For the sake of his career, Jack Voorzanger worked to leave the horrors he endured during the Holocaust behind, but through his volunteer work at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, he has demonstrated his commitment to “never forgetting.” He spends 15 hours each week digitizing the family photo collections of victims and survivors.
Voorzanger, 80, said he volunteers “so that the world won’t forget what happened; there are too many people who deny the Holocaust.”
Voorzanger speaks perfect English although he is Dutch by birth. He has the appearance of a professor or author with his gray hair, thin-but-healthy-looking frame and the casual sports coat he wears when he comes to the library and archives room at the Wiesenthal, where he works three days each week.
His work at the Wiesenthal is simple enough. People turn in photos, and he scans them and adds finishing touches, like using the computer to increase or decrease the contrast or light to highlight an image. He was able to learn how to use a computer without much difficulty only after he started volunteering, he said. The photos, available to the museum’s visitors, along with informational pages about the families shown, form valuable multimedia histories of the Holocaust.
Voorzanger began volunteering at the Wiesenthal following his retirement 15 years ago from running photo labs, and he is now one of the museum’s longest-tenured and most consistent volunteers. He works an estimated 800 hours each year.
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“I couldn’t sit at home all day doing nothing,” he said of retirement. “My daughter suggested to me, ‘Why don’t you call the Museum of Tolerance? Maybe they want some volunteers.’ And I’ve been there ever since.”
He also spent three years translating interviews with Dutch survivors for the Shoah Foundation.
Voorzanger has had a difficult life: Both of his parents died in the Holocaust, and he was subjected to physical and sexual abuse by the head of the Catholic family who hid him from the Nazis. His first wife died following the birth of their only child, and that child was later killed in a car accident.
But he eventually remarried, and he and his wife, Juliet, recently celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary. They have three daughters and seven grandchildren.
Adaire Klein, director of Library and Archival Services at the Wiesenthal Center, praised Voorzanger for his ability to overcome tragedy and for his contributions to the Wiesenthal.
“What has always impressed me about Jack is his tremendous commitment to what he does,” Klein said, “his demeanor, his warmth, his friendship, his optimism, his hope in spite of the lot that he’s been through.”
I am dating a man 12 years my senior, who is going to court soon to gain custody of his 6-year-old son. Though he previously had custody every other weekend, he has not had a relationship with him for several years due to difficulties with the mother. When he did have custody, he relied heavily on his girlfriend at the time to help care for his child (much to the chagrin of the birth mother). He has made remarks about me playing a similar role in his son’s life. He refers to his son as “the kid” or “the little crumb snatcher” and has nightmares about hitting or molesting his child (he was molested as an adolescent by his sister’s husband). My concern is this: while I don’t mind occasionally helping out & I am sensitive to his fears, I don’t want to be used as a babysitter and/or chaperone. I also think he should bond with his son without me there. How should I deal with this situation?
-Insta-Momma
Dear Insta-Momma,
Honestly, I think you should get out of this situation. It is bad news when a man with serious issues from his childhood chooses to pass off the hard stuff to his woman. This man needs to be in therapy to remedy his nightmares, face his past, and therefore step up as father of the year.
Children grow attached to people, like women who care for them. I think we forget this when we find single Dad’s sexy, that we are dating a man AND his children. If your boyfriend is pawning off parenting on his girlfriends, then his kids are finding attachments to temporary women. Are you looking for marriage? Is this a fling for a moment or an investment forever?
Motherhood is for life. It isn’t a job you get real vacations from, or sabbatical. It is a heart contract, an action contract, and a commitment between you and the children you choose to raise. For this, we have birth control, condoms and choices. Ie, to marry or not to marry, to date or not to date, to bring life into the world, not to bring life into the world. I am, as I witness the horror of shows like 16 And Pregnant, more and more an advocate of abstinence.
Since abstinence is irrelevant, as the children already exist, and since you will probably continue to date this guy no matter what I say, here are some options. For one, set limits. Let this man-friend of yours know that you are happy to be involved – to a point. Make those limits crystal clear and if he crosses your threshold, express it. Yes, how you need to treat this guy is a lot like PARENTING. This involves being clear and being firm so that the child/boyfriend is steered in the proper direction.
Also, a gentle suggestion that he seek a remedy beyond your arms for his nightmares would be a smart move. Not only for you and for him, but for those kids. Violence and abuse recur in cycles for precisely this reason. Fear of hitting someone often results in hitting someone, because the energy bottles up and the thought is planted. Chances are he will hurt someone at some point unless he battles those demons.
It sucks, royally, when people we love were hurt in their pasts. But unless you truly love this man and want to weather many storms, remember that his past is his and you shouldn’t be the one shouldering the pain of his torment. That pain is his to resolve, and yours to know of, to rub his back, to support him, but not to carry as your own.
For parenting/step-parenting resources, see below:
Package Deal: My (not so) Glamorous Transition From Single Gal to Instant Mom by Izzy Rose
BecomingaStepmom.wordpress.com
The I Hate Being a StepMom forum.
TheStepMomsToolbox.com
” title=”www.send-email.org”>www.send-email.org to merissag[at]gmail[dot]com.
When Judi Kaufman was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1997, she was told she had five years left to live.
But Kaufman — an accomplished chef, writer and active member of the Jewish community — refused to sit back and accept her prognosis without a fight.
“I asked [my doctor] who the survivors are,” she said. In response, her physician, Dr. Timothy Cloughesy, director of the Neuro-Oncology Program at UCLA, proposed taking up some form of art as a means of improving her quality of life.
Kaufman took his suggestion and ran with it. She began writing again, exploring through her work the depths of confusion and pain that her brain cancer had caused.
“You lose your sense of self,” she said of the disease that has robbed her of her sense of taste and made it difficult for her to comprehend time and numbers, to remember what day it is, or know how many weeks have gone by. But writing, Kaufman said, gives her something else.
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“It gives me my heart,” she said. “It lets me figure out where I want to go and what counts in life.”
After being hit with the profound realization that art could help her rebuild her life in ways she never dreamed possible, Kaufman wanted to help others in her situation make the same discovery. With the help of Cloughesy, she launched Art of the Brain in 1999, under the auspices of the UCLA Foundation. It is a nonprofit devoted to raising money to promote awareness of brain cancer, as well as introducing patients to the healing powers of art.
The organization is run entirely by volunteers and has no operating budget — “Everything is donated,” Kaufman said — and all money is given back to the UCLA Neuro-Oncology Program.
To that end, Kaufman helps to organize an annual gala, which, together with other small events throughout the year, has raised more than $5 million since its inaugural event in 2001.
The foundation is supported by a group of volunteers called “Brain Buddies” who serve as mentors to people with brain cancer and their families, helping them navigate the emotional, physical and psychological changes that the disease can bring about.
And of course, the organization also supports the arts. “When I found out I could write well, it turned everything around,” Kaufman said. “Art can give you something for nothing.”
Kaufman still has difficulty arranging her schedule and, she says, she has “no idea how long I’ll live,” but she works full time managing the foundation, for no salary. Art of the Brain reaches approximately 600 people annually, and over the years, it has reached thousands more.
Kaufman isn’t planning to scale back any time soon. “I live every day thinking of the Jewish value of tikkun olam,” she said. “I always question, ‘Am I doing enough for people?’ ”
Her long-term goal for the organization is nothing less than what one might expect from a woman who has outlived her diagnosis by eight years and counting: At the end of the day, Kaufman says, she wants “to cure brain cancer.”
By nature, Eli Fitlovitz prefers to stay in the background. The kibbutz-raised Israeli, who came to Los Angeles in 1982, has wise eyes, an endearing smile and a quiet confidence. A commercial real estate broker, he and his wife are now raising three teenagers. What finally forced Fitlovitz out of his life-long safety zone were his kids, and not in the way most teens make their parents uncomfortable.
Fitlovitz signed up his American-born public school kids for an Israeli youth group, hoping it would connect them to their heritage. The kids grumbled. But instead of letting them off the hook, Fitlovitz decided to revamp the group. And that’s how he found himself in a place he had never been before – the foreground. Center stage and holding the mike. A community leader.
The Israeli Scouts, or Tzofim, have been operating a chapter in the San Fernando Valley for 30 years. Based in Israel, with chapters all over the world, Tzofim is a nonsectarian, non-political youth movement akin to the Boy Scouts, with an Israeli twist. When Fitlovitz signed his children up, the Shevet Chen chapter had dwindling numbers and shaky morale. And worst of all, according to the teens, it was not cool.
As a child, Lauri Burns thought God was punishing her for something horrible she had done in a past life. How else could she explain the years of beatings by her father that began when she was just 5 years old, or the mental abuse that left her suicidal by her bat mitzvah and led her to drug addiction and prostitution on the streets of Santa Ana?
Today, Burns, 47, is sure that her suffering was meant to prepare her for her life’s mission to rescue children of a foster care system that is failing them.
Each year, nearly 25,000 of the more than half a million children in foster care age out of the system at 18, many with nowhere to go. Only 3 percent go to college, and former foster youth make up 27 percent of the homeless population.
In 2008, Burns started The Teen Project to pick up where the system leaves off. The project gives dozens of current and emancipated foster kids in Orange County the emotional, financial and career guidance they need to become independent. A volunteer-based organization funded by private grants and contributions, The Teen Project has one full-time and one part-time employee and an operating budget of nearly $175,000.
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“We’re a parent to the parentless,” Burns said. “We will never abandon these kids. We’ll stay with them until they finish school and help them get to successful careers. That’s what parents do.”
She strives to provide these teens with the secure family setting she was denied.
The child of a middle-class Jewish family in New York, Burns was removed from her abusive home and sent to a mental hospital after her 12th birthday, when her father falsely told police that she had threatened him with his gun. Straitjacketed to a bed and heavily medicated, she was eventually released to her mother, who had left for California to find safe haven for Burns and her two sisters. But by then she was already “damaged,” she said. A growing criminal record of drug use, theft and constant running away resulted in her being deemed a ward of the state in her midteens and sent to live in group homes. At 18, emancipated, with a young daughter, a drug habit and no home to return to, she took to working the streets to survive.
At 23, Burns was brutally beaten by two men and left for dead. Within 24 hours, she found herself in a recovery home, where she began years of intensive therapy that ultimately gave her a new start in life. She studied computers, eventually launching her own consulting firm, and ran sessions for single moms struggling with drug addiction. She took the first of her 18 foster children into her home in 1996. (Her daughter, Summer, 28, graduated from Columbia University in 2008 and is now a social worker in New York.)
Central to The Teen Project is a pristine home on a quiet cul de sac in Lake Forest that houses up to six women ages 18 to 24, both her own foster children and others referred by social services. Four girls currently live in the six-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot house, which a local contractor renovated free of charge.
Despite a hectic schedule that has her commuting from her Orange County home to Los Angeles, where she is an executive with a Fortune 100 defense company, Burns creates a sense of stability in the girls’ lives through her constant presence. She talks to and texts them every day, visits several times a week and cooks breakfast with them every Sunday. They often visit her as well. She helps them secure scholarships and grants for college or trade school.
For kids not eligible for the house, The Teen Project provides alternative support. An all-volunteer street outreach program brings food, bus passes and information on area shelters to nearly 170 kids and young adults, ages 15 to 24, living in Orange County parks and on beaches. Burns’ next goal is to open a drop-in shelter that will channel homeless kids up to age 24 into foster care or youth or transitional housing.
Burns steers clear of government funding that comes tied to age limits and other restrictions. More than 30 volunteers give medical, financial planning and therapeutic services, and all food at the Lake Forest home is provided at no cost by the Adopt-a-Neighborhood program.
Burns was initially uncomfortable asking for help, but she has been inspired by her studies at the Chabad Jewish Center in Mission Viejo.
“The rabbi taught me that by not asking for donations, you rob a person of the opportunity of doing a mitzvah,” she said. “As Jews, we have a responsibility to bring God’s light to the darkest places in this world. Each time we do a mitzvah and help someone else, angels of light are created on earth.”
David Taylor doesn’t see the point in getting emotional about the evils across the globe.
“What do I accomplish by being sad about it?” he asks.
Rather, he looks at human rights atrocities and thinks about them methodically — where and how can he make the most impact?
And he doesn’t let the fact that he’s 13 years old deter him.
Over the past year, he has convinced the executive board of Kehillat Israel, a 1,000-plus family congregation, to commit to purchasing electronics produced with conflict-free minerals and has mobilized the entire student body of New Roads Middle School in Malibu, where he is an eighth-grader, to work for a peaceful Democratic Republic of Congo.
Taylor, who lives in Pacific Palisades, first learned about conflict minerals in Congo through a Jewish World Watch presentation while he was researching a bar mitzvah project. Residents in villages at the entrances to the mines are subject to rape and violence by marauding gangs trying to gain control of the tantalum, tungsten and tin trade — minerals used in computers, cell phones and digital cameras.
Gabriella Axelrad, a luminous 13-year-old with a striking smile, had been on the final stretch of a family bike ride in Grand Teton National Park when a white van appeared out of nowhere and knocked the last breath out of her lithe dancer’s body.
There were no goodbyes. No time for one last “I love you.” For her mother, Liza Bercovici, there was only unimaginable grief, followed by a long empty life stretching out ahead of her.
That was 11 1/2 years ago, and Bercovici has come a long way since then.
Less than a year after her daughter’s death in July 1999, Bercovici gave up her family law practice in Studio City and established the Gabriella Axelrad Education Foundation. “I had to give myself a reason to go on living,” she said. “And believe me, there was a period there when I really didn’t want to.”
Determined to remain connected to the child she lost, Bercovici sought to establish a legacy for Gabriella. “I didn’t have my daughter any longer, but what I had was her memory; I remember how much Gabri loved to dance.”
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In August 2000, Bercovici opened the doors to Everybody Dance, an arts program offering free and low-cost dance classes in low-income neighborhoods for students ages 4 to 19. Serving mostly Latino, Asian American and African American communities, the program began with 35 students, 12 weekly classes and an annual budget of $55,000. Today it serves more than 2,000 students at three locations in the Rampart District and includes the Gabriella Charter School, a kindergarten-through-fifth grade school in Echo Park that opened in 2005 and integrates dance into the academic curriculum. The foundation has plans to expand into a middle school within the next year, and its entire annual budget has now reached $3.8 million.
Dance, Bercovici believes, has been lifesaving for many in the program. She said that 90 percent of the students come from families whose income level is below the poverty line. The dance classes have decreased extracurricular idleness, but even more than that, they have helped students develop their personalities.
“It’s really obvious dance has done wonderful things for them, given them poise and self-confidence, a strong sense of self-discipline, a need to set challenges for themselves and to meet those challenges,” Bercovici said.
“Once in a while, I wonder what would have happened if this dance program and this charter school had not come along. I would like to think that these kids would have made their way anyway, but I think having something that draws children in and engages them makes their lives better and gives them a pathway to future success.”
Bercovici has a husband, attorney David Axelrad, and two sons, ages 19 and 29, and she is well aware of the abundant opportunities for self-development in affluent communities. “That isn’t true in most the communities that we serve, where children go to schools that are generally mediocre, where they don’t feel challenged, and that translates into a lack of academic ambition and a general feeling of apathy.”
Bercovici’s work has impacted thousands of young lives, and it has also saved her own. “You never give up grieving for your child,” she said. But, she added, life becomes more bearable with time and a purpose.
She plans to open another charter school and realizes that, in a way, her life has become the embodiment of her daughter’s dreams: “It is kind of funny and amazing that even though she didn’t get to live out her love of dance or become the classroom teacher that she wanted to be, we’ve managed to have a dance program for children and create a school that I think she would have wanted to serve.”
“Is Rabbi T a crime-fighting rabbi?” That’s what a student asked Pressman Academy Rav Beit Sefer (head school rabbi) Chaim Tureff at a recent question-and-answer session.
“Lehavdil,” Tureff responded, using the Hebrew word to draw a distinction between himself and the person his students think he might be. “They want to know if I’m Superman.”
Clark Kent never admits to being Superman, and Tureff, who is at least 6-foot-4, teaches Torah-infused tae kwon do and hapkido classes at a studio on Wilshire Boulevard and competed in two different sports at the collegiate level, is similarly reluctant to talk about the charity he does in and beyond the Jewish community.
Tureff has been a volunteer with the Pico-Robertson Hatzolah Emergency Rescue Team since it was established in 2004. (He was once disgusted by the sight of blood but overcame that.) He also works with Jewish teens who need a bit more support than they may otherwise be getting. Humble and discreet, Tureff wouldn’t say much more than that.
When he will cop to some charitable or kind act, Tureff is quick to give credit to others. He organizes annual lunches on Thanksgiving and Purim at B’nai David-Judea for 40 or so homeless people from Pico-Robertson, but insisted that the synagogue’s rabbi, Yosef Kanefsky, laid the groundwork to make it possible. “He’s the gadol [great man] when it comes to these things,” Tureff said. Tureff has also helped to plant trees in his neighborhood (he gives credit to L.A. Green Mile founder Noah Bleich) and has worked as a counselor to recovering addicts at the Chabad residential treatment center (but mentioned how great the work being done at Beit T’Shuvah is).
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For the most recent “Got Mitzvah?” project, a program Tureff launched at Pressman in 2006 as a way to get students directly involved with good causes, the students sent care packages and wrote letters to American servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq. “Other teachers gave me the idea,” Tureff said.
Getting Tureff to accept the title of Mensch took serious urging from relatives. “‘You inspire me,’” Tureff said, recalling his mother’s words. “ ‘You do little things every day. People need to know they can do things like that.’ ”
“Which made me feel a little better,” Tureff said, sitting in his office at Pressman, a windowless former bridal chamber only slightly bigger than a telephone booth. “As it is, it’s still a bit awkward.”
“Is everybody happy today?” Shana Passman cheerfully asked a table of Holocaust survivors eating lunch at Hollywood Temple Beth El at the annual Chanukah party of Café Europa, a social club for Holocaust Survivors run by the Jewish Family Service (JFS).
The survivors’ faces lit up, but one said she needed a napkin — and Passman quickly ran to get one. As Passman and the survivors shmoozed and later danced to the accordion band, it became hard to tell who was helping whom.
“These people inspire me,” said Passman, 60. “They’re not survivors for nothing.”
Passman said she feels fortunate to be able to make giving to others a vocation. For the past 14 years, she has volunteered her time assisting seniors in various capacities, including delivering weekly meals through Meals on Wheels and offering counseling as a case aide at the JFS/ Freda Mohr Multipurpose Center.
She sits on executive and advisory boards of a variety of organizations and educational institutions, including JFS, the food bank SOVA, United in Harmony, Pitzer College, and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s School of Jewish Nonprofit Management.
In 2008, Adam Irving, a filmmaker and photographer, left his doctoral program in media studies at the University of Texas to make the transition from theory to practice. He landed in Hollywood with the dream of making films, but soon after his arrival found himself feeling unfulfilled by the vanity within the entertainment industry.
“Most of the work I do is serious, introspective documentary films about important issues — so overall, it’s very fulfilling — but there are aspects of my work, like working in reality television and doing model shoots, where I’m just making beautiful people look good,” Irving said.
Earlier this year, in part to connect with people who possess a passion for giving rather than a passion for being famous, he spearheaded the Los Angeles branch of JCorps, an international, nondenominational social volunteer force for young adults ages 18 to 28.
“I thought, what could be better than giving back and volunteering, which is one of the most selfless, fulfilling acts you can do,” Irving said. “It’s the polar opposite of chasing celebrities around Hollywood Boulevard.”
JCorps’ headquarters in New York provided some seed money, but Irving raised additional funds from family and relatives in his hometown of Toronto so he could expand operations even more.
Together with the chapter’s co-director, Rebecca Pasternak, he organized their first meet-up last September at the Midnight Mission shelter in Skid Row, where 20 volunteers fed 100 meals to the homeless. Since then, they’ve cleaned up beaches and sent packages to American troops. Earlier this month, they gave away clothing to more than 3,000 people at the National Council for Jewish Women Thrift Shop on North Fairfax Avenue, followed by kibitzing at Schwartz Bakery down the street. Each of the events is usually topped off with time to socialize over a meal at a local hangout.
