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Thursday September 20, 2007

Combating malaria, dysentery are ‘Jewish issues,’ too

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

At the opening party for the new American Jewish World Service office in San Francisco, so many people crammed through the front door that the temperature in the modestly sized suite soon approximated that of the Indian or African locales where the AJWS does its work.

Amid the throng, AJWS Executive Director Ruth Messinger, outfitted in a bright, bubblegum-pink sweater, made an easy target for well-wishers. Newly installed Western Region Executive Director Rabbi Lee Bycel, a head taller than most in the room, stood out as well.

A longtime former pulpit rabbi who got his start in the 1970s at San Rafael’s Rodef Sholom, Bycel quieted the noshing, kibitzing crowd with a few somber words about the AJWS’ mission of disaster relief and providing grants and aid to the world’s neediest populations.

“This is the time of year we read, ‘Who shall live and who shall die,’” he said at the Tuesday, Sept. 18 event.

“But I think it’s more important to focus on how shall we live and how shall we die. People are still dying of malaria, dysentery and hunger and we have the means to alleviate all of these. People may ask, ‘Is malaria a Jewish issue?’ Can you tell me a more Jewish issue?”

The new San Francisco digs supplant a two-person AJWS office in El Cerrito. About a half a dozen staffers and a handful of interns will now make up the organization’s West Coast home.

Although Messinger has no plans to “open an office in every city,” expanding in the West — and in the Bay Area in particular — was a logical move.

The AJWS’ mission always resonated with the San Franciscans. “Whenever I came out here, there were always so many people saying, ‘I want to work with you,’” she recalled.

“When we sat down and picked where to expand to a different level of presence, this was the logical place.” Bycel also will travel to Los Angeles and San Diego at least once a month.

In the past decade, AJWS’ yearly budget has increased 15-fold to roughly $30 million. Messinger hopes that the addition of Bycel — a former adviser to the International Medical Corps — will augment fundraising for the organization’s many causes.

The AJWS is perhaps best known for its advocacy on behalf of refugees from Darfur. Indeed, Messinger did not let the night pass without mentioning the ongoing genocide. Jews “cannot duck this responsibility,” she said. “We can’t let this continue. We know better than anyone else the danger of silence.”

Also tying in to a High Holy Days theme, Messinger noted that on Yom Kippur Jews should atone not only for the sins of commission but those of omission.

She concluded the serious portion of the evening by quoting Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whom she knew because her mother worked for him. “In regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty,” she quoted. “All are responsible.”

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