By Leyna Krow, Special to JTNews
No one knows the power of Jewish non-profits better than Alina Gerlovin Spaulding. At the age of 36, Spaulding says she owes her life as an American and as a Jew to the generosity of Jewish donors and the tenacity of Jewish activists. If it weren’t for them, she and her family never would have escaped the Soviet Union — and her upbringing, education, and religious inclinations would have been very different indeed.
“Thanks to organizations like the Jewish Federations, we were brought to this country and were shuttled through that process of becoming not only Americans, but also [practicing] Jews,” Spaulding said.
Spaulding will be the guest speaker at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle’s 2010 Connections brunch, an annual fundraising event geared toward women donors set to take place Sun., Jan. 31 at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. The theme for this year’s brunch is “Dare to Dream.” It’s a theme that, according to the Federation’s marketing and communications director Tana Senn, Spaulding epitomizes.
“I think her whole family had an American dream and also a Jewish dream and both of those came true,” Senn said. “And now Spaulding has come full circle, making those dreams come true for Jewish high school students.”
In previous years, Connections speakers have included Gloria Steinem, author Jennifer Weiner, and actress Marlee Matlin. This year, however, organizers decided to go a different route.
“We were really looking at the times we’re in. We didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a big-name entertainment speaker,” Senn said. “We wanted someone who would connect with women and would make the connection between fundraising and the work the Federation does.”
Spaulding was born in the Soviet Union in 1974.
“At that time there were hundreds of thousands of Jews trying to get out of the Soviet Union,” Spaulding said, speaking of the hardships that Russians Jews faced under Soviet rule, including living as second-class citizens and prohibitions against practicing Judaism.
Despite the numbers of people impacted, the persecution of Soviet Jewry was not a concern for the world at large. But thankfully for Spaulding, her family, and thousands of others, the international Jewish community took up their cause.
In 1979, at the age of 5, Spaulding and her parents moved from their home in the Ukraine to New Jersey with the help of a number of Jewish agencies, and the Jewish federation system in particular.
“Everything was new,” she recalled. “Even the simplest things, like getting groceries, were different. We didn’t know what broccoli was. Is a kiwi an animal or a fruit? And who knew cheese slices could be individually wrapped?”
Spaulding and her family weren’t just delivered to the United States and then
abandoned in New Jersey, however. They were set up with a host family who helped them make the transition to living in America.
“They were our guides for everything,” Spaulding said of the family that graciously taught her mother and father how to get their neighborhood market and what to say at job interviews. Even after they had settled into their new lives, they remained close friends with their hosts.
Today, Spaulding lives in North Carolina with her husband and three daughters. She is the communications director at the American Hebrew Academy, the country’s only non-denominational Jewish boarding school.
Although she was just a child at the time, the experience of moving to a new country and the kindness of the people who assisted her and her family along the way stuck with Spaulding. As an adult, she has returned to Russia half a dozen times in various efforts to help other Jews.
Although the Soviet Union is no more and Russians are now free to practice religions of their choosing, many Russian Jews know little of Jewish traditions or rituals. Spaulding has assisted with “family summer camps” for Russian Jews of all ages to come and learn the basics of Judaism.
“The levels of learning are pretty much the same across the board,” Spaulding said of camp participants. “Kids who are 8 years old will know the same amount as adults who are 70 because for so long people weren’t allowed to learn about Judaism or do Jewish things.”
She has also served as a translator for various medical trips, traveling with English-speaking doctors to visit patients in Russia.
She also travels the world sharing her family’s story with supporters of various Jewish organizations (as she will in Bellevue on Jan. 31). Her talks focus on the importance of philanthropic giving and of pluralism within the Jewish community.
“What really inspired me was that no one ever asked what denomination we were or how observant we were,” Spaulding said of the people who helped her family escape the Soviet Union. “They asked if we were Jewish and if we were needy and when we said ‘yes,’ they were there.”