A glimpse into the varied articles that have cited JDC's work around the world. To obtain a story's full text, please refer to the news source attributed.

St. Petersburg Jews Wrestle With Future
Baltimore Jewish Times – August 10 2004
…For their generation and the generation of their parents, being Jewish meant having to study harder than anyone else in order to have a shot at getting into university. It meant discrimination, and only the barest knowledge of their own heritage. "We wanted to know what it meant to be Jewish besides long lines at the passport office, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust," she said, adding, "We wanted to know something positive about being Jewish." Today, Lvova, a straight-talking 46-year-old former computer programmer, runs Adayin Lo, a Jewish community center that symbolizes the grass-roots rebuilding of Jewish life in St. Petersburg after 70 years of Communist rule. More than 2,000 people flock to its 10 locations around the city for classes ranging from Hebrew to Israeli dance to Jewish tradition. The center also runs a network of kindergartens and youth and basketball clubs, in addition to a choir and the only center in the city for special-needs children and adults. This "is the real evidence of our renewal," Lvova tells a group of visiting North American Jews on a recent United Jewish Communities leadership mission to the city. The JDC and the Jewish federations of Cleveland and Palm Beach have played a major role in helping support this and other Jewish organizations in the city.

Jewish-Catholic World summit in Buenos Aires
Clarin – August 5 2004
Catholic and Jewish authorities united efforts to fight poverty and to duplicate their actions aimed at solidarity… The deepening of the crisis occurred in Argentina towards the end of 2001, did more than only strengthen the work of institutions like Caritas; the JDC, a U.S.A organization that provides social assistance to Jewish people around the world, is now not only helping poor people from their community, that now amount to 35000 persons, but also poor people from other communities as well. At present it provides assistance to more than 40 Caritas kitchen soups: 6 in the Buenos Aires Dioceses, 11 in Merlo- Moreno, 23 in Moron, and 1 in Córdoba. It also participates in the "Pro Huerta Plan" (Pro Vegetable farm Plan), in the dioceses of San Isidro by 30 training families to develop their own vegetable farms and providing them the seeds among other actions (see Working in the "Villa 31" together). It also provides economic support with the help of Caritas to a kitchen soup in a synagogue in the neighborhood of Belgrano.

Solidarity of a Priest and a Rabbi
Clarin – August 5 2004
"…They were going to visit the kitchen soup that members from both Catholic and Jewish communities are setting up in Loma Alegre, the very center of the Villa… The Rabbi runs the JDC’s Argentine Office in charge of Social Programs outside the Jewish Community. The JDC, a U.S.A. Committee that provides Social assistance to the Jewish Community, decided to donate materials to the Villa after seeing the work done at the six parish kitchen soups that feed approximately 1000 inhabitants in the Villa… With the help of the Jewish Community, walls have now been constructed. The kitchen soup needs a roof so that children can have a decent place to eat, seated at a table. The place used to be an old garbage dump, inhabited by people from the interior of the country, Paraguay, Peru and Bolivia. "The solidarity of Rabbi Avruj was an unexpected experience. It made us understand that both communities have a lot in common and that the core values and traditions are common to both religions" father Pepe told Valores Religiosos…

Cleveland Jewish group sends $20,000 to aid Sudanese
Cleveland Plain Dealer – July 23 2004
… "We are saddened and outraged that today, in Darfur, Sudan, crimes against humanity are occurring and once again the international community is doing little about it," said the federation's Louis Malcmacher in a prepared statement. Malcmacher led the federation committee that recommended the donation. "We must respond in the strongest manner possible, while there is still time." The federation in Cleveland is working through the Jewish Coalition for Disaster Relief, an effort led by the JDC. The coalition has raised $10,000 for Doctors without Borders already working in that region of Sudan…

Local Doctors Join A Group Providing Health Care To Jewish Communities In The Former Soviet Union
News & Record – July 18 2004
The Formerly Blind, a club that opened three years ago in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, owes its existence to an international organization with roots in Greensboro and Atlanta…The JDC suggested the group consider focusing on Odessa and Chisinau, Moldova. Both had poor Jewish communities in desperate need… Mackler and Kriegsman along with a Jewish radiologist from Atlanta, three Israeli medical people and two JDC staff members, flew over and spent a week in each city studying the need…To meet the needs of those groups, they decided they'd work to improve continuing education opportunities for health care professionals in the distressed areas, improve access to health care for the old and young, and find a way of providing basic supplies and medicines local professionals couldn't get…

Rebirth of a people; After the Holocaust and decades of communism, Jewish culture in Minsk is being resurrected and metro Atlantans are helping
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution – July 17 2004
… The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, a nonprofit organization that raises funds for mostly Jewish causes and groups, has been pouring money, time and volunteers into Minsk's reawakening Jewish community for several years through a partnering program coordinated by JDC. "We have safety nets in place in the U.S. for the poor," says Melissa Kerbel, the new partnership coordinator for Atlanta's Jewish Federation. "But in Belarus that doesn't exist, and without our programs a lot of people would simply fall through the cracks." Their work has made a difference. Although still small, some officials estimate there are now 50,000 Jews in Minsk and twice that number in Belarus. Synagogues, Hebrew schools and community centers are sprouting up again in scores of small towns and villages.

WILL MOW LAWNS FOR SHIATSU!
The Jerusalem Report – July 12 2004
Hundreds of Jerusalemites share their expertise in a version of barter that kindles community spirit…The program is known as Time Bank, and has been running for a little more than a year, with the Joint Distribution Committee, other Jewish groups, the government and private donors funding its annual 70,000-shekel ($ 15,000) budget (for marketing and part-time salaries for Tiser and another coordinator). It is based on a 30-year-old American model, Time Dollars, which today boasts centers in 14 countries, spanning North America, Asia, Europe and Africa….The JDC, Tiser says, has guaranteed funding for a nationwide, 50-center expansion.

Everyone's a Star at Art Therapy Festival
The St. Petersburg Times – July 9 2004
The 2nd International Art Therapy Festival "Wandering Stars" ended Thursday with a fleet of floating stars - about 300 candles set afloat in the Finnish Gulf in a resort outside St. Petersburg... The festival is a continuation of Kovcheg's four-year collaboration with the French theater troupe Turbulences, who work with autistic and Down Syndrome children and young adults in Paris. Traditionally in Russia disabled children are educated separately. Kovcheg advocates integrated education that closely involves parents and places artistic expression and creativity at the heart of the educational process. The festival, a fundamental part of their integration program, brings together children, their parents and educators from Russia and abroad, and allows them to exchange their ideas and experiences of integrated education… The festival was held in cooperation with the Assistance to Russian Orphans Program and the JDC, which have recently branched out to work with children's charities.

Jewish community ‘is about volunteers’
Canadian Jewish News – July 8 2004
…On the panel, titled "We are Our Brothers’ Keepers: What It Means in Practice," were Linda Levi, assistant executive vice-president of the JDC… Levi, who oversees the JDC’s worldwide planning and budgeting process, said our heritage includes a long history of social justice, and it’s our challenge to live up to these moral principles… In the former Soviet Union, where pensioners have become impoverished due to tremendous economic changes, she has seen many people who can no longer afford to put food on their table… In Buenos Aires, there is a new class of Jewish poor, and 36 children from the community die from hunger every day, Levi said… The JDC has also reached out to the Jewish community of India, which had been cut off from the rest of the Jewish world because of distance, she said…

Traditional dance festival held by the Cuban Hebrew community in Havana
World Data Service – July 5 2004
…"I am very excited to see all these people coming from Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo and other Cuban cities where Hebrew communities were almost non-existent. Our community has been reborn; it is alive," said Adela Dworin, Vice-president of Patronato de la Comunidad Hebrea de Cuba, the institution that organized the First Rikudim (Traditional Dance) Festival "Raíces" last weekend in its headquarters in the neighborhood of El Vedado in the capital city… The rebirth of the Hebrew community in this Caribbean country is closely linked to the support provided by JDC… the regional branch of this international Jewish organization has contributed to the religious, cultural and educational revival of the Hebrew community in Cuba after a long period of inertia starting in the ‘60s for various reasons.

Survivors' huppa presented to Yad Vashem
Jerusalem Post – July 1 2004
…The embroidered azure huppa, made in Israel and sent at the request of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to Germany, is one of several similar canopies, that were dispatched along with other ritual objects, to displaced persons camps after the Holocaust. Thousands of Jewish couples were married under these canopies. In the course of the refugees moving to Israel and elsewhere, the huppa disappeared. It was rediscovered by chance a couple of years back at a public auction in the US by Jane Weitzman, a member of the JDC board. JDC director-general Arnon Mantver presented the huppa to Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev in a ceremony Wednesday at Yad Vashem…

Book recalls children rescued from Nazi Europe
WASHINGTON JEWISH WEEK – July 2004
… There was a requirement that we not wave goodbye out of the window when departing because Jews were not allowed to give the Hitler salute and waving might be mistaken for one." So said Robert Braun, one of the more than 1,000 Jewish children rescued from soon-to-be-Hitler-controlled Europe in the late 1930 and early '40s, some of whose stories are told in Don't Wave Goodbye… Michel Margosis of Springfield …His father had to flee for his life to Portugal, "his life was in mortal danger," Margosis wrote in 1995, and the rest of the family made its way through France toward Spain and Portugal. His sister and brother went to Palestine from Cadiz, Spain, after Margosis had been spirited away to Portugal and to his father by the JDC…

24th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (July 4-9 in Jerusalem)
The Jerusalem Post – June 18 2004
…The Joint Distribution Committee archives will be open to conference attendees. A room with microfilm readers and relevant material will be open during the conference. Resources include registration card microfilms of people seeking help during WWII through JDC offices in Munich, Vienna and Barcelona (some 80,000 names with details). Following the war, JDC's Istanbul office tried to locate refugees and lost families - these records will be available. There is also a list of survivors, but no search engine. JDC materials include information not at Yad Vashem. To help the archives provide adequate facilities, email if you plan to visit, archives@jdc.org.il…

Mass bar mitzva celebrated in Russia
The Jerusalem Post – June 15 2004
The Great Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg was recently the site of a mass bar and bat mitzva ceremony in which some 70 Jewish children celebrated their rite of passage into adulthood, the Lubavitch.com Web site reports. The event, which was arranged by the local Jewish community with the assistance of the JDC and the Palm Beach Jewish Federation, was presided over by Chabad-Lubavitch emissary Rabbi Menachem Mendel Pewzner. "This celebration might enter the Guinness Book of World Records," Rabbi Pewzner told the participants, reminding them that, "your parents couldn't even dare think about obtaining a Jewish education in such festive surroundings. From now on, you are competent representatives of the Jewish people."

JDC helps Eastern European Jews use returned property for self-sufficiency
JTA – June 7 2004
Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe are getting a hand at becoming self-sufficient thanks to a real estate loan program. The idea behind the Strategic European Loan Fund, or SELF, is to help communities maximize revenues from restituted property and then pump the money back into projects that benefit local Jewry. Initial experiments with the program have proven so successful that JDC, which introduced SELF, is now looking to develop the interest-free loan program all over the continent. Already, JDC has begun setting up seminars in different countries to provide community representatives with real estate know-how… Jerry Spitzer, a JDC board member and property management consultant, said many communities face difficulties in deciding what to do with real estate that has been returned to the Jewish community recently, decades after their seizure by the Nazis during World War II. "The fact that you have gotten a building can be a liability," Spitzer said. "Unless you can turn it into an income-producing property, it is a drain because you have to insure it, maintain it."

Jewish Artifacts Remain in Limbo in Iraq
The Associated Press – May 27 2004
…Harold Rhode, a Pentagon expert on Middle East affairs who spent six weeks in Baghdad working on the materials, said the records are of great historical interest because the Baghdad Jewish community has nearly disappeared. Jews fled Iraq after deadly riots under a pro-Nazi government during World War II; thousands more left after the execution of Jews as spies for Israel and the United States in the 1960s. Many now are in Israel. Of the estimated 100,000 Jews living in Baghdad at the end of World War II, only a handful remain, most of them elderly people who can't or don't want to leave, according to the JDC, which sponsors Jewish relief programs. Full restoration of the materials retrieved from Baghdad would cost an estimated $1.5 million to $3 million, according to the National Archives…

Operation Solomon babies celebrate bar mitzvah
The Jerusalem Post – May 27 2004
It has been 13 years exactly since she arrived along with 13,260 others during the Operation Solomon airlift of Ethiopian Jews. On Monday, the Busenas gathered with five of the seven other mothers who gave birth along the way to celebrate their arrival in Israel and the arrival of their children at Jewish adulthood. Five bar mitzvas and one bat mitzva were part of the celebration put on Monday in Jerusalem by the JDC, which helps to Ethiopian Jews to integrate in Israel, in honor of the operation and the 500 Ethiopians that now work for the organization. According to Dr. David Raveh, … "Nobody screamed. Nobody said anything. It was totally quiet. I was like the Exodus out of Egypt," he said. "It's a once in a lifetime experience. It's a piece of history, for me and for the Jewish nation," he added. "We had a unique opportunity to pour love. To open the soul and pour unlimited love."

Myers Foundation grants $15 million to JDC-Brookdale
Cleveland Jewish News – May 25 2004
The Cleveland-based David and Inez Myers Foundation has made a grant equivalent to a $15 million endowment to the JDC-Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem. The gift will support general operations at the institute, which is a research and resource center for the overseas social service projects in the Jewish community. It is the largest grant made by the Myers Foundation in its 50-year history. To recognize this new partnership, the institute has been renamed Myers-JDC-Brookdale. "It was a relatively easy decision for the Myers Foundation to make," says foundation president S. Lee Kohrman, an attorney at Kohrman Jackson & Krantz PLL. "It was one of the most valuable contributions we could make to the social fabric of Israeli life…"

Europe's Jews see strong role for them in expanded EU
Haaretz – May 21 2004
…"With between 2.5 and 3 million Jews living in the European Union since its enlargement to 25 member states on May 1, Jews will play a positive role in developing a new European identity, said Jonathan Joseph, chairman of the Third General Assembly of European Jewry. "We want to continue as we have done for 2,000 years to contribute to European culture," Joseph told reporters… "Fortunately, we are not in the same conditions as the 1930s," Benatoff said, referring to the rise of Nazism. "Strong democratic institutions are running Europe." Benatoff's views were echoed by Eugene Ribakoff, the president of JDC, who said he had been encouraged by a recent meeting with Pope John Paul II. "There are many good people trying to fight this problem," Ribakoff said, referring to anti-Semitism…

PM to launch new project to help children at risk
Haaretz – May 13 2004
"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will soon announce the launching of an ambitious project to rescue some 350,000 children who are at-risk due to poverty, neglect and abuse… the state only reaches 20 percent to 25 percent of the estimated 350,000 children currently at risk, which means that 200,000 to 250,000 either receive no assistance at all or receive only superficial assistance. Yaniv is the brainchild of Avi Naor, a former president and CEO of the high-tech company Amdocs, and founder of the Or Yarok (Green Light) nonprofit association for the war on traffic accidents. Naor decided last year that he wanted to donate $25 million over the next five years to a national project to aid at-risk children. He persuaded Sacta-Rashi to get involved, and together they began raising money from other Israeli businessmen. They also turned to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which has developed programs for treating at-risk children, and the Joint agreed to donate $2.5 million."

JDC turns 90
JTA – May 12 2004
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is celebrating its 90th birthday. The JDC will celebrate the occasion with a ceremony Tuesday night at Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City's mayor, who will address the group. The JDC was founded in 1914 in New York City to send funds from North American Jews to their brethren in Europe and Palestine during World War I. Today, the JDC is the North American federation system's overseas agency, providing relief and welfare to needy Jews around the world.

Coping in a crisis
Haaretz – May 12 2004
…"Security and emergency rescue officials from Jerusalem gathered for three days last week for the first time, to focus on coping personally and as a team with crisis situations. The encounter was meant to provide participants with tools for administrative leadership during emergency routines, but in actuality, it was a rare opportunity for the representatives to meet each other, voice frustrations that have built up over years of terrorist attacks in the city, and formulate working arrangements… The gathering was arranged by the Jerusalem Municipality in conjunction with the Jerusalem Foundation and the JDC-Israel, which both helped fund the meeting, as part of the emergency support network operations…"

Indian rabbi follows his dream, and it leads him right back home
JTA – May 10 2004
…"While a botany student at university, Rabbi Kolet became involved with the JDC, which had launched educational and social welfare operations in India in 1964. He read Aryeh Kaplan’s books on Judaism in the JDC library, learned ritual slaughter at a JDC community center and became convinced that he needed to go to Israel if he wanted to learn more about Judaism… In Thane, a suburb of Bombay, Kolet says a Jewish learning center is under construction that will include a kindergarten and an after-school program. Kolet also is trying to raise funds for a kashrut program, a new Jewish educational program and the purchase of tefillin in Bombay.

Age shall not wither them
Haaretz – May 3 2004
…"This is a very simple and very cheap arrangement that is really brilliant," says Dr. Yitzhak Brick, Director General of JDC-ESHEL, which developed the Supportive Community model. The first such community was created in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Moshe a decade ago. In recent years the idea caught on and the project has expanded in response to the accelerated increase in Israel's elderly population. In 2003 alone, the number of Supportive Communities grew by 23 percent; today, there are 113 communities throughout the country. That year, the number of elderly people participating in the project rose by over 30 percent, reaching a total of approximately 20,000. When Brick presented the project to him several weeks ago, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was so impressed that he asked JDC-ESHEL to set up another 100 Supportive Communities throughout Israel. The establishment of 50 new communities will begin this year, 50 more will be launched in 2005, and the Finance Ministry will allocate NIS 45 million for the project over the next five years. JDC-ESHEL today finances the project to the tune of nearly NIS 2.5 million annually."

On eve of E.U. expansion, Jews see mixture of risk and opportunity
JTA – April 25 2004
…"On May 1, less than 15 years after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the former Communist states of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are to become full-fledged members of the European Union, along with the island states of Cyprus and Malta. The move marks the culmination of Europe’s political and economic transformation. It puts a formal end to the post-World War II paradigm of a Europe divided between East and West — and, at the same time, validates the emerging Jewish communities in the new member states as part of the European and Jewish mainstream. "It’s as if brothers who were out are coming home," said Mario Izcovich, director of pan-European programs for the JDC. Like their non-Jewish fellow citizens, Jews in the new E.U. countries view the union’s enlargement with a mix of emotions ranging from eagerness to deep anxiety. .."

JCF program makes successful im-PACT
Cleveland Jewish News – April 23 2004
…"An initiative of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland and the JDC, PACT is in its fifth year as an educational-enrichment and community-services program for Ethiopian-Israeli children and their families." …"This program is changing the lives of Ethiopian parents and children, and the next generation will be our real future," says Rivka Argai, through an interpreter. She is coordinator of the PACT Plus Liaison Initiative in Beersheva Elementary Schools. "When I arrived in Israel, everyone stepped off the plane, stooped down and kissed the tarmac. We had made it to the Promised Land. Now, at last, we have a chance to live up to our promise. PACT has given us that opportunity…"

L’Chaim Cuba!
The Jewish Week – April 16 2004
… "There is a revival," says Dr. Jose Miller, president of the Patronato, Havana’s synagogue-community center. "We are a Jewish community," a community with a secular history. "We are a Zionist community. We support Israel." "We" is 1,200 to 1,500 people"… At Miller’s invitation, the New York-based JDC, the overseas arm of American Jewry that helps strengthen struggling Jewish communities around the world, came in 1994. The JDC sends husband-wife teams for two-year stints of teaching classes, running camps and developing young leaders. "Without the Joint, nothing would happen in Cuba," Miller says… "Economically, Jews are reflective of the rest of Cuban society, which is poor," says Will Recant, JDC assistant executive vice president. "Many Jews are professionals, but being a professional in Cuba doesn’t give you much of an advantage" in terms of earning power. The average salary is $15 to $20 per month, and food is rationed…. In past years, about a score of Santa Clara Jews attended the seders. This year it was 16, every Jew in the city."

U.S Volunteer Boosts Belarus Jewish Life
Baltimore Jewish Times – April 15 2004
Koby Oppenheim gives the JDC its money's worth. The 25-year-old is often spotted dashing from task to task across the Jewish communal compound known in Minsk as "The Campus." In his conversational Russian, he teaches Hebrew to kindergartners. He teaches English to administrators and Jewish tradition to adults. He advises youth groups how to better coordinate activities and boost membership. And whatever else he's asked to do. The JDC sent Oppenheim to Belarus in August through its Jewish Service Corps, a program launched in 1987 that has sent some 100 American young adult volunteers to 12 different Jewish communities… His service has been an exhilarating experience, says Oppenheim, learning about a unique Jewish community — one he's found surprisingly vibrant. Of the 15 former Soviet republics, Belarus has the third-largest Jewish population, estimated at 65,000 to 70,000.

Spring break with South American Jews
Cleveland Jewish News – April 8 2004
…The Texas Hillel group, which was the result of a new program in partnership with the JDC and sponsored by the Howard and Leslie Schultz Family Foundation of Dallas, took a slightly different tack: The students mixed a mission-style trip with volunteer work. Not tied to a daily volunteer routine, the Texas students visited welfare centers were they distributed medicine and clothes and put together packages for mothers and babies from a JDC Baby Help program. They also served meals at three soup kitchens. "This is a pilot program for JDC and we are very hopeful and encouraged that it will be replicated in the future," Will Recant, JDC's Latin American desk director...

Cleveland JCF makes large commitment to Falash Mura
Cleveland Jewish News – 8 April 2004
… To help these people, the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry has been operating a $500,000 "second meal program" to ensure all pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under 6 in these compounds are properly fed. However, following the recent death of the program's major donor, the conference found itself $250,000 short and unable to continue the meals…. The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland is one of only seven Jewish federations in North America that has opted to pitch in and save the program… The involved federations will administer the funds through the JDC, which already manages much of the efforts to support Falash Mura still residing in Ethiopia.

Life After Al-Qaeda
Jewish Week – 8 April 2004
…So in the elementary school supported by the JDC, teenage girls teach multiplication tables in Hebrew while introducing the Talmud in the students’ mother tongue of Arabic. "This is the only place in the world where girls are teaching Talmud in Arabic," said Yechiel Bar-Hayim, the JDC’s liaison to the community. "This is the largest extant community of Arabic-speaking Jews. This is because of the relatively moderate policy of the Tunisian government…"

Sending joy and happiness in a box
Kansas City Star – 3 April 2004
"The program is called the Simcha Box Program, with ‘simcha' meaning joy and happiness," said Michelle Lawner, director of community outreach and grant development for the Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City. The first deliveries this year went out last month for Purim, and this week volunteers are preparing boxes for Passover, which begins at sundown Monday…While in Romania, we witnessed a program of the JDC," Lawner said. "They deliver food boxes of staple grocery items to Jews living across Eastern Europe. When I saw the program, I was extremely inspired because for so many people receiving the boxes, they may be the only Jewish individuals in their villages, and the people delivering the boxes may be their only contact with the Jewish community in their country." She also started thinking of how to reinvent the program in Kansas City. She took pictures of the boxes and made a list of their contents. Upon her return, she called a meeting of people from various Jewish agencies to brainstorm. From that she developed the Manna Fund, "manna" literally meaning "food from heaven," she said. The first step is the food box program…

Belarus Jews At Dictator's Whim
Baltimore Jewish Times – 2 April 2004
…Save for Basin and a few others, Belarussian Jews — the third-largest Jewish community in the former Soviet Union, behind those in neighboring Russia and Ukraine — are loath to criticize Lukashenko. After seven decades of Soviet dictatorship, with long memories of dark times and uncertainty of what may come in the future, Jews here have learned to toe the line… Many of them are elderly, and they struggle economically, like the vast majority of Belarussians, though the JDC assists them with welfare programs and health care. Meanwhile, long-suppressed Jewish life has rebounded and is flourishing — also supported by the JDC. But after generations of subservience and fear, Jewish reticence on political matters is a difficult and even risky cycle to break…

At home in Casablanca
Jerusalem Post – 3 April 2004
…Joining us is Amir Shaviv, executive of the JDC, which helps fund many of the community's projects. "We continue to invest in Moroccan Jewry because emigration appears to have stabilized in recent years," says Shaviv. "And despite the small numbers, there is a vibrancy to Jewish communal life here that would be the envy of many a Jewish community in mid-sized American cities…"

From Minsk to Pinsk
JTA – 1 April 2004
…Officials say they hope to learn their specific needs and design programs to further satisfy them. Results and analysis are due in June. The survey may become a model for other countries in the former Soviet Union, says Sofia Abramova, director of Hesed Rachamim, the Minsk community welfare program and one of 18 nationwide initiatives funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Claims Conference and others… JDC still is the major player when it comes to Jewish welfare in Belarus. In the first decade of its operations in Belarus, the JDC and its Hesed programs focused much of their attention - understandably - on the elderly… The children phenomenon is relatively new. It was first discovered soon after the opening of the Jewish Campus - a JDC-financed facility that houses most of the major Jewish organizations in Minsk and has become the center of Jewish life in the capital… Across the country, 2,285 families have been interviewed. The surveying likely will end in February, Abramova says. Analysis of the interviews is being carried out in conjunction with faculty from Emory University in Atlanta and the JDC-affiliated Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem…

The Jewish Traveler: Sofia
Hadassah Magazine – April 2004
…Today Sofia, a city of 1.2 million, has only 3,000 Jews (there are 6,000 in the whole country). But under the aegis of Shalom, the Organization of Jews in Bulgaria, the community is restoring that lost knowledge through activities for every age group… Many of the activities are supported by the JDC and Jewish federations in the United States. But as the community gradually regains properties confiscated by the Communist Party half a century ago, it hopes to become financially independent…

The Joint Distribution Committee's Programs in Cuba
Jews of Cuba– March 2004
… Nestor Szewach and Mara Steiner are building a system of Jewish religious education in Cuba which will last far beyond their two years of service to Cuba's Jewish communities. Assigned to Cuba by the Buenos Aires office of the New York-based JDC, Nestor and Mara are methodically helping to build a series of educational programs which, after they depart in August of 2004, will be operated by the Cubans…

Pope hopes friendship between Catholics and Jews will strengthen
AP – 29 March 2004
VATICAN CITY…The pope received representatives of JDC, which provides aid and assistance to Jewish communities around the world. "Your visit is yet another sign of the bonds of friendship between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church, bonds which we hope will grow ever stronger," John Paul said.

Belarus Jews take part in Jewish life but don't know much about Judaism
JTA – March 17 2004
… Jewish life in Belarus: enthusiastic renaissance of Jewish culture and society, but painstakingly difficult reconstruction of Jewish religion. "It is easier to train people to provide social welfare services than it is to teach them values and traditions," says Marina Fromer, the local representative of the JDC, which underwrites much of Jewish cultural, social and welfare services in Belarus. That's one main reason that all Campus activities are free -- it brings Jews through the door. And they come back for more: The JDC claims a 90 percent rate of return visits…

As ruling nears in Swiss bank case, groups demand a piece of the money
JTA – 16 March 2004
… In addition to surveys by the group Dubbin represents, two reports in the Swiss banks case attempt to identify and quantify the current living conditions — and even the war-era suffering — of Holocaust victims worldwide. Brandeis undertook the $50,000 study on behalf of the JDC, which helps care for some 225,000 elderly Jews and their families in the former Soviet Union… The report "was not designed to make the policy decision but simply to lay out the facts about the situation of victims in different countries and the resources they have available to them," Saxe said. Brandeis undertook the work with the proviso that the JDC "would not have a say in how it came out," he added… The poorest are in the former Soviet Union, concentrated in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, living on as little as $18 a month in pensions and receiving limited health care, the report said. Herbert Block, the JDC’s assistant executive vice president, said any money the organization received from the settlement would pay for food, home care and medicine for survivors in the former Soviet Union, but the agency has not requested a specific amount…

For Morocco’s Jews, a mixture of integration, vibrancy and decline
JTA – 16 March 2004
… Morocco’s "is the jewel in the crown" of Jewish communities that the JDC serves, said Amir Shaviv, the JDC’s assistant executive vice president for special operations. "There is such a rich fabric of Jewish life in the community although it’s so small, and it’s a model of peaceful coexistence in an Arab and Muslim country." The Casablanca community, which with 3,000 people is by far the largest in Morocco, has 10 Jewish schools serving some 800 students. The community also has at least six synagogues, an old-age home, a medical clinic and a youth center…

Police may shut file on 1967 death
The Prague Post – 11 March 2004
Investigators may drop their inquiry into a mysterious communist-era death, despite concluding that the victim may have been murdered. The case is the 1967 death in Prague of leading American Jewish official Charles Jordan. The Office for the Documentation and Investigation of Communist Crimes (UDV) is considering shelving the case for lack of evidence, even though claims of new evidence are leading the office to investigate the possibility of murder. The circumstances of Jordan's death, which came during the turmoil of 1960s Middle East politics, fueled one of the great murder-conspiracy theories in contemporary Czech history. Jordan, then vice president of an American-Jewish humanitarian organization, the JDC, was found floating in the Vltava river close to Charles Bridge Aug. 20, 1967, four days after disappearing from the Esplanade Hotel in central Prague. He had been visiting the city for three days when he disappeared…The Joint Distribution Committee's country director for the Czech Republic, Yechiel Bar-Chaim, said in a statement March 4 that the committee is interested in seeing all new leads in the case pursued. "We believe that the current status of this investigation for the murder of one of our top officials continues to be worthy of public interest…"

Baltic Jews rebuilding their community
The Jerusalem Post – 29 February 2004
There is a country whose Jewish community involves nearly all its young people, elects its leaders by democratic vote on the basis of character rather than wealth, and is not riven by political and religious divisions. The country is Lithuania, once a vibrant center for 250,000 Jews, where today some 6,000 Jews are rebuilding their institutions and community on the ashes of the Holocaust and Soviet rule. The upbeat report comes from a small and youthful delegation of activists from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which arrived in mid-February to celebrate the inauguration of the Los Angeles-Baltics Partnership…Asked what impressed the group most about their visit here, Andreas Spokoiny, the JDC director for the Baltic States said, "It was discovering the richness of options for Jewish living available here."

A haven for Holocaust survivors: Jewish groups launch bid to build assisted-living units at Vinohrady hospital site
The Prague Post – 26 February 2004
…The Hagibor project, backed by a coalition of Jewish groups and survivor organizations, will replace a smaller facility in Prague that can no longer cope with the needs of wartime survivors reaching their twilight years. The community is preparing a tender this year for the reconstruction of a building at the Vinohrady hospital complex, near the New Jewish Cemetery where Franz Kafka is buried…The Terezin Initiative (an umbrella organization for Czech Holocaust survivors), the JDC and the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities are among the plan's backers. Hagibor, slated to open in 2006, will provide 60 beds with round-the-clock health care and a daycare center, services in greater demand as the country's 1,550 remaining Holocaust survivors age. Remnants of a prewar Jewish population of 112,000, they make up more than half of the official membership of the Czech Federation of Jewish Communities and about 1.5 percent of the world's remaining concentration camp and ghetto survivors, according to Czech Jewish officials…

US Jews raising funds for Moroccan quake victims
The Jerusalem Post – 29 February 2004
Following a devastating earthquake in Morocco on Tuesday, Jewish organizations in New York pledged to raise funds to aid victims of the natural disaster. At the JDC, executive vice president Steve Schwager set up a mailbox for donations… "We will work with the Moroccan Jewish leadership to determine the best way to render assistance," said Schwager, who praised Morocco for promoting peaceful coexistence between its Jewish and Arab citizens. A strong earthquake early Tuesday rocked a picturesque but impoverished region of northern Morocco, killing more than 550 people as they slept and laying ruin to villages that have suffered for decades under government neglect... Donations can be sent to: JDC, Morocco Earthquake Relief, Box # 321, 847A Second Ave., NY, NY, 10017

FSU: Hillel stepping up outreach efforts to face post-Communist challenges
JTA – 17 February 2004
In its 10 years of operating in the former Soviet Union, Hillel has reached thousands of Jewish students. Now it’s trying to reach more… Hillel’s presence in the region — brought here with support from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation in partnership with the JDC — generally has had a positive impact. The movement has a network of 27 full-time centers and a dozen affiliated youth groups devoted to bringing Judaism and Jewish experiences to young and mostly assimilated Jews in seven of the former Soviet republics. More than 10,000 Jewish students participate annually in Hillel’s activities in the region… We are coming out into a bigger world, we will be coming to campuses, clubs and museums. We will be going to all those places where we can find Jewish students to engage more of them," Purinson said at the opening of the conference in Moscow on Feb. 4. Unlike in the United States, where most Hillel chapters work with Jewish students on specific campuses, Hillel in the former Soviet Union operates community-based centers that reach out to a broader student population from multiple colleges…

Forsaken in their old age
The Jerusalem Post – 12 February 2004
One of the most frequently played songs on Israel's airwaves on Wednesday was that based on the verse from the 71st Psalm: "Forsake me not in my old age." DJs empathizing with the findings of a Brookdale Institute survey on poverty and the aged sought to remind the government that it has neglected its obligations to a significant segment of the population. President Moshe Katsav was visibly shocked Wednesday when he was presented with statistics on the plight of Israel's elderly, 200,000 of whom are living in abject poverty. Katsav's Seva Tova (Ripe Old Age) initiative to provide supplementary services for the indigent aged is being implemented in conjunction with the JDC, the Eshel Organization for the Aged, the Brookdale Institute, the IDF, the Israel Police, the Prisons Service, the Health Ministry, the Ministry for Social Affairs, the National Insurance Institute, and several voluntary organizations in seven pilot projects. According to Brookdale director Jack Habib, in the current economic climate, the numbers are likely to grow… "It's vital to intervene as quickly as possible," said Katsav. "This is the last chance to save them."

For survivors in ex-Soviet lands, golden years are difficult times
JTA – 10 February 2004
The fall of communism has brought a cruel paradox to the lives of Holocaust survivors in the Soviet Union. They can now be open about their wartime ordeals as Jewish victims of the Nazis, but in the post-Communist world, they have no government-sponsored Social Security-type system to rely upon when they reach the age of retirement. The Communist government did not allow the Soviet victims of the Holocaust to receive any compensation from Germany. After the fall of communism, Holocaust survivors in the former Soviet Union became eligible for compensation. But most never lived long enough to get any money… "Holocaust survivors in the former Soviet Union are among the poorest Jews on earth," says Steven Schwager, the executive vice president of the JDC, a group that provides a wide array of social services to the population of survivors in the former Soviet bloc…

Year abroad: KC man back from year working to revive Jewish life in Poland
Kansas City Jewish Chronicle – 13 February 2004
Kansas City native Yehoshua Ellis just returned home from a year in Poland, where he was part of the JDC’s Jewish Service Corps, helping to revive Jewish life in the formerly communist nation... "The Holocaust and communism came down hardest in Poland, and it has been hard to recover," he said. Ellis said that, while working for the Jewish Service Corps, he was able to shape his own job. He started his time abroad by updating the Polish Jewish Internet site, www.jewish.org.pl, daily. He added news on the Jewish world, kept the links updated, wrote articles about holidays, seasons, history and concepts and added a kashrut link on the site. He also spent a lot of time working with youth, serving as an adviser to the Polish Union of Jewish Students, or PUSE…

Prague exhibit traces century of relief efforts for Czech Jews
JTA – 22 January 2004
… A turbulent and tragic century for Jews in Central Europe has been brought to life in Prague’s National Library. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee opened an exhibition there on Jan. 16 detailing its work in the Czech and Slovak lands over 85 years… "In a way, it’s an exhibition about the work of the Joint, but it is also an exhibition that highlights just how important this relatively small Central European country has been in the history of European Jewry and even the State of Israel over the past 85 years," Bar-Chaim said. "What amazes me is the magnitude of the effort after the war — a quarter of a million people in a war-torn country struggling with its own issues of repatriation and reconstruction."…

Brisket Was His Madeleine
The New York Times – 14 January 2004
… "I have always said that holidays are very dangerous," said Edward Serotta… takes his chances because holiday meals are essential to his work, documenting what remains of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe… Centropa, the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation is an oral-history project that includes an interactive archive of recipes gathered in Jewish population centers in 13 countries… financed by the Austrian government; the JDC; and numerous foundations…

Naval commandos adopt home for troubled teens
The Jerusalem Post– 9 January 2004
The elite naval commando unit Flotilla-13 on Wednesday officially adopted a home for troubled teens on the coastal moshav of Bustan Hagalil… a beach-front boarding school to better help high school dropouts pass their matriculation exams and, to facilitate their successful social integration, serve in IDF combat units. Some 30 boys and girls, 40 percent of whom are new immigrants, comprise the first class of the school, and every six months a new group will arrive until the student body reaches 150. The Nirim Youth Village is supported by the defense, education, and social affairs ministries but also depends on private donors, including JDC-Israel and International Fellowship of Christians and Jews…

Banana sanctuary
Jerusalem Post – 8 January 2004
… When one thinks of the thousands of Jews who sought to escape the Nazis in the years leading up to World War II… It's a little-known piece of history that the only country to fully open its doors to the Jews during those years was the Dominican Republic…The DORSA was the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, a task force created by the Joint Distribution Committee, whose job it was to facilitate the resettlement of Jewish refugees to Sosua - a 26,000-acre banana plantation that was chosen as a place where Jewish families could live and work. In January, 1940, the DORSA signed an agreement with Trujillo's regime guaranteeing Jews civil and human rights… almost all of the 700 refugees were professionals from big cities. Their lives had been saved, but they also had to reinvented: Rural life on the northern coast of a Caribbean island bore little resemblance to life in Vienna or Berlin…

Local Jews aid peers in former U.S.S.R.
Saint Paul Pioneer Press – 4 January 2004
Bella Guler was 16 when the Nazis rolled into her hometown in Ukraine. She was also a Jew, which made her a target of the German killing machine… Today, at age 78, Guler is one of a dwindling number of Jews in Korostyshev. Aged, frail and poor, they are completely dependent on social-service agencies. Those agencies are largely funded by charitable donations from Jews in North America, including the Twin Cities… The long-suffering Jewish population, however, had a friend overseas: the far-flung JDC. Acting on a central principle -- "All Jews are responsible for one another" -- the JDC is sustaining the needy while simultaneously laying the foundation to rebuild Jewish communities across the former Soviet Union. "We definitely feel a responsibility not to leave these people in the last years of their lives, but to support them and help them live in dignity," said Amos Lev-Ran, the JDC's missions director in the former Soviet Union…