Community is built one story at a time.
As The Associated launches its Annual Campaign, here are three Baltimore individuals whose lives have been touched this past year, thanks to the work of The Associated network.
Read about a newly divorced woman who found a job that helped her pay her bills, a student seeking to stay Jewishly engaged and a teacher educating her non-Jewish students about antisemitism.
Becoming Financially Secure
Judy Schnidman never anticipated she would be starting over at this point in her life. Having worked in curriculum development, student financial aid and hotel marketing, she chose to step away from her professional path to raise her children.
Yet, life doesn’t always work out as planned, and now, after getting divorced and being out of her field for years, she needed to find a full-time job.
“It’s not easy to reenter the job market. Life is expensive and getting more expensive, and I wasn’t able to make ends meet.”
She turned to Jewish Community Services (JCS), an agency of The Associated. They helped her with her resume, updated her LinkedIn profile, taught her how to identify job opportunities and connected her with job openings. As part of her job search, she attended networking events through Na’aleh, The Associated’s leadership development program.
“JCS understood me and helped me find something that was challenging,” she says. Thanks to JCS, she learned about and was hired for a grant-funded position as a student financial wellness coordinator with Morgan State University.
Judy credits The Associated network for where she is today. “We are so lucky that The Associated is here, that JCS is here and that there is a whole support network that we’re part of. It is really, really comforting knowing we are part of a community that is there for one another.”
Creating a Jewish Future
When Eli Friedman graduated from Krieger Schechter Day School and entered public high school, he knew one thing for sure—he wanted to stay connected Jewishly. That’s when he discovered 4Front, The Associated’s teen programming initiative managed by the JCC.
His first program was the Social Innovation Fellowship, a chance to explore entrepreneurship, Jewish values and social change. Inspired by that experience, Eli became a Diller Teen Fellow, meeting Jewish teens from around the world, developing a friendship with Ido, his counterpart in Ashkelon, and spending three weeks in Israel. In his senior year, he sat on the JCC board as part of the Gesher program.
“4Front provides so many different ways for students to really stay connected to Judaism while exploring what they enjoy,” he says.
4Front, he adds, made him realize that he wanted to continue his Jewish journey in college and beyond.
At the University of Maryland, College Park, he joined a Jewish fraternity and became involved with Hillel and Chabad. He traveled to Israel on Birthright and the Birthright Onward Israel program.
And the lessons he learned through 4Front, along with his relationship with Ido, made him more equipped to respond to antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric when he encountered it on campus.
Most importantly, Eli doesn’t see his journey ending here. When asked about the future, he says, “I definitely want to take on a leadership role and have an impact on my community.”
Educating about Antisemitism
Natalie Petro, a teacher at The Catholic High School of Baltimore, knew one thing for sure. With antisemitism rising across the country, she knew how important it was to educate her students about hatred and teach them tolerance and respect.
That’s why, several years ago, she participated in the Holocaust Educator’s Institute, a three-day professional development program offered at that time by the Baltimore Jewish Council (BJC) and Jewish Museum of Maryland.
Inspired by the experience, she began incorporating curriculum into her classroom and taking students to Lessons of the Shoah, co-sponsored by BJC and the Klein Family Foundation.
Held at the John Carroll High School in Bel Air, this annual event brings together high schoolers from public and private schools to hear from Holocaust survivors and learn about the Holocaust. This past year’s theme focused on the children of the Holocaust. Natalie decided to use that as a springboard for more comprehensive lessons around antisemitism.
That included having her students read The Forbidden Daughter, the true story of a young Holocaust survivor. They examined the trauma experienced by children living through the Holocaust with the youngest Israeli hostages and drew parallels between the two.
“Prior to the program,” she says, “my students had a very narrow view of antisemitism. Many believed it started around 1940 with World War II. They were shocked to learn the long history behind it and how it continues today,” she says.
More importantly, she adds, “So many have limited exposure to the Jewish community. Now they were asking questions, reflecting and gaining understanding of their role standing up against hatred.”
At this critical juncture, join the many in our community who are saying yes to The Associated’s Annual Campaign this year.
Your support will help The Associated combat antisemitism, provide individuals with the tools to overcome learning differences, as well as mental health and financial challenges and create opportunities for our children and grandchildren to build strong Jewish identities. Say yes today at associated.org/give.
Learn more about The Associated’s work at associated.org.
Israeli-Americans Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin talked about the pain of losing their 23-year-old son, who was kidnapped and later murdered in the Oct. 7th tragedy.
A committed philanthropist and community leader, Russel was president of R&H Motors.
The mother of four was a native of Winchester, Virginia, who spent most of her life in Northwest Baltimore.
The Columbia resident worked on the Gemini and Apollo space missions.