By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
Seven Washington residents are among hundreds of volunteers nationwide nominated for the first United Jewish Communities local heroes award. (UJC is the national umbrella body that serves local Jewish federations). We’ve got profiles of each here.
Margot Kravette is the only local volunteer to be ranked in this contest that is part Facebook/part American Idol with its online voting system. Because of the efforts of her daughters, who sent e-mails to everyone they knew, Margot is the only one from our state to make it to the top 25.
A Congregation Beth Shalom member, Margot started and runs an all-volunteer effort to provide meals to Jewish families who are in Seattle while a loved one is treated for cancer through the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute or having a particular type of brain surgery only performed at Harborview. She has many volunteers, which makes the duties light, but could always use more.
All our local heroes are committed and modest in person. Many hadn’t even known they were nominated until they heard from me. All were eager to suggest that others were doing more or better work.
“I feel very honored to…represent working people,” says Robby Stern, founder and chair of Healthy Washington Coalition (www.healthywacoalition.org), protesting, “I don’t think I’m worthy.”
He formed this group of organizations and individuals about five years ago to “try and move an agenda of state-based health care reform,” he says, “because was nothing was happening at the federal level.” (Stay tuned on that one!) The long-time activist was an appliance repairman for many years, and personally involved in local labor unions. After getting a law degree, he eventually came to work for King County and then the state labor councils (AFL-CIO).
He and his wife, Dina Burstein, are organizing a forum on health care at Temple Beth Am on Oct. 11 at 10 a.m., to which the community is invited.
Longtime Federation volunteer Iantha Sidell was also surprised to learn she’d been nominated.
“I hardly feel I’m a hero,” she says, especially compared to people who put their lives on the line for cause or country. “But I believe in community, I believe in the Jewish community,” which warmly welcomed her 30 years ago.
“I get out of it more than I give,” she adds.
The Herzl-Ner Tamid member gives time to numerous local and national philanthropic boards, including two at the UJC, the Jewish Studies program at the University of Washington, and the Save All Ethiopian Jews scholarship program.
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum heard from me, too, that she’d been nominated. The founder of the Kavana “synagogue without walls” in Seattle also doesn’t feel particularly hero-like, and was skeptical about voting for heroism, but acknowledged the good in “a democratic way to identify people around the country” who help others.
“There are probably 20 times as many who could have been nominated,” she observes.
Another Seattle grassroots organizer being recognized is Joel Rothschild, one of the founders of the Ravenna Kibbutz, a Jewish housing cooperative in the Seattle neighborhood of the same name. Joel knew of the nomination because a frequent and enthusiastic kibbutz guest wanted to nominate the entire organization. The rules only allow for individuals to be named so residents and participants — cooperatively — singled Joel out.
The self-employed software engineer is proud of the organization, which he says serves the entire community by serving mostly unaffiliated Jews searching for a Jewish home.
“It really is something [kibbutz members] are doing for the community,” as are most of the nominees, he observes. “For the most part this contest does seem to be between people who are not into self-promotion, but are into community building.”
Our state is represented outside Seattle by Katie Edelstein, a tireless Hadassah volunteer and Bellingham resident who donated a kidney to another Hadassah member a few years ago, someone she didn’t previously know.
“I’ve been talking about organ donation since then…to Hadassah and to non-Jewish community groups,” she says. “It…was a wonderful honor to be recognized for my contribution.”
When she’s not busy with Hadassah, Katie works with her husband, David, in their business, Greenbriar Construction. She is in good health and says she never thinks about her missing kidney until it’s time for her annual checkup.
Finally, we return to Seattle where Ben Meyerhoff turned his own recent job-hunting efforts into a group effort to help all Jewish job hunters. The Queens, N.Y., native, who moved here from California in 2003, had been working in the high tech sector, but was laid off in mid-2008. Knowing it was coming he started networking, but found nothing organized by the Jewish community.
“I’m the type of person who likes to make things happen and not to watch them happen,” he says, so he started the Greater Seattle Jewish Business Network which exists virtually as a LinkedIn group (on-line networking site) and as a real-life group that meets at his congregation, Temple Beth Am, in Seattle on the second and fourth Wednesdays at 7 p.m. (www.templebetham.org/community/caring) as well as at Herzl-Ner Tamid on alternate weeks. The Federation has also been active in administering the Linked
In aspect of the group, which grows by 50 or more people a month.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean people are getting jobs, Ben notes. At 66, and without a job for over a year, he is considering moving on to retirement himself. He helps others as much as he can and he also volunteers for SCORE, a business advice program of the Small Business Administration.
Ben named a number of people who had helped him with the network, but wanted to make sure I mentioned Jay Bakst, a Herzl-Ner Tamid member who is the co-sponsor of the group.
You can visit vote “early and often” (daily, really) at the heroes Web site, www.jewishcommunityheroes.org through Oct. 8.