EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK
More Than A Playground
I
t was beshert (meant to be) that Pamela Azaria's 17-
month-old daughter, Ella, squirmed to get out of her
stroller and play as they passed a rundown playground at
moshav Nechusa in Israel in August 2002.
Pamela was with childhood friend Nancy Fogelman and her
daughter, Tehila, 10 months. Both women grew up in
Huntington Woods, as Pamela Franklin and Nancy Gardner.
They went to United Hebrew nursery school together and
were in the Berkley High School graduating class of 1985.
They graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor in 1989. Each visited Israel for the first time with B'nai
B'rith youth.
Ironically, both married Israelis, but only
Nancy made aliyah. Her husband, Danny, a
Boston native who has lived in Israel since
1979, is a former full-time Israeli commando.
He's also a graduate of a
West Bank yeshivah,
Neve Shmuel, run by a
great friend of Detroit
ROBERT A. Jewry, Rabbi Shlomo
SKLAR
Riskin.
Editor
Pamela recounted the
_ genesis of the play-
ground while sharing e-mail photos of it
with me last week. The photos reminded
me of the vastly different orbits of Jewish
and Palestinian kids.
"It was a dirty, dangerous wooden
playground with splintered, broken
wood pieces on the swings and rusty
nails sticking out all over," Pamela told
me. "Despite this, there must have been
20 children vigorously playing all over it,
risking injury."
Then and there, the Birmingham
woman came up with a bright idea that
says a lot about her priorities. She opted
to donate a new playground to the 37-
family moshav (a privately owned group
agricultural development) by tapping into a new foundation
her family had just set up. Of all the places she could invest
in, she chose Nechusa, which sits on a green hilltop along the
Green Line just south of Beit Shemesh. She was motivated to
remove the playground danger for children at the moshay.
Talk about a kind soul.
Nechusa is a microcosm of Israel's melting pot. Many fami-
lies are descendents of immigrants from Yemen and Morocco.
For others, family roots go back to India, Kurdistan, Egypt,
Tunisia or Brazil. Some families are of European descent. The
Fogelmans are the only residents of American descent.
A Stark Contrast
Steered in the right direction by the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit and its North American umbrella, the
United Jewish Communities, Pamela hooked up with the
Jewish Agency for Israel's Jeff Kaye, a former Israel emissary to
Detroit Jewry and still a source of pride for our community.
With Kaye's help and the Azaria family gift of $15,000, the
playground was built. Relatives and friends also contributed
$500 toward the construction in honor of the birth of the
Azarias' second son, Yonatan, last January.
Pamela's husband, Erez, is a former Israeli military officer
who works in the auto supply industry. The two met in New
York but lived in Chicago before moving to Michigan last
year. Locally, they're congregants at Shaarey Zedek.
Pamela visited the playground for the first time in
November, adorning it with a plaque in memory of her
grandparents, Rose and Nathan Milstein. "My children had a
blast," said Pamela, a human resources consultant. "We don't
see too many merry-go-rounds in the U.S. I felt very proud
that we could do this for the children of Nechusa."
The same day I enjoyed Pamela's e-mailed images of the
playground, I reviewed a Palestinian Media Watch report
underscoring that Palestinian Authority children continue to
be indoctrinated through schoolbooks and popular culture to
embrace combat support roles against Israel.
The irony was gut wrenching. Palestinians, Arab by descent,
teach their kids through official edict in the name of Allah to
hate Zionism and self-detonate using bomb belts if they can
kill Jews in the process. In con-
trast, Jews — the Azaria story
is but one example — find a
collective benefit in giving their
kids a haven to play, interact
and develop.
Nechusa, 27 miles southwest
of Jerusalem, was founded in
1982. Collectively, the people
grow grapes. But many hold
down other jobs to make
financial ends meet. Nancy is a
Dovid
lactation consultant. Her hus-
Fogelman,
band now operates a nearby
9, enjoys
bakery
called Oogies.
the new
In
a
note
to Pamela, Nancy
moshav
talked
about
how the play-
playground.
ground
spurred
the moshav to
'ow
action. Members spruced up
the entire grounds, painting
buildings, clearing trash and
creating a garden by the play-
ground. "It's just amazing,"
said Nancy, the mother of five.
"If it wasn't for something this nice and new popping up in
the center of the moshav, none of this would be happening."
A Gift Nonetheless
Moved as I was by Pamela's generosity, her reason for giving
was bathed in refreshing honesty. She said she had the money
and saw a way to enrich the lives of a friend's kids, whom she
knows and loves. That she also would give joy to other kids
made the gift even richer.
Too often, she feels, contributions to a charitable cause
become immersed in a big pot and can't be tracked. With the
playground, she can touch and see her investment.
"Unlike just giving money to a charity," Pamela said, "I real-
ly got to see the actual results of the donation I made. And I
got to see my grandparents' names immortalized on a plaque.
"I think I got just as much or more out of this mitzvah as
the moshav did," she added.
Pamela finds project-related giving more satisfying than
making an unrestricted gift to an organization, worthy as it
and its cause may be. "I feel like I make a bigger impact that
way," she said.
I like her independent approach to giving. Yes we should
support charitable organizational causes and campaigns, but
there's room for giving in a very personalized way, too.
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