2000 Newsletter

This is our annual report in which we hope to convey the importance of your help to young people who are striving to integrate a compelling moral commitment with their own personal growth. These grantees are idealists who draw on the strength of their tradition in wanting to build a just and compassionate community. They act on their belief that they have the responsibility and the skills to change the world for the better. They are fervent in their sense that: "I am my brother and sister's keeper; how can I best serve them?"

This past year, 1999-2000, 27 individuals were the beneficiaries of your tradition of responsibility for fellow humans; these awardees received a total of $19,150. Since Amy Adina's death in 1986 the Fund has distributed $115,900 to 225 grantees!

The Fund's principal has now risen to $315,000. It remains a nonprofit, 501(c )(3) tax exempt corporation; the Schulman family covers all administrative costs so 100% of each gift is added to the capital base. This base continues to grow thanks to contributions from so many of you.

For the first time this past year, grants from interest on the capital base averaged over $700. This may not seem like a very large sum, but the words of the grantees attest to the important validation that the AASMF gives to individuals who are then able to actualize their passion to participate in a social justice cause of their own choosing. We attach excerpts from correspondence with some of this year's grantees. We would be pleased to provide the complete reports from these and the other recipients.

Finally, we invite you to visit and bookmark our web site which contains full information on the founding and mission of the Fund, a Bio of Amy Adina, financial matters, a sampling of previous awardees' activities, a listing of annual lecturers, and an application. We do appreciate comments and suggestions, such as links to other sites. Please bookmark our web site and our e-mail address.

It's hard to believe that 3 years have gone by since I received your generous grant that allowed me to volunteer at Sikkuy (Assoc. for the Advancement of Equal Opportunity in Israel.) The Citizen's Guide, (to increase public awareness of civic rights), one of the projects I contributed to, is in a second edition in 4 languages…

In 1998 I returned to Colorado and finished my Master's… I then accepted a volunteer position with the International Foundation for Education and Self Help (IFESH) in Benin, West Africa managing a Learning Resource Center in a rural village…. During the summer of 1999, in the brief time between my volunteer position in the Resource Center and a salaried position at IFESH as part of their Primary Evaluation Teacher Training Project, I worked as a facilitator for Building Bridges for Peace. This is a Colorado based summer camp experience for Israeli and Palestinian teens. Through workshops and activities, these young women learn intentional communication techniques. It is a powerful and intense experience and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to their program…

JESSE L. grew up and attended Jewish Day School and Hebrew High School in L.A., CA. She graduated from Tufts where she participated in a year long intensive seminar on the topic, "Exodus and Exile: Refugees, Migrants, and Global Security." Her resume also notes a residency in the Tufts Muslim Unit Housing, and one year as chair of the Tufts Community Union Judiciary, where she led weekly meetings and served as a jury member in disciplinary hearings. Jesse is a certified, trained mediator. She writes:

During my senior year I worked as an intern at Physicians for Human Rights (in the U.S.) My duties as assistant to the Missions Coordinator included researching and compiling background information on Kosovo and Nigeria to which our staff and volunteers were sent, planning the mission logistics, and general administrative tasks.

After graduation she completed an intensive program in Hebrew and Jewish and Israeli history at the Jewish Students Graduate Studies Program in Arad, Israel. She has now been accepted to spend a year with Melitz, a non-partisan, mainstream organization committed to promoting pluralism and democracy via a range of educational activities.

Jesse will be involved in the Palestinian-Israeli Encounters project - Theatre in Education - in partnership with the Palestinian Center for Regional Studies. She will also devise educational materials for dialogue and facilitator training programs.

I anticipate that my experience with Melitz will deepen my connection to Israel and social justice. Once I return to America I plan to continue to support and organize opportunities for dialogues between Israelis and Palestinians abroad and in Israel…

Thank you for your generous grant. It will help. As you know, I still need to raise most of the balance (expenses for the year.) I plan to proceed with my position at Melitz even though full funding is not yet assured. If necessary, I shall supplement my salary with a second job. (Do you know anybody {in Israel} who needs a good waitress to work nights?) Again, thank you very much for your grant and for your confidence in me.

I plan to specialize in gynecology and thus will be caring for women of all backgrounds in my clinic. I would like to receive a grant from the Fund in order to study spoken Palestinian Arabic in an intensive Berlitz course. Caring for someone's health in general, and a woman's reproductive function in particular, requires profound communication with patients, both as a physician in explaining medical conditions and as a woman in identifying with those I care for. It is very important that I be able to communicate with my patients beyond limited Arabic phrases. Many male Jerusalem Arabs speak Hebrew, women have much less exposure to Hebrew…

I will also be working on a joint program run by the Frankl School (part of the Conservative Movement school system) and a school in Beit Hanina, a nearby Arab neighborhood. Children from the same grade in both schools work together on a project based on a specific theme. In the past, for example, a theme was rain, and the children talked about the importance of rain in their respective cultures and produced a play together. The proposed theme for the next session is bread. One problem is that not all of the Beit Hanina students speak Hebrew, and the Jewish students do not speak Arabic. There is a great need for staff conversant in both languages.

Beth grew up in Tampa, and was a magna cum laude graduate from Harvard in June 1999 majoring in Biochemical Sciences. She was elected to the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel Steering Committee serving as its Annual Events Chair, coordinating the Harvard community's observance of the Jewish holidays with social and religious programming. In the summer of 1997 she was a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel; in addition to her medical studies she works part-time in the lab of the 1999 recipient of the Israel Prize for Science.

The grant from the Amy Adina Fund will certainly help me a great deal towards funding my studies and I appreciate it very much. But the remaining costs of my Arabic lessons and the expenses involved with volunteering will be difficult for me to make up from personal funds because my schoolwork is so demanding that I work a limited number of hours in the lab during the school year. I have been in touch with several foundations but I have not been successful because they fund organizations, not individuals. I would respectfully request that the Board consider whether they could increase my grant. I hope this does not appear unappreciative of the support you have already offered me, but all year I have looked forward to finally being able to study Arabic in an organized and rigorous fashion - and these coming months after my exams are over and before school begins again are my best opportunity to do so… Thank you for your help and consideration.

Thank you for your generous donation to our group. Until this year, the Hillel Alternative Spring Break group at the U. of Michigan was part of a larger community service organization. This year, due to restructuring, Hillel was no longer included in this organization and we were forced to prepare for the trip without much outside assistance. Yet we were able to raise enough money to have a wonderful trip (to the Lieberman Geriatric Center in Skokie, IL) thanks in large part to your contribution. Thank you so much for your continued investment in students and allowing us the opportunity to do wonderful things.

DAFNA H. has just finished her third summer in Otisfield, Maine as a counselor/sports teacher/staff member at the Seeds of Peace International Camp for Conflict Resolution. (See "The Jerusalem Report" article March 13, 2000 on Seeds of Peace.)

The kids I worked with never ceased to challenge, surprise and delight me. Over 300 teenagers from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, Morocco, Qatar arrived with hostilities and prejudices and departed with more open attitudes and new friends.… I am aware that bringing Jews and Arabs to an idyllic summer camp is only a beginning, a symbolic gesture of the possibilities for peace.

Unfortunately, the modest stipend provided (by NIF) will not cover projected expenses… I am eager to work on a deeper, more long-term basis to help cultivate an ethos of social justice. I will be working with the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development in Herzliyah, organizing a business-women's forum, and volunteering with MANAR, a women's educational and community center in Yaffa, teaching computer literacy to adult women from working class backgrounds, both Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Israeli, and to foreign workers. I want to help build a stronger Israel, enhancing its democratic tendencies, the status of Israel's Arab citizens, and the situation of women, minorities, and immigrants…

Dafna graduated from Harvard in June 2000. Her senior thesis, "Peace with Justice, Peace with Care: Palestinian and Israeli Women Negotiate Peacemaking Models" earned highest honors and was published by the Kennedy School of Government as a working paper in its Women and Public Policy Program. She was a writer and news editor of "The Harvard Crimson," Chair of the Social Action Committee of Harvard Hillel, an active member of the Radcliffe Ultimate Frisbee Team, a Hebrew School Teacher of 4th and 5th graders,and a volunteer teacher of conflict resolution, violence awareness and alcohol and gender issues in South Boston with Peace Games, Inc.

GABRIELLE K. is pursuing her social vision, "wrestling a tradition I both embrace and struggle with" as a playwright, performer, and poet. Pursuing a Master of Arts at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a certificate in Women's Studies from Temple University, she has already published her first book, works with Theatre Ariel in Philadelphia, and traveled to Israel this summer to study theatre troupes there. The AASMF grant helped finance her trip during which time she worked on creating a new performance piece based on the biblical Sarah and Hagar.

I read this text as a complex relationship between two women trying to survive in a patriarchal society which pits them against each other for status and security… just as the struggles between Israeli and Palestinian today. I have created Sarah and Hagar as two contemporary women. I need to engage with these women…to meet with organizations that are forging dialogue, to implement what I learn into the dialogue in my play. … I intend to take the play to synagogues and schools, to share it with teenagers and adults, Jews and non-Jews. I want…to ask vital questions about the legacy of our sacred texts, to examine feminist concerns using texts that are often dismissed because of their patriarchal perspectives.

ALEX S.-B. has finished his second year as a student at Northeastern University's School of Law; he is a member of the student organization's National Lawyers Guild. His public-service legal internship experiences included work with the Service Employees International Union, Local 509, the Women's Bar Foundation, and the Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services.

I conducted intake interviews with battered women seeking pro-bono and reduced-fee legal representation in divorce, child support, custody and restraining order proceedings…represented clients in disability benefits hearings…provided legal assistance to a local union representing human service workers…wrote Unfair Labor Practice complaints…

For Israel to become and remain a democratic nation, to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians and its neighbors, it must guarantee the religious and civil rights of all its citizens and allow the full spectrum of Jewish belief and practice to flourish and thrive… My internship with IRAC will promote and support their vital work for religious freedom and civil rights...

I will work on developing a network of Attorneys for Religious Freedom. This project will help organize a critical constituency around these vital issues of religious freedom and pluralism facing Israeli society…

SARAH W., currently a doctoral student in medical anthropology at Emory University, requested a grant for an internship with the Free Clinic run by (PHR) Physicians for Human Rights in Tel Aviv. PHR is an organization of health professionals, scientists and concerned citizens that uses the knowledge and skills of the medical and forensic sciences to investigate and prevent violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

For my dissertation research I plan to conduct an ethnographic study of the community of foreign workers in Tel Aviv, focusing specifically on the difficulties these individuals and families face in obtaining adequate health care. In order to lay a solid foundation for this study, I am seeking resources to support myself while at the Free Clinic. The director has enthusiastically agreed to accept me as an intern. Due to the organization's severe budget constraints, however, she has directed me to seek external funding support for this internship. I am skilled at writing grant proposals, newspaper and magazine articles, project reports of various types. I believe I can contribute a great deal to PHR while preparing for my dissertation research.

Sarah graduated from Case Western Reserve (CWRU) in 1996 where she was a presidential scholar, editor-in-chief of the CWRU student newspaper, national merit scholar, and Rhodes Scholar nominee. After graduation she was the Raoul Wallenberg Scholar at Hebrew University, and served as a Parliamentary Assistant for Naomi Chazan, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset. Sarah's previous work has included positions as a coordinator of special projects for the World Health Organization Center for Nursing and Midwifery, and a research consultant with the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA and Baku, Azerbaijan.

By funding my internship at PHR the Schulman Fund will simultaneously offer direct support to an outstanding Israeli social change non-governmental organization and support the early stages of a meaningful and substantive dissertation research project…

This has been the worst year for forest fires in the U.S in many decades; RAQUEL S. completed one semester at Israel's Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (AIES) and then returned to the U.S. as a fire fighter. Excerpts from some of her e-mails:

June 25th: I have been working on the Pike Hotshot Forest Fire-Fighting crew. We were on the Los Alamos fire in New Mexico since June 6th. We just got back; there is no e-mail nor phones at fire camp for crews to use… I have only been back in the USA for a month… I am here to make some money. I do not know if I will stay on the Hotshots. I am hoping to be transferred to a less dangerous crew - like trails crew or an engine crew - but Hotshots get paid the most, next to smoke jumpers… But with your help (the Fund's grant) I won't feel I have to be on the front lines of the forest fires. It's like a G-d send that you can offer me some help paying the Arava (Institute for Environmental Studies) the back tuition that I owe.

June 26th: Thank you for your good wishes of safety, health, and strength…. Seeing the forest just burn away within minutes, is a humbling experience. I am pretty sure this will be my last fire season since I want to return to Israel in November and continue with my studies. You don't know how much your granting me this funding helps me out. Thank you for giving me a brighter today and tomorrow.

August 11th: On R&R for 2 days in between fires. It's been a non-stop summer. Hopefully the fires will burn out by the time I return to Israel for the Fall Semester. Thank you again. Take care. Love life.

Raquel graduated from the U. of Maryland, then worked as a seasonal park ranger supervising and coordinating volunteer canal repair projects including emergency flood preparation, and building flood barricades. For three summers she worked for the U.S. Forest Service and was a member of the Forest Service's Sierra Hot Shots which included fighting fires in Florida swamp terrain, in high timber terrain in Washington, Montana, Oregon, and in desert terrain in CA. She completed required training courses with over 1,000 hours of fire suppression duties including line construction, burnout, mop up, and various firing methods.

Raquel applied for help in funding her studies at the unique year-long program for international students at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. Its bulletin states "AIES serves as a regional center for conservation and environmental protection activities. Courses are designed for students planning to pursue careers as environ-mental professionals." Who would be better qualified than Raquel?

…As my Thanksgiving weekend is ending, I am taking a moment to review in my mind to whom I must be thankful. I have not forgotten my experience in Israel or your generous scholarship which allowed me to make the trip with Habonim Dror… (It) was an incredible experience where I learned a lot, and I would like to warmly thank you for helping make the trip possible.