ization has made itself a destination for those looking
for one-time or periodic volunteer opportunities.
At Yad Ezra, children fulfill their bar-bat mitzvah
project requirement, teenagers do community serv-
ice for their schools, adults who believe in the cause
come to help and some synagogues provide drivers
on a Sunday several times a year. There's also a big
contingent of "senior volunteers who take great
pride in doing mitzvahs," Luger says.
"These volunteers become our ambassadors to the
community."
New Meaning To Life
Many factors filter into competition for the volun-
teer pool in the Jewish community. First, many
more Jewish organizations exist today and all need
volunteers, especially in a sluggish economy where
dollars to nonprofits are diminishing. Compound
that with the societal pressures of demanding jobs,
many more women in the workforce and limited
time. Also, people live longer, which often means
that those in the "sandwich generation" not only
take care of their children, but also their parents.
The flip side to longevity is that there's another
pool of people who can be tapped as volunteers.
"Men are an untapped resource," says Grossman,
who helped find a niche for retiree Jim Fleischer, 63,
of Bloomfield Township.
Last year, after selling his car repair business,
Maxie Collision on Northwestern Highway in
Farmington Hills, Fleischer went to Jewish Family
Service to see what he might do next. With encour-
agement from Grossman, his fellow Adat Shalom
Synagogue member, he decided to give tutoring a
try at Kennedy Elementary School in Southfield.
"Do I know what I'm doing?" he asks. "No. Am I
enjoying it? Yes. Do you really know what you're
doing when you start out with most things? You
make it work."
Fleischer's inspiration is two second-graders he's
been working with since September. "I see the kids
want to learn. They're sponges and they need atten-
tion and tutoring. And you don't just sit there work-
ing with pencil and paper. You converse with them,
too," Fleischer says.
"I walk into the classroom and my students auto-
matically wave to me," he says. "It makes me feel
welcome, and I can see they're waiting in anticipa-
tion of our work together."
Long-Term Effects
But whatever the value of volunteering, not every-
one knows about opportunities or can afford the
time to volunteer.
Aware of the changing needs of volunteers, espe-
cially regarding time constraints, organizations have
tailored opportunities to specific audiences.
"People are not as willing to commit as they once
were. That's why the new [one-day] mitzvah pro-
grams [such as JFS' Fall Fix Up] have grown. They're
very do-able. They're a limited amount of time, and
one doesn't have to get involved in the planning,"
says Hadassah's Moretsky, whose personal volunteer
schedule is crammed with tutoring, fund-raising,
event planning and the Temple Israel Sisterhood.
still Gleaning
While working in downtown Detroit more than 10 years ago,
Ned Greenberg, 41, of Bloomfield Hills learned about
Gleaners Food Bank of Metropolitan Detroit.
Located around the corner from the loft where he was liv-
ing, he visited it one Saturday and decided to start volun-
teering. Greenberg packed food boxes, each providing a
month's worth of meals for a family, he said. "It was a great
feeling of accomplishment."
Greenberg next volunteered to teach a class at Gleaners for kids
from Detroit and surrounding areas. The sessions were designed
to talk about hunger and instill the spirit of volunteerism.
"We launched this program on a shoestring and now corpo-
rations fund it, and we have a full-time staff person," says
Greenberg, now vice chairman of the Gleaners board. He is
chief executive officer of a software company in Southfield and
married with three children.
Gleaners Food Bank is a nonprofit that runs like a business, he
says. It distributes 23 million pounds of food a year We take
food surplus from food manufacturers, grocery stores and farms
and distribute it to agencies that then distribute to people."
One agency served by Gleaners is Yad Ezra, Berkley's kosher
food pantry.
Greenberg says the advantage to working at Gleaners is the
diverse population of volunteers he's able to meet.
"I've become friends with people from churches and from vari-
ous suburbs, like Macomb and Livingston counties, who do the
same types of things were doing in the Jewish community," 0
"Hadassall has allowed me to broaden my horizons, while I
have broadened the horizons of the organization," says Barbara
Moretsky, who held three vice president positions over the past
12 years for the Greater Detroit Chapter of the Women's
Zionist Organization of America. She instituted local
Hadassah's popular doll project and expanded its tutoring pro-
gram during this time
In the 1970s, Moretsky had a jewelry business. A client told
her about Hadassah, and she eventually attended a meeting.
Moretsky already was well acquainted with the pleasures of
volunteering. Besides joining ORT and the National Council
of Jewish Women of Greater Detroit, she was a member of the
steering committee for Southfield-based Orchards Children's
Services. This developed into a chairmanship of a special proj-
ect: building a residential transitional facility for boys.
From that group, people recommended Moretsky to other
groups, such as the Volunteer Network of Metro Detroit,
which she has headed as president.
Moretsky says she was eventually recommended for and got a
paid position: executive &rector of Variety, the Children's Charity
in Detroit, which she held for five years. People in the entertain-
ment industry formed the group to help needy children.
Through her work with Hadassah, she was invited to work
with United We Walk, a West Bloomfield-based community
organization that promotes the values of Martin Luther King
Jr. She is fund-raising and event planner for the non-profit
THAW [The Heat And Warmth] fund, which partners with
utilities companies. And she works with the Temple Israel
Institute on Judaism, teaching public school personnel about
the holidays and religion of Jewish students. ❑
Ned Greenberg of
Bloomfield Hills works
with young volunteers,
members of the Detroit
chapter ofiacks and fills
Inc., at Gleaners Food
Bank in Detroit.
Barbara Moretsky of
Bloomfield Hills initiated
Hadassah's Doll Project, one of
her many volunteer endeavors.
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11/22
2002
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