Category: Jewish Voice

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From a President’s Perspective

[flipbook pdf=”https:/jhsdelaware.org/Jewish%20Voice/19840601e.pdf”]

We are happy to share with you the Jewish Voice issue from June 1, 1984. It’s a celebration of 50 years of the Jewish Federation of Delaware.  The following article by Leo Zeftel, then president of the JFD, gives a good overview of the accomplishments of the Jewish Federation of Delaware.

From A President’s Perspective

By LEO ZEFTEL, President
Jewish Federation of Delaware

1984 marks a milestone in the history of our Jewish Federation. It is a time not only to reflect on the past but also to look to the future. Significant progress has been achieved in our Jewish community over these past five decades. We have not only grown in size, but as a community have responded to and been responsible for the dynamic growth of local services.

At the same time, we have experienced some of the most traumatic times in the continuum of our Jewish people. We witnessed the destruction of one third of world Jewry in the most devastating period of our long history.

We were privileged to be a part of the rebirth of the Jewish nation and the subsequent emergence of Israel as a sovereign, democratic State that became a haven for thousands of our fellow Jews from lands of hate and oppression. 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 — these were the years that Israel’s very physical existence was at stake and she survived as a viable, dynamic state. We were all part of this historical development in terms of our financial and moral support for Israel. Zionism became a household word. Israel’s many achievements have given all of us a deep sense of pride and we must and shall continue to strengthen the ties between us so that Israel will prosper and endure.

Here in our own Jewish community of Delaware, we witnessed the growth of our social service network of services made possible by the commitment and leadership of hundreds of devoted, dedicated men and women. We have reached an era when the donor and recipient are one. All of us are directly touched by the human services provided by our agencies. It was the Federation which evolved as the moving, dynamic force in the financial support, coordination and planning for total community needs – locally, nationally and overseas.

We can all be proud of what has been done. We are a richer community for it. But, as we look ahead in the turbulent 80s, we are confronted with many difficult and challenging problems and issues.

We are witnessing a growing erosion of Jewish family life, a weakening of our Jewish roots and identity, growing concerns in the areas of community relations and Jewish education. We still face too much apathy on the part of a large segment of our Jewish community.

Some specific areas of concern are services that will be required for the increasingly growing elderly of our community. Twenty percent of our Jewish population are now 65 or older compared to a national norm of 14 percent. Increased availability of camp and similar recreational programs for both youth and adults must be provided. Community services now available primarily in the Wilmington area must be extended to other areas in the state. Educational programs for all ages must be strengthened. Single parents and young adults will require programs specific to their needs.

It seems to me the challenge our community faces is to be responsive to these growing and continuing needs in a thoughtful, creative and qualitative manner. There are too many critical issues in Jewish life to engage in “business as usual.” We cannot afford to respond to the evolving needs with the archaic and “comfortable” techniques of the past.

With the quality of leadership we currently have, and with the involvement of an even greater segment of our community, we can indeed impact on these issues in greater measure.

We can look with pride to the fact that in the last few years we have significantly turned our campaign around and are now moving in a positive, upward direction. We have the expertise and capacity to do even better both by direct fund raising and our newly revitalized endowment program.

Our tasks are not just for the few — we need and look to all of you if we are to have a broadened, democratic base of participation. We are a voluntary organization and our strength is the volunteer – the volunteer can and should be you!

As we move into the next 50 years of our Federation let us do so with renewed dedication and commitment to our biblical mandate of tzedakah – passion and concern for our fellow Jews. This is what we are all about.

About The Cover

The cover photo, a timeless depiction of new immigrants, has been reproduced from a 1957 United Jewish Appeal Poster. 1957 represents one of the high points of the exodus of Jewish refugees from lands of oppression, and also represents the mid-point of the 50-year history of our own Jewish community.

The quote concerning tzedakah, has been excerpted from Harry Blueston’s “A Historical Review Of A Century of Jewish Philanthropy,” originally found in Philip Birnbaum’s Book Of Jewish Concepts.

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lsrael proves memorable for Balick

GOLF
Tom Tomashek

Charlotte Kaufman Balick
Charlotte Kaufman Balick was inducted into the Delaware Sports Museum Hall of Fame in 1999. Click on the picture to learn about her remarkable career.

The setting was perfect for Charlotte Balick’s final night in Israel.

On a spacious lawn surrounding a well-lighted pool, the U.S. women’s golf team was being wined, dined and entertained after a victory in the Maccabiah Games.

“It was gorgeous, but all of a sudden there was a big flash and an explosion,” Balick said shaking her head. “Some people at the table stood up, some stayed sitting, and others hit the ground.

“Me?” she repeated the question. “I went down.”

The scare was nothing more than fireworks, which went off a few seconds earlier than planned. For Balick, the incident is humorous now, but was no laughing matter at the time.

Tension was a constant during this month’s Maccabiah Games, the Jewish world’s Olympics. So was security, which was increased after an early incident of terrorism.

“We didn’t go a lot of places we went the last time I was here,” Balick said, looking back to her 1981 Maccabiah experience. “There was security everywhere. During the opening ceremony they even put [security] people in our uniform. “The security was great and you were glad because you figured if they [terrorists] were going to do anything, it sure was going to be us because that’s the kind of headlines they want.”

The golf course was a reasonable distance from the major areas of strife, so the American women’s golf team quickly slipped into a competitive mode and walked away with the team championship.

Team USA led by 10 after the first round with Balick’s 75 good for a share of the first-round individual lead. The six-time Delaware Women’s Amateur champion. and two-time Women’s Senior winner gradually slid off the individual pace, but helped the U.S. improve its lead 10 to 21 to 31 and 44 strokes in the final three rounds.

“The opening ceremony is a very moving experience. Just like the regular Olympics,” Balick said. “There were 55,000 people cheering you, and everybody likes to be cheered.

“But once the tournament began, everybody was extremely serious about the competition,” Balick said. “We were the first [women’s] team to win the gold medal.”

The conditions were sunny and hot with temperatures ranging from 90 to 105 each day. Every bag included 14 clubs and plenty of water.

“The heat was so intense, it did something to you right away,” Balick said. “You drank water every hole, whether you wanted to or not, and I wore· a hat.”

Balick likes Israel’s only course, set in the middle of the desert. She described the layout as interesting in design and because of the ancient Roman columns scattered along the perimeter.

The course was different from most American courses Balick has played, with the grass on the fairways and greens being extremely coarse. There is no out-of-bounds.

“I figure the out-of-bounds was Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Mediterranean,” Balick said.

The course’s condition was not as good as Balick remembered in 1981, but she wasn’t complaining.

“I don’t like to knock any golf course, especially when you’re a guest,” Balick said. “And besides, Israel is putting its money into defense and feeding the people.”

Balick’s two Maccabiah Games are among the high points of her brilliant amateur career. The competition was great, the overall experiences even greater.

But the 1989 Maccabiah Games were probably last for Wilmington and Brandywine Country Club golfer.

“Everybody is younger. I really felt like I didn’t fit in,” Balick said. “I felt like I was the mother.”

Originally published in The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware,  Sunday, July 30, 1989 – Page 28

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Bar Mitzvah Maccabiah Scheduled

Bar Mitzvah Maccabiah Scheduled

Wilmington Woman To Compete In Golf

Jewish Voice, February 10, 1989, p. 22

New York — Since 1932, the Maccabiah Games have been the pinnacle of Jewish sporting achievement. Every four years, Jewish athletes from the four corners of the world gather together in Israel to compete for sporting honors in events as diverse as track and field, basketball, water polo, football and gymnastics, to name but a few. Standards are high and the competition intense in what has become known as the “Jewish Olympics.”

The 13th World Maccabiah Games are scheduled for July 3 through July 13 in Israel. More than 4,000 world-class athletes from 38 countries are expected to participate in the games. The United States will field a delegation of more than 50 athletes, coaches and trainers, including Charlotte Balick from Wilmington who will compete in golf. The Maccabiah Games are the third largest international competition and are recognized by the International Olympic Committee.

In 1989, the Maccabiah will celebrate its Bar Mitzvah —the 13th Maccabiah Games. “The ‘coming of age’ in Jewish tradition is a time of great significance, a time to strengthen ties and celebrate the continuity of a people,” according to a spokesman at the Maccabi World Union at JWB In New York. As part of the Maccabiah festivities, the 13th Maccabiah Games Organizing Committee has invited youth from all over the world, along with their families in parallel programs to join its celebration of the 13th Maccabiah.

The participants will take part in a Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremony at the Western Wall with youth from all over the world. They will join in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Maccabiah Games, travel all around Israel, stay with an Israeli family and much more.

The Organizing Committee of the 13th Maccabiah Games is offering two programs, both specifically designed for 12-14 year olds and their families. The programs will be organized according to age groups and no particular religious background is needed.

Program A includes an all-inclusive tour of Israel. Traveling as a group, the tour is fully structured from the first day, and specially designed to incorporate parent participation. The program is supervised by experienced leaders.

Program B, “your footsteps in the Maccabiah,” is specially designed for parents who want to make their own holiday arrangements in Israel while giving their children a chance to take part in the excitement of the 13th Maccabiah and the thrill of the Bar Mitzvah celebrations. It allows the kids to join in the fun with youngsters from all over the world at six special events, while families relax and enjoy the break. Alternatively; parents can join selected events and enjoy them as a family.

For more information and registration contact: Kenes Tours USA/13th Maccabia, 271 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016; telephone (212)986-8300 or (800)356- 3809, or contact On Elan, Maccabi World Union at JWB, 15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010, (212)532-4949.

 

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Importance of·the Garden Of The Righteous

Human life is sacred to all who believe in God, the source of all that is. Even a secular humanist, with perhaps no recognition of the divine, considers life a value to be safeguarded. Violation of one human life, or millions, by individuals, groups or governments affects us all. The garden of the righteous, conceived and implemented by the caring and tender remembrance of Helena Wind Preston, of happy memory, during the celebration of Israel Expo, is a tribute to those whose lives were witnesses to faith, tradition, brotherhood and inalienable rights. The efforts to make this memorial perpetual in honor of those who suffered from man’s inhumanity to man and to those who tried to help stem the tide of such defamation deserves support from every thinking and concerned individual.

As a member of the Catholic Community in the Wilmington area, I salute those who are honored and those who keep our consciousness raised by making this monument as permanent as possible.

May those whose lives we remember help us to be better neighbors to one another and witnesses to world reconciliation, peace and harmony.

Rev. Msgr. Paul J. Schierse,
Pastor
St. Joseph’s on the Brandywine

 

This year we celebrated the 13th anniversary of the Center in our building on Garden of Eden Road. During that 13-year period, we have provided our community with many memorable programs and events, all of which have come to symbolize the importance of the Jewish Community Center in our community.

Our dedication of the Memorial to the “Righteous Gentiles” makes another proud moment in our JCC’s history. This memorial garden, singularly unique as the only memorial of its kind in the United States, will in the future become a focal point for educating our members­hip and the larger community about the Holocaust. We are proud to present it to the community.

Dr. Marvin Shepard President
Jewish Community Center

The Garden of The Righteous is an important reminder of and inspiration for one’s truly living their religious principles. It speaks to the courage and action that an individual’s faith can inspire. The garden challenges each of us in today’s world to take a hard look at how we act upon our religious values especially in the way we relate to our fellow human kind. Out of the horrors of the Holocaust are important learnings such as these of which we must never lose sight.

Helen F. Foss
Executive Director
National Conference of Christians and Jews

 Our Jewish community should feel proud and honored to have created the first Garden of Righteous in the United States. The perpetuation of the memory of what happened to our people during the Holocaust is essential — it is the world’s insurance that such inhumanity to man will never be repeated.

We also have another sacred obligation: to remember the humanitarian efforts of the righteous Christians. These individuals risked their lives, and the security of their families, to save their Jewish countrymen. When we teach our children the lessons of the Holocaust, let us also teach them about bravery, goodness and righteousness as exemplified in the deeds of the Righteous Christians. Come to this ceremony, and bring your children, to remember the people whose concern for fellow human beings stood out as a beacon of hope in an otherwise mad, uncaring world.

Leo Zeftel
President Jewish Federation
Of Delaware

 

In A Ballad of Trees and the Master, Sidney Lanier wrote:

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little gray leaves were kind to Him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Perhaps, when we are “forspent” with the evil in the world within us and around us, we can find comfort and support in this garden—in its own right and in the memory of those to whom it is dedicated.

Dr. George F. Cora
Executive Director
Delmarva Ecumenical Agency

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Community Center Dedicates Garden Honoring Righteous Christians Who Saved Jewish Lives During Nazi Holocaust

In honor of the Righteous Gentiles who at the risk of their own lives and the lives of their families, saved Jews during the Nazi Holocaust (1933-1945).

Please join us in dedicating The Garden of the Righteous Gentiles on Sunday, December 11, 1983 at 2:30 P.M.

at the Jewish Community Center

101 Garden of Eden Road

Wilmington, Delaware 19803

“These were the Righteous in their Generation.”

Genesis 6:9

Memorial Is Dedicated

Sunday, Dec. 11, 1983, is a historic day for Delaware — at once a solemn and a happy day. At 2:30 p.m. begins the ceremony formally dedicating Wilmington’s Garden of the Righteous Gentiles. The Garden is the first monument in the United States to honor Christians who, at the risk of their lives and the lives of their families, saved Jews from the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.

On Nov. 16, 1981, a crowd gathered on the lawn in front of the Jewish Community Center to witness a tree-planting ceremony by Holocaust survivors residing in Delaware. Those trees, each of which honors specific Christians, were the beginning of the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles.

Now, two years later, permanent bronze plaques replace the temporary wooden markers which had been unveiled by survivors or their representatives at the tree-planting ceremony. And a formal landscaped entrance greets visitors to the Garden. Raised lettering on a cement background proclaims:

THIS GARDEN HONORS RIGHTEOUS GENTILES WHO SAVED JEWISH LIVES DURING THE NAZI HOLOCAUST 1933-1945

Nine of the Christians whom we honor in our Garden saved Jews who later came to live in Delaware. In another case, the survivor’s daughter lives in Delaware. The names of two Righteous Gentiles, unknown by the survivors they saved, are honored with a tree dedicated to The Unknown Righteous Gentile.

One Christian couple, honored in our Garden for their heroic efforts in Holland, now reside in Delaware.

In still another case, a Christian is honored by a Delawarean whose fellow townspeople in White Russia were saved.

One tree honors Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved an estimated 100,000 Hungarian Jews. And one tree honors the people of Denmark, who saved most of their country’s Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis.

The Christians we honor here, in this Garden that will grow and blossom in our front yard for as long as life and freedom exist on this corner of the globe, are truly among the heroes of human history.

By risking their lives to save Jews from death during the Nazi Holocaust, they rose up to proclaim with their actions that love and decency could flourish amidst the most unthinkable barbarism the world has ever known.

On the following pages, we proudly present their stories in print for the first time.

Six Million of our brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, went to their deaths because they were Jews, and the world stood silent. We, the Jewish community of Delaware, hereby dedicate this garden to a few of the Righteous Gentiles who chose to act rather than to remain silent. We honor these brave souls for all time.