Board & Staff
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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Betty Gaertner
Chair
Directors
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Suellen Boyd
Talia Klein Leighton
Laurel Rothman
Carrie Goldstein Mazoff
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Founders
Rabbi Arthur Bielfeld
Dodo Heppner
Roger Hyman
Ostrowtzer Hilfs Farein
International Solidarity
“Now we are located in a very bad camp for convalescents in very bad conditions... after the war and we should still be quivering and hungry for a piece of bread." Letter from the Frydrych brothers to Max Hartstone and the United Ostrowizer Hilfs Committee, 23 Jun. 1946.
As they found their footing in their new home, Toronto’s Jews continued to maintain ties to their communities of origin. Mutual Benefit Societies like the Ostrowtzer Hilfs Farein -- this one established by people from Ostrowiec, Poland -- were founded by people who shared social networks, language, and local customs and sought to support each other through fellowship and financial loans in Toronto. In an era before governmental social welfare initiatives, these societies provided much-needed interest-free loans (help with housing and starting a business), medical coverage through a Society doctor, assistance for widows and orphans, and cemetery privileges.
The Mutual Benefit Societies continued to attend to the needs of their landsleit, to the people from their hometown, even after World War II. Beginning in 1946, letters flooded the Ostrowtzer benefit society from former residents of Ostrowiec, sent from Paris, Sweden, various locales in Southern Italy, Romania, California, Tel-Aviv, Bergen Belsen and the US Zone in Germany. Many bear the stamp of the Comité d'Entraide d'Ostrowiec, the Ostrowtzer Society’s counterpart in Paris. They appealed to distant relatives and imagined support from people who could trace their own origins back to the same town of origin.
Discussion questions:
Some of the most needed support is for those who are not around us, who we don't see everyday - who may not even live in the same city or country as us. How can we build and sustain relationships across vast geographies, both with people we know personally and those we do not?
What Jewish values are most important to you? Is generosity connected to Judaism for you, and if so, how? How can we nurture a culture of generosity in our own communities, both for those in the community and those outside of it?
Image credits:
Header image: Gordon Perlmutter and Gurion Hyman outside 58 Cecil Street, former Ostrovtzer Synagogue, now the Cecil Street Community Centre, 1938 and 2014.
First image: Ontario Jewish Archives, item 1180 (cropped).
Second image: Marcus Mitanis, courtesy of Heritage Toronto.
