My Hadassah Journey: Looking Back at How It All Began

My great-grandmother made me a life member of Hadassah when I was born. A fourth-generation life member, I am now the co-chair of Evolve Engagement for National Hadassah. It’s been so fun to look back on how I got started.

In 2014, I saw an email inviting applications for a Hadassah Leadership Fellowship–a two-year program to bring Jewish women, who were already leaders, into Hadassah. At the time, I had just completed over 14 years on the board of the MetroWest Jewish Day School in Framingham, Mass., and was looking for something new in the volunteer realm. I always felt being a Hadassah member was important and remembered when I was a kid, my sister and I would get excited when the Hadassah calendar arrived in the mail. We’d flip to the months of our birthdays to find our names and birthdays listed.

I’d also been a faithful reader of Hadassah Magazine since I returned from my first trip to Israel in 1989. I had great respect and admiration for the women all over the country who put their time and energy into volunteering with Hadassah.

The original Hadassah Leadership Fellowship program included two weekends in New York City, meeting one another, learning about Hadassah, preparing for our trip to Poland and Israel and learning about Hadassah Advocacy.

Our nine days traveling together to Poland and Israel proved more unique than my previous 10 or so trips to Israel. I wrote this in my blog at the time:

The program is purposeful and powerful, helping us to connect to ourselves, each other, our collective memory and our shared future. This Fellowship is my opportunity to learn more about Hadassah and what happens on the local, national and international level and I’m so blessed to be part of this group with the other 15 strong women from around the country. Our experiences over the past few days have bonded us together. In any moment one of us may tear up over a memory or situation and someone is quickly there with a hug, a tissue or to hold her hand.

I remember that, nearing the end of the Auschwitz tour in Poland, we happened to walk through the gas chamber at the same time as a group of young Israeli soldiers. That was the most powerful moment of the day for me. I had been thinking of the State of Israel for the first time as rising out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Seeing the Israeli young men and women in uniform was comforting. It was a reminder that Jewish refugees now have Israel as a home. (Who knew that 2023 would find us in a more weakened position following October 7?)

I turned to a new friend and said “Dayenu” (It is enough for us), for it would have been enough to have this powerful experience and not travel on to Israel. But, of course, going to Israel once again was wonderful.

Toward the end of our stay in Israel, I had breakfast with Aviva Schnur z”l (May her memory be for a blessing), my husband Mike’s aunt, who lived in Jerusalem and was a tour guide at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum. She explained that, at Yad Vashem, they teach visitors that Israel was founded despite the Holocaust.

I can’t begin to put into words all that I learned. Even though I’d been to Israel so many times, living and learning together for nine days with this special group of women, all dedicated to Hadassah, Jewish values and Jewish family, was incredible.

At Hadassah’s Meir Shfeya Youth Village, one of Hadassah’s two youth villages in Israel, there is a street named after Barbara Goldstein (BG), former deputy director of the Hadassah Office in Israel (HOI) and now its ambassador-at-large. BG told us during our visit to the Village that Hadassah women are “dressed in strength and dignity,” a phrase from the Eshet Chayil (woman of valor) prayer, which husbands traditionally sing to their wives on Shabbat. BG is still my role model.

“Shfeya,” as it’s affectionately called, started as an agricultural settlement purchased in 1888 by Baron Rothschild. In 1923, he gave the land to Hadassah’s founder Henrietta Szold to house refugee children and orphans from Europe after the Holocaust. Beginning in the 1970s, it began to serve “at risk” Israeli kids.

In the 1980s, Shfeya welcomed Ethiopian and Russian immigrant children and today there are 300 teens and children who live in its dorms 10-12 months of the year. It is the most inclusive school in the country, serving youth from the Jewish, Druze, Muslim, Christian and Bedouin communities. Shfeya also has a day school with another 300 kids.

Every time we were introduced to young people as “the future leadership of Hadassah,” my heart skipped a beat because I wasn’t sure of my place as a future leader, but it sure sounded exciting!

At the end of our Fellowship term, we were asked to take on a local project. Hadassah had recently partnered with Momentum for a one-year program that took women to Israel and engaged them in Hadassah upon their return. Boston was chosen as the third pilot city and I was asked to lead the trip and  the follow-up year of growth for the women when they returned to the US.

I had the great privilege of leading the “Boston Minyan” in 2018 and “Wominyan” in 2019. Women from both these groups are now in leadership positions with Hadassah locally, regionally or nationally.

In the fall of 2019, I was invited to join the Hadassah national assembly as the Momentum co-chair in the Evolve Department. I was tasked to work with women around the country after they returned from their Momentum trips to help engage them locally in Hadassah.

I began my portfolio in January 2020. Since then, our department has evolved and blossomed. Hadassah now has new “Evolve Communities” all over the country. Young women who want to get involved with Hadassah can create their own activities and programs to fit their local area. In 2025, we will be introducing “Evolve on the Road,” through which Hadassah staff and volunteers will travel to different communities to provide a one-day leadership program.

Looking back at my own Hadassah leadership journey, I feel so blessed to have seen that first email asking for women to apply for a Hadassah Fellowship. In the mere filling out of that application, I learned so much about myself. So many times, when leading a trip to Israel, I’ve heard “BG” tell other women that they are the future of Hadassah. I hope their heart skips a beat with excitement at all the endless exciting possibilities, just as mine did!

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Jody is a member of the Hadassah Writers’ Circle, a dynamic and diverse writing group for leaders and members to express their thoughts and feelings about all the things Hadassah does to make the world a better place, to celebrate their personal Hadassah journeys and to share their Jewish values, family traditions and interpretations of Jewish texts.  Since 2019, the Hadassah Writers’ Circle has published nearly 450 columns in the Times of Israel Blog and other Jewish media outlets. Interested? Please contact hwc@hadassah.org.