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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

January 3, 2018

Twitter and the Responsibility of More

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If you post on Twitter or follow someone who uses that social media platform — whether a reality star like a Kardashian or a reality star like President Donald Trump — you probably know that the character limit on tweets recently doubled from 140 to 280.

As with any change in technology, while many celebrated the increase, others grumbled. The mixed multitudes of kvetchers maintained that Twitter’s essential characteristic was brevity. The original character cap, they said, forced economical thinking, an increasing rarity in a space overpopulated by verbosity, and expanding that message space meant amplifying the worst parts of the internet — the users who spew hatred and negativity instead of love and enlightenment.

But more is better, right? More voices in an empowered, democratic America. More power, more success, more money, because that’s the American dream. More internet bandwidth. More unique impressions on your website. More entertainment options on your smart TV. “More” drives our capitalist society, each buzz of achievement a momentary high, stoking our pursuit of a sustained one.

Having more words is good, if we wield them wisely.

“More” is also the reason our immigrant ancestors moved here, dreaming of a nation golden in its guiding promise: more opportunity and more freedom for those with little or none of either. Many of us have lost touch with that existential type of “more,” when it applied mostly to freedom. This receding of memory is a blessing of sorts. Without the daily presence of immediate threats, we are not motivated by the same fears and worries. We are free to acquire and expand, to be who we want to be. We are already at the “more” our ancestors dreamed of.

Even God promises more: that we will be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, that our descendants will be as numerous as the sands of the earth and the stars of the sky. “More” is our literal, biblical birthright as children of Israel. But the daily truth is that while prophecies may promise abundance, fertility and the chance to make a real impact, reality may not deliver. For many, the present has not delivered on what was promised and, in many cases, deserved. Life is not a meritocracy: When it comes to love or family or legacy, our “more” may never come. And when deprived of this “more,” so many of us can feel like less.

Except in speech. We know that two Jews have three opinions, or in an age of internet expression, maybe even more. We always have more to say. We have not just the Bible verses but multiple commentaries that dissect the verses’ word choice, phrasing and narrative. Not just those commentaries, but the oral Torah. Not just the Mishnah but the Gemara and accompanying commentaries. We hunger for more opinions, more meaning, more interpretations to learn from and stand in opposition to. Having more words is good, if we wield them wisely.

Twitter gave everyone 280 characters, not just celebrities, thinkers or raconteurs — or just Jews (although that would have been interesting). This expanded space is politically, religiously and socially agnostic. It’s equal for all, regardless of race, class, gender, merit, wisdom or power. Anyone can connect to anyone — to lift them up with hope and love, or to assault them with invective and hate. Evil can assert itself as easily in 140 characters as it can in 280. Messages through any medium are made in the image of their author.

Living in abundance should mean increased gratitude for the wealth you possess, humility about how you achieved it, acquired wisdom about how to use your assets and generosity of spirit toward those who have less. In this winter holiday retail season, our desire to acquire may assert itself. But we should pause before we purchase or post, and use our budgets of dollars and words responsibly to bring light, joy and peace to those around us.

Shakespeare, who drew on a tremendous well of potential words to find the ones that fit just so — in iambic pentameter, no less — wrote that “brevity is the soul of wit.” Just because we have 280 characters to wield doesn’t mean we always have to use them all.

Esther D. Kustanowitz, a 10-year veteran of Twitter, is a contributing writer at the Jewish Journal and an editor at GrokNation.com.

Twitter and the Responsibility of More Read More »

Hayden Klein: YULA Student Picks His Cause

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, The Mensch List /

When most 15-year-olds might choose to spend their summer going to camp or the beach or just hanging out with friends, Hayden Klein decided to do something more.

Klein, a sophomore at Yeshiva University High School of Los Angeles (YULA), chose to spend last summer working at a day camp with teenagers from ETTA, a Jewish nonprofit that serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

“Every year I would go to day camp, a sports camp, or hang out with my friends, but this year I wanted to do something a lot more meaningful, something bigger than just going to camp,” Klein said. “I wanted to get that great feeling that I was doing something important and something to benefit my community.”

ETTA, he said, was the perfect choice for him, because he’d heard wonderful things about the organization from his teachers and friends.

At a day camp at Shalhevet High School, Klein was paired with an ETTA teenager. They spent their days doing a variety of activities, from singing and dancing to taking trips to places such as Knott’s Berry Farm.

“I really bonded with all the participants there,” Klein said, not just the teenager he was paired with. “You get to see them as just human beings, without the label of being autistic or having Down syndrome.  They’re just like everyone else. They have goals and they want to succeed in life. They’re amazing people.

“I love seeing them outside of camp, too,” he added. “We say, ‘Hi’ and recall things that we did over the summer. It’s a really cool feeling.”

“I come from a very giving community. My grandmother worked in children’s education and I learned a lot from her.”

Klein said a lot of his desire to get involved in volunteer work comes from good examples he has observed.

“I come from a very giving community,” he said. “My grandmother worked in children’s education and I learned a lot from her [about giving back].”

Members of ETTA’s staff were so impressed with Klein’s work that, at the end of the summer, they asked him to join the organization’s Youth Board. As a board member, he helps organize fundraising events during the year, and he is pushing to expand to throughout the year the summer activities the participants enjoy.

“I was in shock when they asked me to join the board,” Klein said. “I’m one of the youngest kids there. It was a real honor.”

At its annual gala in November, ETTA also presented Klein and seven other high school students with its Moselle and Lazare Hendeles Youth Leadership Award.

YULA’s head of school, Rabbi Arye Sufrin, said Klein’s volunteerism goes beyond his work with ETTA. “He is on our flag football team where our coach, Dayvon Ross, is currently undergoing chemotherapy. The entire flag football team was involved in fundraising to help with medical bills by running a Hanukkah barbecue.”

Klein hasn’t decided what he wants to do when he graduates from high school — beyond visiting Israel and going to college. “But I’ll always stay involved and give back,” he said. “I just have that type of mindset.”

Hayden Klein: YULA Student Picks His Cause Read More »

Kfir Gavrieli: Well-Heeled Businessman Gives Back

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Kfir Gavrieli’s footwear company, Tieks, boasts the tagline, “The ballet flat, reinvented.” But Gavrieli has done more than reinvent a women’s shoe; he has turned his profits into philanthropy.

The retail footwear company led by the 34-year-old Angeleno and Israeli native has found success since it launched in 2008, and Gavrieli has been trying to turn that success into mitzvah gold. Through the organization Kiva.org, which provides microloans to female entrepreneurs in the developing world, the Gavrieli Foundation has funded nearly 59,000 loans totaling more than $10 million.

“We are giving them access to capital, they are repaying us and then we can lend to somebody else,” Gavrieli said.

Tieks has been a family affair for much of its history. Gavrieli, who lives in Brentwood, co-founded the Los Angeles-based company with his sister, Dikla Gavrieli. The company sells casual ballet shoes made of Italian leather and textiles. The walking shoes are foldable so they can fit into a purse. They have won praise from the likes of Oprah Winfrey.

Recipients of the company’s philan-thropy live all over the world — in Peru, Mali, Indonesia and elsewhere. The Gavrieli Foundation website says the women who have received its loans through Kiva have used the money to pay for such things as their children’s tuition, feed for their farm animals and sacks of rice.

“Microlending has become intertwined with the meaning of our company and our product and our brand.”

“We can give a shoe to a woman,” Gavrieli said, “but how much more powerful is it when we give her a loan she can use to start a business?”

The Gavrielis’ commitment to Kiva began with a promotion on Facebook that involved them providing $1 to Kiva for every “like” their company received. As a result, they ended up with the fastest growing Facebook page in the world in the clothing category, Gavrieli said.

“[Microlending] has become intertwined with the meaning of our company and our product and our brand,” he said, “something we have doubled down on each year, something we have increased our commitment to.”

Gavrieli has extended giving to other areas of his life. The graduate of Stanford University — where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s of materials science and engineering, and a master’s of business administration — is deeply committed to supporting Israel. He is involved with the leadership of numerous pro-Israel organizations, including AIPAC, the Israeli American Council, American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and 30 Years After.

“In terms of where I put my time and also my capital, it goes far beyond the microloans,” he said.

After college, he worked for venture capital companies and was attracted to e-commerce.  He then decided he wanted to get into e-commerce by selling his own product through his own website.

“We were kind of able to demonstrate as a brand that you can sell stuff online — and your own stuff through your own website — as opposed to going through retail stores or Zappos [an online shoe and clothing store],” he said.

If shoes and microloans are his day job, Israel is his passion.

“I’m trying, over time,” he said, “to change the tide a little bit and make it cool and fun to support Israel rather than to bash it; help people reconnect with Judaism …  and hopefully change the perception of Israel and help get to the point where the Jews aren’t as oppressed a minority as I perceive them to be.”

Kfir Gavrieli: Well-Heeled Businessman Gives Back Read More »

Alana Yakovlev: Law Isn’t Just a Profession — It’s a Calling

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A month after taking the California bar exam in 2010, Alana Yakovlev took the case of an indigent Jewish man facing felony charges whom she had heard of through her network of friends and family in the Los Angeles Jewish community. She believed he was not guity, but prior convictions made him a candidate for a significant sentence.

“They were saying he was going to serve four years in state prison,” she said in the conference room of her Koreatown law office. “Lo and behold, I got involved in the case and two months later, he walked — time served.”

Now, Yakovlev, 33, an Orthodox mother of three, routinely takes on as many as 10 cases at a time of fellow Jews who are often mentally ill and homeless, working to wrest them from the revolving door of the criminal justice system and get them much-needed treatment. She often works with the Aleph Institute, a nonprofit that reaches out to incarcerated Jews.
Too often, she said, mentally ill individuals become trapped in legal limbo by virtue of their illness, for instance, if a court deems them incompetent to stand trial.

“By the time a court deems them incompetent, by the time a court issues an order to give them the medication to restore them to competency, by the time they get sent out to a facility with a bed available for treatment, you’re talking about five to six months,” she said.

Yakovlev, who runs a private criminal defense practice, offers her services to these individuals for free, working to ensure they have access to medication, ideally at a facility equipped to deal with mental illness. She said the penal system often overlooks or ignores mental illness, meaning lengthy jail terms and inadequate treatment for those afflicted.

Depending on the client, her job ranges from contacting social workers, family mem-
bers and jail staff to arguing cases in court.

“Some cases could be a couple phone calls, a couple jail visits, a couple court appearances; others could be very intensive writs, petitions, legal arguments. It varies,” she said.

In theory, this should be the work of public defenders, or PDs, but for mentally ill clients assigned PDs, Yakovlev said, “Good luck. They’re not equipped. They don’t have the resources, and a lot of the time, even when I’ve co-counseled with a PD, I had to do the brunt of the work.”

Having a private lawyer involved, she said, “makes an impact on the end result, because your opposing people, the district attorney’s office, they see it. They see you’re making a fuss not just for the sake of making a fuss, but because it actually means something to you.”

Yakovlev said she often draws on her faith as a devotee of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, sharing with her clients a word of Talmud, Torah or the great Chasidic rabbis, which she said brings them comfort.

“They might not know anything in Hebrew, but they feel that they’re a Jew, that there’s a God, that HaShem loves them even though they’re locked up right now,” she said.

Likewise, she draws on her faith to deal with disappointments.

“Everything I do, I try to do leshem shemayim [in the name of heaven],” she said. “With that in mind, nothing really scares me. Sometimes, things don’t work out. It’s life; it’s disappointing. But at the end of the day, if you go to sleep and you know you did the best you could do for that person, it’s a good day.”

Alana Yakovlev: Law Isn’t Just a Profession — It’s a Calling Read More »

David Nimmer: Building Community, One Lunch at a Time

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Thirteen years ago, David Nimmer, a 62-year-old copyright lawyer, was listening to a sermon inside the sukkah at B’nai David Congregation in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

“In the dvar Torah from that day,” Nimmer recalled, “God says, ‘I want you to do my work.’ That’s healing the sick, clothing the naked and feeding the hungry.”

Two days later, Nimmer, B’nai David’s former president, organized breakfast in the sukkah for homeless residents of the area.

Only one homeless person came.

“Well, that was just the beginning,” he said with a chuckle.

Now in its “bar mitzvah year,” as Nimmer refers to it, B’nai David’s lunch program feeds about 100 people each month. With Nimmer as its lead architect, the program consists of two monthly lunches: one for mainly members of the Russian-Jewish community and another for all comers.

They also host special meals for the homeless on Jewish holidays and a Thanksgiving lunch that attracts about 60 guests each year.

B’nai David members, as well as student volunteers from Pressman Academy, Yeshivat Yavneh  and the Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles (YULA Boys and Girls), prepare and serve the food, which often consists of traditional Shabbos lunch dishes like cholent and cucumber-and-orange salad. To pay for the food each month, Nimmer uses his personal connections to recruit local businesses as lunch sponsors.

People from all walks of life frequent the monthly lunches — Jewish, non-Jewish, homeless and affluent. For Nimmer, the main benefit for guests, shul members and volunteers alike is the shared humanity and unlikely conversations each meal brings.

“Homeless people confound your expectations.”

“The main thing is to just have all the people mixed up and spread out so they talk to people they don’t know,” he said. “We tell the local school kids not to sit with their friends. We tell them to sit with people you don’t know and ask them where they’re from. Homeless people confound your expectations. There’s a lot of political conversation. We want these kids to know that these aren’t scary people. They have histories, stories, hopes and dreams.”

Nimmer said that many of the student volunteers, upon graduating, cite the lunches as among the most impactful memories from their high school years.

“They always talk about the interesting people they met at the lunches,” he said.

Nimmer’s wife, Marcia, and his five grown children also pitch in and help with the lunches. Over the years, many of the guests have watched his kids grow up, he said.

“The guests will see my kids … and they’ll shout at them, ‘You’re back! Where are you at in school now?’ It’s fun,” he said.

Besides the food and fellowship, Nimmer focuses on a third crucial component each month: the entertainment.

There’s typically a sermon or text study, which helps engage Jewish and non-Jewish guests in conversation. On occasion, Nimmer has invited priests or evangelical authors to speak, just to shake up things.

Other gatherings feature parlor games or musicians whom Nimmer invites to perform. At a recent lunch, Nimmer said, a homeless Jewish man who brought his guitar with him stepped in for a canceled act and performed many of Leonard Cohen’s greatest hits. He even dissected verses of “Hallelujah,” discussing their meaning, as if the lyrics were words of
the Torah.

“My takeaway is that these lunches are miraculous,” Nimmer said. “The joke is that a miracle at every lunch is the norm.”

David Nimmer: Building Community, One Lunch at a Time Read More »

Rochel Leah Bernstein: Protecting Children From Sexual Abuse

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Rochel Leah Bernstein is on a mission to protect children from sexual abuse at schools, congregations, camps and after-school programs.

With the support of the Jewish community business incubator Jumpstart Labs, Bernstein has launched The Child Safety Pledge, which seeks to have funders of youth-serving organizations require those organizations to take measures to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse within their operations and programs.

“I am urging funders, philanthropists in the Jewish community and the community at large to step up,” the 33-year-old Bernstein said. “There’s so much money spent in the Jewish world on Jewish education, and Jewish education is not enough without child safety. So, to me, anyone who funds Jewish education is someone who should be — if they are not already — funding child safety.”

The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation is one of four founding signatories to the pledge.

Bernstein, a survivor of sexual abuse, said that Erin’s Law — legislation first adopted by Illinois in 2013 and then by 30 other states, including California, after a campaign by sexual assault survivor Erin Merryn — provided her the inspiration for the pledge. In addition to her personal experience, she also was guided by the philanthropic example set by her parents. Her late father, Zalman Bernstein, was a billionaire businessman who endowed the Avi Chai Foundation, which functions in Israel and the United States, and the New York-based Tikvah Fund, and gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Israeli causes and other charities. Her stay-at-home mother volunteered to aid the sick and the disabled.

“At home I saw, on a small scale and on a large scale, a dedication to the community,” she said.

Bernstein, who is divorced, has three daughters — ages 4, 6 and 10 — and an 8-year-old son. She is raising them shomer Shabbos and in a kosher household, though she does not subscribe to any denomination. Although she was raised observant — “frum from birth,” she said — she has gone through many phases in her spiritual journey.

“I try very hard not to be labeled,” she said. “It’s not my thing.”

Bernstein also volunteers at Tomchei Shabbos, an organization that provides free groceries to low-income families. At Tomchei Shabbos, she has started an event that invites children to wrap gifts and make cards for children in need.

“Anyone who funds Jewish education is someone who should be … funding child safety.”

“I try to make my home and my family an environment where my kids are learning about giving,” she said.

For several years, Bernstein funded and helped implement healthy eating and nutrition programs at her children’s Orthodox day school.

“I don’t know about Reform and Conservative schools,” she said, “but Orthodox ones have issues with nutrition.”

She is confident her work can make a difference in the community.

“At the end of the day, unfortunately, I don’t know that we are able to — by ‘we’ I mean society — eradicate child sexual abuse,” she said. “But I believe if we make our institutions unsafe for predators, they won’t come to our institutions.”

Rochel Leah Bernstein: Protecting Children From Sexual Abuse Read More »

Rena Hirsch: Her Life Is ‘Being of Service to God’

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Rena Hirsch, who is participating in a chaplaincy internship at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, has comforted stroke, heart attack and cancer patients, as well as the occasional gunshot wound or traffic accident victim. Then there was the young Jewish woman who arrived in the emergency room after overdosing on heroin some time ago.

Hirsch discovered that the woman’s mother had died when she was a girl, and that she had been raised in a series of foster homes. “She wanted to turn her life around, so I gave her encouragement and the numbers of rehabilitation facilities,” Hirsch, who is Orthodox, said in her Fairfax-area home, surrounded by Jewish art and books. “We prayed together, and I tried to help connect her to God, because she did believe in God.”

“When you are in a medical crisis, it brings out old traumas,” Hirsch added.  “And when you are a person who is a chaplain, they feel they can share with you their pain.”

“When you are in a medical crisis, it brings out old traumas.”

Hirsch is now in her second year of the two-year layman chaplaincy training at Cedars, which requires 1,600 hours of patient visits to complete. On a volunteer basis, those chaplains provide a compassionate presence for patients and families, helping them sort through their spiritual and emotional distress and providing a spiritual perspective if desired. Hirsch’s goals include “breaking patients’ isolation, and encouraging them to find strength within themselves.”

Hirsch, who was born in Morocco and raised in Toronto, began her volunteer efforts in earnest after she married and moved to Los Angeles 28 years ago.  When her husband suggested that she try matchmaking for baalei teshuvah —  people who are becoming observant — she attended a singles event and began connecting with people and gathering names.

“These people don’t have their parents, teachers or rebbes to match them up,” she said of why the matchmaking is crucial.

Hirsch began to work many hours per week to help Jews who were in the process of becoming or were Sabbath observant. Her clients today range in age from 18 to 75. She often begins by questioning people about what they would like in a prospective spouse; those predilections have changed over the years, she said. “The men, as always, want someone they’re attracted to and is a good person,” she explained. “But these days many men are also looking for someone who can bring in a second income, since it’s so expensive to live in Los Angeles.

“In past years, women were looking for a mensch and a provider,” she added.  “Today they’ve got a longer list; he’s got to be fit, funny, established and educated.”

Hirsch has long arranged for people to meet at her Shabbat dinner table, where she regularly hosts at least 25 guests. During the Journal interview on a Thursday, her kitchen bustled with preparations for that Friday’s Sabbath meal.

Her efforts have resulted in more than 50 marriages, three of which took place in her backyard. Hirsch also has hosted Jewish outreach events for some 40 young people at her home.

Her work with visiting the sick began when she was a young mother who would take her children to speak with the elderly in nursing homes and also at Cedars-Sinai, where she would distribute Shabbat kits to the patients.

To enhance her volunteering skills, she enrolled in the paraprofessional counseling program of the Wagner Program at American Jewish University four years ago. At Wagner, she studied subjects such as childhood development, psychology and gerontology. When it came time to do her internship through Wagner, she chose the chaplaincy program at Cedars-Sinai.

There, her studies have continued with such topics as how to support patients with disabilities or who suffer from mental illnesses.

“For me, my work is about being of service to God,” she said.

Rena Hirsch: Her Life Is ‘Being of Service to God’ Read More »

Roni Tour: His Mitzvah for Mom and Dad Turns Into Charity for the Hungry

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Seven years ago, after Roni Tour’s mother died, he decided to do something in her memory. He started cooking breakfasts at the Ateret Israel synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, where he was reciting Kaddish at the time.

“I used to cook shakshuka [an Israeli egg dish] for the men after the morning prayer, and after a while, I started buying challah and baguettes and gave to those in need,” said Tour, 62, an Israeli native who lives in Los Angeles.

Soon, he was adding other groceries to the list — frozen chickens, bananas, avocados. Word spread that Tour was distributing Shabbat meal packages out of his home. And it didn’t take long before people came knocking on his door.

What started as a one-year tzedakah project for the needy in memory of his mom ended up evolving into seven years of charity work.

“I didn’t mean to continue for so long,” Tour said. “Families in need used to arrive at my home every Thursday and Friday. Then, when my father passed away [in 2012], I continued doing it. Three years later, I decided it’s enough and it’s time to stop. After all, a mitzvah in memory of your parents you do for only one year. But then, one Friday afternoon, a woman came to me and asked for a Shabbat package. I told her I’m no longer doing it. She started crying and said she just got fired and didn’t know how she will feed her family. I told her to hang on and ran to the bakery. It was after closing time. I went through the backdoor and asked the owner for some challahs, and then rushed back home with a few challahs and gave them to her. This incident made me realize I can’t stop.”

“We have 70 families we support during the holidays and 35 families on a weekly basis.”

And so, Tour continued his efforts. With the help of friends and people in the community, he added to his holiday packages food vouchers to the Glatt Mart grocery at on Pico Boulevard. “So far, we have handed out a total of $39,000 in food vouchers,” he said. “We have 70 families we support during the holidays and 35 families on a weekly basis.”

To help fund his charity work, Tour created a nonprofit organization about five years ago called Kol Israel, so that donations received would be tax deductible.

He not only gives out groceries for Shabbat but also collects food from a kosher catering company and bread and pastries from BiBi’s Bakery and Schwartz Bakery on Pico Boulevard that he brings to the SOVA Community Food and Resource Program operated by Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.

“In 2016, I brought 16,000 pounds of food to SOVA,” he said proudly.

Tour and his American wife immigrated to the United States with their two daughters in 1982, and their third child was born here. Now divorced, Tour made a living as a painting contractor, a shoe store owner, a roofer and a mover. Eight years ago, while working on a roof, he was injured in a fall.

“It was the first night of Hanukkah and by a miracle, there was a big trash can with an elastic top which cushioned my fall. With the compensation money I received, I got into the moving business and purchased two trucks. I used to do the moving myself, driving from state to state.”

Today, Tour works as an apartment manager but otherwise devotes himself to his charity work.

“It does take time, but I enjoy doing it,” he said. “It makes me happy knowing I can help others in need. I have a sense of responsibility toward the people in the community, and it gives me great joy seeing their relief, knowing they’ll have food for Shabbat dinner.”

Roni Tour: His Mitzvah for Mom and Dad Turns Into Charity for the Hungry Read More »

Nancy Mishkin: A Cancer Survivor Leads the Way

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In 2004, Nancy Mishkin, a professional sculptor and a philanthropist, was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I was scared to death. I was certain I was going to die,” she said.

Then she saw a physician at the Tower Hematology Oncology Medical Group in Beverly Hills “who hugged me and said, ‘You’re going to live,’ ” she recalled. “That’s what I needed to hear.”

A friend asked Mishkin to join the board of a separate nonprofit entity, Tower Cancer Research Foundation. Now she’s chairwoman of its board. Over the years, she and her husband, Jack, a successful carpet manufacturer, helped the organization raise more than $30 million for research and patient-support programs. She also founded the Magnolia Council, a women’s support group that raises more than $300,000 annually for the foundation.

She encountered cancer again in 2012, when doctors diagnosed Jack with mesothelioma, giving him just four months to live.

“People don’t realize what addiction does to families.”

“He came home on a Monday and that afternoon, I knew he was dying,” she said. Taking part in clinical trials, he survived 14 months, dying at 66. “He wanted so badly to live, and we tried everything we could,” she said.

After his death, Mishkin worked with the foundation’s president, Dr. Solomon Hamburg, to establish a $1 million, three-year mesothelioma study at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. An annual golf tournament in Jack’s name has raised more than $1 million for mesothelioma research and other cutting-edge cancer studies.

Mishkin is the daughter of Polish-born concentration camp survivors who met and married after World War II in Germany, where Nancy was born. After the family moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, around 1950, her father — who had lost all of his relatives in the Holocaust — invited strangers to their Shabbat dinner every week, even though the family was struggling financially.

Mishkin’s own philanthropic efforts began in earnest in the late 1970s, when she began raising funds for asthma research. In the 1980s, she created a bronze sculpture for the Children’s Burn Foundation, which pays for the multiple surgeries required by child burn victims. She became a member of the organization’s council and, among other efforts, helped arrange for a camp experience for the children.

“They could all see that they were burned,” she said. “But by the end of the day, they had their arms around each other and were swimming together.”

Later, Mishkin created and donated a sculpture of a boy holding a shell to his ear for Sonance, a support group for the House Ear Institute. She also helped raise money for the organization to provide cochlear implants for hearing-impaired children.

In the early 2000s, Mishkin began her four-year term as chairwoman of Beit T’Shuva, which provides recovery programs for Jewish and other addicts and their relatives. “People don’t realize what addiction does to families,” she said.

As board chairwoman of the Tower Cancer Research Foundation, Mishkin helps raise funds for studies that evaluate the disease on a molecular level. The foundation helps support research on how cancer alters DNA, how to tailor treatment for individual patients, and using viruses to target cancer cells.

On another front, Mishkin serves as president of the Diadames, which raises scholarship funds for highly gifted children to attend private school.

“I can’t imagine living without giving back,” she said.

Nancy Mishkin: A Cancer Survivor Leads the Way Read More »

Jason Youdeem: Empowering the Next Generation of Jewish Leaders

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Jason Youdeem doesn’t sell himself very well, citing, you know, “a typical Persian story”: that of a first-generation American whose immigrant parents left Iran and had to work doubly hard in the United States not only to rebuild their own lives, but to give their children better ones.

Yet, within that community paradigm, Youdeem, 28, has made some unconventional choices. While many of his peers have become lawyers, doctors and real estate owners, Youdeem went to work for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he is currently the only person of Iranian descent working in the Los Angeles office.

“If all we do is keep to ourselves, then how can we write the second chapter of our immigration story?” Youdeem said.

For the past several years, Youdeem has focused his efforts on developing communal resources to help young Iranian-American Jews integrate into the leadership structures of the organized Jewish community. It’s not enough, he says, to contribute financial resources; Youdeem wants to see more Persian Jews on more Jewish boards.

“I’ve benefited a great deal from the institutions and community I’m a part of and I want others to have that opportunity as well,” Youdeem said. “And not only to participate, but to lead.”

As one of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ 2013 PresenTense fellows, he incubated the idea for a leadership development organization that would educate and train the next generation of Iranian-American Jewish leaders. A year later, he shepherded the first cohort of young Persian-Jewish leaders through the Maher Fellowship, which he founded with the backing of real estate businessman Oron Maher under the auspices of 30 Years After (Maher was featured as a Jewish Journal mensch in 2014). Designed for Iranian-American Jews ages 21 to 35, the nine-month program focuses on Israel advocacy, community leadership and public speaking, and includes a subsidized trip to the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C.

“I feel a real sense of responsibility to provide for others what has been so meaningful for me.”

Now a community staple, the Maher Fellowship is about to initiate its fifth cohort of leaders and boasts an alumni network of 74 people. Youdeem said Maher graduates have gone on to join 30 boards in the Los Angeles Jewish community and six have become Jewish communal professionals.

“The forces of American assimilation are very strong and the Persian-Jewish community is not immune to that,” Youdeem said, explaining why every area of his involvement is focused on the Jewish future.

“It sounds cliché,” he said, “but I feel a real sense of responsibility to provide for others what has been so meaningful for me.”

In addition to his work at AIPAC, where he trains young fellows to fundraise for the organization, Youdeem serves on the board of 30 Years After and sits on Federation’s Young Adult Engagement & Leadership Development Committee, which oversees Federation’s work with young adults. He also recently was accepted into the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation’s ROI Community, which connects young Jewish leaders from around the globe.

The other obvious through-line in his work is Israel advocacy, a passion born out of history and necessity.

“I can’t visit Iran,” Youdeem said. “I can’t see where my parents or grandparents grew up; I cannot visit my community. I cannot walk into their homes or touch their doors; I can’t smell the smells or walk on the streets. That part of my heritage, for now, is lost. But there is still a large part of my heritage and identity that is tied to Israel. My community really adopted Israel as our homeland.”

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