being a PANIM Madricha is a wonderful way of connecting to motivated Jewish youth even when you are a full-time professional or student.  It's also a fun way of meeting other Jewish young adults living in the DC area similarly committed to the PANIM mission!”
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“Project Renewal”

Eli Pristoop, a native of Baltimore, attended Washington University in St. Louis. The Columbia University School of Social Work, and The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.  He lives in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC with housemates and a listless dog.  His dream is that one day he’ll be able to play in a 5 on 5 game of basketball at the AVODAH alumni retreat.  

A year of Jewish Service can not only influence and help the population one is working with, but it can direct the life course of the volunteer as well.  Such is the case with Eli Pristoop, an AVODAH Corps member in New York in 2002-2003.  Eli currently works as a data analyst at The Education Trust, where he assists state university systems committed to reducing gaps in access and success between low-income and minority students and their peers.  His position meets his interest in bringing analytic methods to bear in addressing social issues.  Elements of the AVODAH experience helped Eli align his values and career goals.  “Several speakers [during Corps member training] discussed balancing their passions for justice with choosing effective methods.  One mentioned a commitment to reducing poverty by working on hunger issues because no one can argue against reducing hunger.  Another chose domestic violence work for the same reason.” 

Ongoing conversations with fellow Corps members about social and political change convinced Eli to seek “information that would identify what seems to work.”  Empirical study and research help Eli feel more secure that what he advocates for is actually appropriate and desirable.

As a Corps member, Eli worked at Project Renewal, a program providing comprehensive services to homeless men and women in New York City.  Working in the computer lab, where clients learned computer skills and created resumes, Eli produced a systematic report of the lab’s most popular classes, times of peak use, and other needs.  Later, when pursuing his Masters in Social Work, Eli used his analytic skills to evaluate the effectiveness of childcare and job retention programs under the auspices of the NYC government.

“In my mind, the goals of the programs I had been focusing on were to help people from disadvantaged communities achieve their potential and improve their lives.  Therefore, when an opportunity arose to do similar work in the field of education, it seemed like a fairly logical extension of what I had been doing.  In AVODAH we discussed the concept of treating each person as if bishvilo nivra ha’olam, as if the entire world was created for them.  One of the things that attracted me to the organization where I work is that we bring a lot of attention to high-achieving, high-poverty, high-minority schools.  Some groups want to dismiss these schools as flukes, but we argue that if you have high expectations, and put a curriculum and level of instruction of sufficient quality in place, students anywhere can learn to the highest levels.  This feels to me very much in line with treating each individual as if the entire world was created for them.”    

Eli recently co-authored a paper entitled Funding Gaps 2006, which exposes K-12 school funding inequities at the federal, state, and district levels.  This publication was covered by AP News and Education Week and generated inquiries from Senate staff, state newspapers and elected officials, and the public.
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“Beyond Tzedakah”

Ilana Aisen, Education Officer at AJWS, received the 2006 Young Professional Award from the Jewish Communal Service Association.  This prestigious national award is given at the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities to recognize outstanding young leaders in the field.  In her acceptance speech, Ilana described the importance of Jewish service programs that "foster reciprocity - recognizing that everyone involved is both teacher and learner."

At American Jewish World Service (AJWS), I develop curriculum for service programs that bring Jewish volunteers to the developing world to do hands-on work projects and to learn about global justice through a Jewish lens.  From my service experiences in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, I've learned about the achievements of grassroots groups that are transforming their communities.  These organizations are building legal clinics that protect abused women and children, diversifying crops to gain financial security and digging ditches for pipes that will bring their families clean water.  They produce astounding results with limited resources.  And, they inspire me to make more of the limitless resources that I was lucky to be born with.

AJWS supports these community-based organizations through grant making and volunteer service.  Through advocacy and education, we encourage the American Jewish community to assume the responsibility of global citizenship.

The AJWS grantees that host service programs welcome our volunteers into their lives for a brief time.  They allow us to join them in their work even though we are picking up for the first time the tools that they know so well.

Six years ago, AJWS helped to found the Jewish Coalition for Service.  Every year, thousands of Jews serve in North America, Israel and other countries around the world.  Service is becoming a rite of passage, a norm, in the Jewish community.

Many large Jewish communal organizations and funders are working to expand the number and size of their service programs.  This is wonderful news.  However, with rapid growth, it's possible to compromise the quality and integrity of the work.

Service can be a risky undertaking.  We learn this from Maimonides who instructs us to give tzedakah anonymously.  But, personal service isn't anonymous, nor can it succeed if we understand it as a form of tzedakah - a situation in which the volunteers give and the needy receive.  We should develop service programs that foster reciprocity - recognizing that everyone involved is both teacher and learner.  As service programs increase, we have to ensure that the fundamental commitment to human dignity enshrined in Judaism's assertion that people are created in the image of God continues to motivate our commitment to service.

Two years ago, I brought a group of young adults to the Dominican Republic for a week-long service program in a community called Los Jovillos.  The physical conditions were awful.  Many people lived in homes made of rotting wood and most had dirt floors.  In seeking to understand the reasons for these conditions, we read an article about the root causes of poverty that lists problems like environmental degradation and denial of human rights.  After speculating for a while about the causes of poverty in Los Jovillos, we noticed a group of men sitting nearby.  We translated parts of the article and asked them whether they agreed.  The men told us about the roads, which were not paved and had large potholes that often flooded, causing frequent isolation.  The next day, we walked with these men to see the roads.  We had felt the potholes during our drive to the village, but it was only by starting that conversation and taking that walk that we began to understand our host community.

Lila Watson, an Australian Aboriginal activist and artist wrote, "If you are coming here to help me, you are wasting your time.  But if you are coming here because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together." I hope that this principle of reciprocity will continue to guide Jewish service programs as we teach our community that being of service is a necessary part of Jewish life.