Page 28 THE JEWISH GEORGIAN <strong>January</strong>-<strong>February</strong> <strong>2012</strong>
<strong>January</strong>-<strong>February</strong> <strong>2012</strong> THE JEWISH GEORGIAN Page 29 <strong>Jewish</strong> THE <strong>Georgian</strong> Fidelity Bank partners with JNF as collection point for Blue Boxes By Mordecai Zalman In many of the homes and communities in which we grew up, that little <strong>Jewish</strong> National Fund (JNF) Blue Box, or pushke as it was referred to with its Yiddish descriptive name, was ubiquitous. From 1901 with the founding of Karene Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL), which, in this country, goes under the JNF banner, up until the 1948 founding of the State of Israel, the Blue Box was a symbol of our dream and a vehicle to financially help in acquiring land and making improvements for the future. From 1948 forward its purpose changed from a way to support a dream to a method of taking part in making that dream a reality. According to the KKL website, “Shortly after the founding of the organization, Haim Kleinman, a bank clerk from Nadvorna, Galicia, placed a box in his office and sent off a letter to Die Welt, By Ron Feinberg <strong>The</strong> world was exploding around George Stern when his father picked him up and carried him down to the basement of their apartment complex. He was a child, only three years old, and the German war machine was on the march. It was 1940. <strong>The</strong> Nazis were rolling into Belgium, bombing Brussels, where he and his family lived, chewing up the countryside and destroying anyone and anything that stood in the path of the Third Reich and its efforts to take control of Europe. “I remember the noise, the explosions and my father picking me up,” Stern says. He also remembers what happened a few hours later, still early in the morning, when he heard someone knocking at the door. “It was the milkman,” Stern says, a note of amazement still echoing in his voice when he recently recalled his very up-close the Zionist newspaper in Vienna,” in which he notified the paper as follows: “In keeping with the saying, ‘bit and bitty fill the kitty’ and following the Congress resolution on KKL’s founding, I put together an ‘Erez Israel box’, stuck the w o r d s ‘National Fund’ on it and placed it in a prominent spot in my office. <strong>The</strong> results, given the extent of the experiment so far, have been astonishing. I suggest that likeminded people, and particularly all Zionist officials, collect contributions to KKL in this way.” A recurring challenge that has faced JNF is how to make it convenient for its <strong>The</strong> pushke lives George Stern and personal introduction to World War II. Years later he asked his parents why the worker was willing to risk his life to deliver milk. “He was making a statement,” his mother told him, that even in war “life goes supporters to deliver the change that is collected in these Blue Boxes to the offices of the organization. Now, the JNF Atlanta office has found an exciting and innovative new way to collect these coins. Under the enthusiastic leadership of board member Bruce Reisman, a unique arrangement has been made with Atlanta’s Fidelity Bank, Member FDIC, to serve as a deposit destination to have these monies placed in JNF’s checking account. H. Palmer Procter, Jr., Fidelity Bank president, and Bruce Reisman, JNF board member As an accommodation and one of its services to the general public, Fidelity Bank offers coin-counting machines in See BLUE BOXES, page 31 Holocaust survivor’s story filled with drama, hope on.” Stern will be sharing his life’s story at this year’s Yom HaShoah Service of Remembrance, April 22 at Greenwood Cemetery – the early years in Belgium with his family, the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the family’s detention as “enemy aliens” at a camp in France, and their harrowing journey through Spain and Portugal, then on to Cuba and Freedom in the United States. It’s a story laced with danger, fear and joy, rescue and survival. A tale that will also include the difficult and dangerous work of righteous gentiles and other heroes of the Holocaust. It’s been nearly seven decades since the monstrous work of the Nazis was fully revealed to the World. Today, the bleak days of World War II are a fading memory See SURVIVOR, page 31 A new director, a continued direction By: Marvin Botnick Gail Luxenberg To be a good cook, turn out memorable creations, and produce a meaningful experience, a person needs the correct ingredients of the finest quality. <strong>The</strong> end result is the culmination of the efforts of many different groups and conditions that meld together, in concert and independently, to fashion the product. So it is with building a community. For many reasons – historical origins of the <strong>Jewish</strong> people as a nation, forced separation from the greater non-<strong>Jewish</strong> population requiring mutual support, religious imperatives requiring communal structure, etc. – there has been and is an understanding of the need for mutuality of efforts in certain areas of support, help, and services. <strong>The</strong>re is, in fact, an understanding of the need and benefit in having certain unique organizations meet particular needs for the total. One such institution is the Marcus <strong>Jewish</strong> Community Center of Atlanta. From its beginning in 1904 as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, when the <strong>Jewish</strong> population of Atlanta was about 2,000, the organization has grown and changed to meet the demands of an estimated <strong>Jewish</strong> population in 2006 of 120,000 in Metropolitan Atlanta. In addition, many of its non-<strong>Jewish</strong>-based services have gained such an outstanding reputation that these are sought out and used by a large number of the general popula- See DIRECTOR, page 31