Charity begins at home

Posted Wednesday, November 26, 2008 9:40 pm

New group will help victims of financial crisis

By Yaffi Spodek

Issue of Nov. 28, 2008 / 1 Kislev 5769

“Who would have imagined that in the affluent Five Towns, which have given so much money to causes outside the community, we are really now faced with ‘aniyei ircha,’” wondered Rabbi Hershel Billet of the Young Israel of Woodmere.

Local families are in financial distress due to the economic downturn. Principals of local schools report that significant numbers of parents have lost their jobs and can’t pay tuition.

“For the first time ever, some yeshivas are behind in paying salaries to rebbeim,” warned Dovid Friedman of Lawrence.

He was the co-chair, with Sam Bergman, of a group of lay leaders from Lawrence and Far Rockaway who planned to help unemployed breadwinners. Unbeknownst to them, a parallel effort was underway in Woodmere. The two groups have now pooled their resources into what will be known as the Eliezer Project.

“We realized that for us to proceed on our own would be redundant,” said Bergman.

“Our goal was to help people who lost their jobs [to] deal with collateral issues with lack of employment, mortgage refinancing, foreclosure issues, tuition challenges and social matters within the family,” said Friedman.“After speaking to professionals in the field, they told me that the focus should be jobs, jobs, jobs and that there are more out there than we can imagine.”

That was the beginning of the short-lived Project LIFT –– Livelihood Initiative for the Five Towns.

Both men are now on the eight-member steering committee of the expanded group that is to establish a board of directors incorporating members of both efforts.

The Eliezer Project — started by David Pollack of Woodmere in memory of his late father — has been in formation within the Young Israel of Woodmere for close to a year, and was conceived even before the current financial crisis. It is loosely modeled on Project Ezra, an organization in Teaneck, NJ.

“It started before the economic downturn, but obviously with the recent situation in our economy, we have stepped up our efforts and broadened our scope,” Pollack explained.

The Eliezer Project intends to “help individuals and families in employment efforts, credit counseling, budget management, asset re-allocation, and assist them as necessary with the psychological consequences of a new economic reality,” Pollack said.

The Eliezer Project began operating about a month ago out of an office on Central Avenue. Jerry Mann, a onetime executive director of HAFTR, now leads a staff of three, and plans to recruit professionals in various fields to volunteer their time as advisors to the organization’s clients.

“The long term goal is to get these people back on their feet and be functional families and act and behave as they did in the past,” Mann told The Jewish Star. “If necessary, we try to give them some money also to keep them going until they find a job.”

People in need of assistance are required to fill out an application and submit three references, one personal and two business-related. Once accepted as clients, they meet with Ellen Aronovitz, the employment director, and with Esthy Hersch, the financial manager, to discuss options and services that would be most useful to them.

“I am here to help them in any way I can to find employment, with career counseling, writing and revising resumes, and contacting employers,” explained Aronovitz, a retired teacher who previously worked as an executive recruiter. “We put the call out to people in the community who have contacts in different firms, law, insurance, accounting, etc., and ask them for mentoring and networking help.”

As part of a larger network of employment resources a web site for The Eliezer Project will soon go live to help job seekers view available positions.

A major component of the project’s networking efforts are a close collaboration with groups that already operate job placement programs.

“A number of national Jewish organizations such as the Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel and the National Council of Young Israel have programs in terms of job identification and job search processes, interview arranging and the like,” said Moshe Bane, senior vice president of the OU. “Our goal is to make these national resources more accessible to residents of the community.”

It seems as though Project Eliezer isn’t gearing up a moment too soon.

Mann described how he recently advocated to a local school on a client’s behalf to make sure that his children are able to stay in yeshiva, and to ensure that he will be able to keep his house until he finds a new job.

“This was a man, a husband, who lost his job working for a major company with a nice salary, through the years had problems with saving, and now his family is in dire financial straits,” he explained. “We will try to work with him and refer him to lawyers and accountants who can work with him to get him back on the derech.”

Moshe Tyberg, director of Agudath Israel’s Professional Career Services, is watching from the inside as unemployment statistics rise.

“The number of people looking for work has gone up dramatically,” he said. “The ratio of people to jobs used to be 5 to 1, but now it’s more like 30 to 1 –– that for every job available, there are 30 people who want it.”

While he has entry levels positions and controller jobs available, Tyberg said, “a lot of middle management positions have disappeared... Baruch Hashem, we do place people, but frankly I don’t have the remedy for this situation.”

A diverse group of local rabbis — including Rabbi Hershel Billet, Rabbi Kenneth Hain, Rabbi Yaakov Reisman, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum and Rabbi Dovid Weinberger — are behind the Eliezer Project, having attended the various meetings. They and other community rabbonim are being relied upon to refer clients, and to get the word out that help is available to those who need it.

“We expect that rabbis will address the issue and present the availability of help in the community,” Bergman said.

“We are also working on getting a contact person in every shul in the community for people to drop off resumes in a discreet manner, and have one Shabbos where every rabbi in every shul speaks about the project,” Friedman added.

Funding for the initiative is expected to come through solicitation of private donors. It is thought that this might require a conscious redirection of some available tzedakah funds — monies that until now have steadily flowed out of the community to meet needs elsewhere.

“The support from the community has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Pollack. “Members of the community have indicated their willingness to help and their acknowledgment that we are confronted with this type of unprecedented program and have to look inward to help our community.”

“The beauty of the program is that it’s not just people in my office helping out,” Mann observed. “We have volunteers from the community who are lawyers, accountants, and other specialists who are helping either pro bono or at a low fee, to help make referrals to our clientele. It’s by community for community, neighbor helping neighbor.”

“There are people out here in the greater community who are going through a very difficult time and facing serious changes in their lives,” Rabbi Billet said. “We don’t know when the economic down cycle is going to turn around.”

“There are a lot of very capable, talented lay volunteers who are skilled professionals and want to do the right thing in a sophisticated, dignified way,” he added. Those not involved in a hands-on way “can direct our giving to support an organization which will try to give support in a dignified way to members of our own community.”

The Eliezer Project is located at 466 Central Avenue, on the second floor. To apply for services or to volunteer your professional assistance, please call (516) 284-2942.

To contact the staff via e-mail: