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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