← The PM Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:00]
Karen Grossman Gershon
I always get emotional when I talk about these things. For me, when life is working at its best, there's an intersection of my Judaism, my feminism, and my activism. And they all can happily coexist and they're not competing with each other. There's a very democratic framework in which they all can coexist.
- [00:22]
Jay Frost
Welcome to the PM Podcast, brought to you by Donor Search, the show that takes you inside the lives of thought leaders, innovators, and change makers in fundraising, philanthropy, and civil society community. I'm your host, Jay Frost. Karen Grossman Gershon is CEO of Project Kesher and the architect of its international network of feminist Jewish leaders. She has helped raise over $40 million to support Jewish women and girls across Eastern Europe and Israel, advancing gender equality, public health and Jewish life. Most recently, she's helped shape a gendered response to the war in Ukraine. We begin the conversation on her earliest memories of social activism.
- [01:04]
Karen Grossman Gershon
So I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, with two parents who were school teachers and very progressive. And so some of my earliest memories are things like going to one of the first integrated preschools in New York City, where it was a co op and our parents had to work at the co op. And so from a very young age, I knew that we had sort of a commitment to civil society in our house. Another early memory was when they were building King's Plaza, one of the major shopping malls in New York City. And my father had all of the children on the block lay across the street so that we would be able to create a barrier and stop all traffic that day to really push the shopping mall to ensure that we would have a proper shopping, a proper traffic pattern when they built the mall. So my earliest memories of my parents that I have the most fond memories were not only engaging in social activism, but really using all that was best of New York City, the libraries, the Brooklyn Museum, which had free art classes, and many other things, like going to hear Pete Seeger when he they would come in with the tall ships every year in New York. So that really, I would say, informed my childhood very strongly. Another very fond memory was taking dance classes in Sheepshead Bay with Marjorie Mazzia, the wife of Woody Guthrie and mother of Arlo. And it was not a very traditional dance class. It was one where we were taught how to breathe and leap around the room in the Martha Graham style of dance. And I think that from a very early age, my parents were sort of instilling in me this sense that we had responsibilities and that we were empowered to act on Them.
- [02:54]
Jay Frost
It sounds almost like a threesome. Do you have siblings?
- [02:57]
Karen Grossman Gershon
I have one brother. His name is Steven, and he has been incredibly supportive of my work.
- [03:03]
Jay Frost
Is he also kind of in this world of progressive change, social change?
- [03:09]
Karen Grossman Gershon
No. My brother is very devoted to his family and worked on Wall street for much of his career.
- [03:16]
Jay Frost
Brooklyn sounds like a different Brooklyn from today's Brooklyn. For those who don't know New York, I know there's still a great deal of engagement with community as there has always been, but it has also transformed economically. Do you live in Brooklyn today and what are the differences you see between the Brooklyn of your childhood and the Brooklyn and New York of today?
- [03:38]
Karen Grossman Gershon
So I live on the Upper west side of New York now, and I don't know Brooklyn as well as I used to. When I was growing up, Brooklyn was heavily Jewish, Italian, Irish, smattering of Greek. And it was a very ethnic community to live in. Our restaurants reflected that. We had a lot of pizza places and bagel bakeries and, and things like that. My neighbors were very loving and supportive of each other, but we didn't always have that much in common. We were on very different paths. You know, all the kids in my, in. In the Jewish community that I really was closest to were all expected to go on to college and move out. Most of the Italian kids in my neighborhood went into family businesses. Many of the girls got married younger. And so it was sort of a very diverse community. But we had a lot of love for one each of one another. My parents both worked as teachers, and so very often my neighbors would take me in and feed me whatever pasta they were making for dinner that night. I have very fond memories of a Greek neighbor who made the most exquisite cookies. So those are sort of my memories of growing up in Brooklyn. But it was. I really don't know how to compare it to today because I don't live there today.
- [04:58]
Jay Frost
Yeah, that kind of close knit community is something, which, something I believe that many people are battling to reconnect with today. And you're working in the thick of that. In terms of communities that are, you know, for example, in Ukraine, other places that we'll be talking about. I do want to ask you about the importance of community in terms of social activism, which is a big part of your life. How important is that?
- [05:30]
Karen Grossman Gershon
Well, Project Kasher, the organization of which I'm the CEO, was founded by a social worker named Sally Egrach. And one of the basic premises of the work that Sally envisioned was that the people who were the target of the work would be instrumental in both envisioning it and implementing it. And I think that what made Sally's model so powerful is that when you have a community of people who realize that they can become empowered, and they sit together in circles and start to understand what they identify as the primary needs, they are then in a position to start taking steps to address them. And so everything we do in our organization is built around community. And right now, I'd say one of the most powerful projects we've been doing is an LGBTQ initiative in Israel, where we have a large number, I think as many as 1500 LGBTQ members from Russia who have been essentially forced out by the Putin administration. They land in Israel, and they really don't know what life is going to be like for them. But they have each other, and now we have a network of people who've come before them. And so by offering them a community, they realize that this is not going to be more of the same. You know, it may be complicated to live in Israel, but we try to create a scenario in which they are able to live openly as who they are, get healthcare as who they are, and fight for legal benefits through the Israeli court system to ensure that both partners in the relationship are in a position to get on track for citizenship in Israel, not just the Jewish partner, because in most cases, these are interfaith couples. So having community is really the very core of everything we do.
- [07:27]
Jay Frost
Take us back a little bit, though, to how you became involved with the organization. I believe you were an attorney, correct? Initially. So how did you move? Well, what kind of law were you practicing? And then how did you decide to join the organization?
- [07:41]
Karen Grossman Gershon
So I was going to Northwestern Law School, and I took my first job at Cat, Mitchen and Zavis, a law firm in Chicago. And while I was there, I met a woman in Lamar's class when I was pregnant with my first child. And at the time, she was not sure that she was going to raise her children in the Jewish community. And I encouraged her to check out a synagogue called the Reconstructionist Synagogue of Evanston, Illinois, jrc And she did. And she met the founder of Project Kasher there. And the founder, Sally Gratch, was going to be taking a delegation of Jewish women from around the world to kyiv, Ukraine, in 1994. And I heard about the trip, and I kept thinking, boy, it would be so cool to go on a trip like that. I will read about this in the New York Times. And I wish that I was one of those people who had been brave enough to Go. At which point I called my mom and asked if she would watch my kids, and she said she would not. She would come with me instead. And the two of us proceeded to join Project Kasher in Kyiv in 1994, at which point I realized that the skills that I had been developing all my life, starting with a degree from Cornell, and industrial and labor relations, which I always thought of as a union organizing degree, would be very useful in organizing people in any country. And so I felt like I had a good skill set. I also felt like I was in a position to advocate. I had spent most of my career in law as a litigator. I specialized in appellate litigation at both the state and federal level. And so I really wrote a nice brief. And so when I started as a. As a leader of a nonprofit, some of the early feedback I was given is, you're very persuasive. And I was like, damn straight, I'm persuasive. I used to get paid hundreds of dollars an hour to be persuasive, and now I do it for good. So that was one of the joys of getting into this position, as I felt I really could use my skill set for things that I was really passionate about.
- [10:03]
Jay Frost
What was that initial trip to Ukraine like, especially going with your mother? That must have been a pretty special experience.
- [10:10]
Karen Grossman Gershon
So the first trip was so dingy. It was before there had been any changeover from basically the former Soviet Union. And our founder, to put it mildly, was very frugal. And so she put us up in hotel, in a hotel that was so gray and dingy. And the food was so what you would have expected from, like, 1980s style Soviet food. You know, it was like a gray piece of chicken and some beets and some potatoes on it, a plate with a side of borscht. And I think that, you know, what was so shocking to me was that as daunting as the experience was, I love the people. I just loved meeting people and talking to them. And there were some beautiful early seminars by people like Marty Kon Spiegel, who's out of California, where we talked about things like, what did your family cook? And what we started to realize was, is that despite all the differences in where each of us had grown up, we had all these commonalities like, what did we eat and what did we remember? And we began to realize that the Jews of the region that we were visiting, although they had not been raised as Jews under communism, they had really interesting memories from their childhoods, were, for instance, their family would Tell them a story. And they had no idea that it was biblical. And so all of the pieces of the biblical story had been sort of whitewashed so that people wouldn't know that they were being taught religion. But in fact, they did remember a lot of the stories that came from, you know, Jewish text and Jewish holidays. But they knew them as more like anecdotal. And it started to come out that they did have these memories, and it was really. It was really exciting to see them starting to reclaim them.
- [12:15]
Jay Frost
Wow, that's so timely as well as interesting for that particular time, since we're all searching for the right ways to communicate things in environments where sometimes words are stricken from the public record. So when you had these conversations, these connections with people, work coming out of that kind of Soviet era, because the wall had just fallen in 89, that must have been. And that must made a pretty big mark on you. How quickly was it between that time and then when you joined Project Kasher formally, and what role did you take on?
- [12:58]
Karen Grossman Gershon
I joined the organization as we left that retreat, that conference in 94. I think that what was most interesting at the time is there was no sense of trust between us yet. And so I was there, and they thought I was very nice and very American, but they sort of found me very lightweight. So, like, I would walk through the street and smile at people, and they'd look at me and they go, you do know that it comes across as foolish when you smile at people on the street? And I said, oh, I consider it a small investment in civil society. And they thought that was very silly because people in their country kept their emotions close to their vest. They did not smile on the street. I would say that within two years, I could tell somebody from my organization, because if they were walking down the street, they were smiling at me, I was smiling back, and they were ready to throw their arms around me. But it took a few years till they realized that this was not superficiality on our part, that this was how we chose to engage with each other from a place of kindness and a place of values. And they really were intrigued that we were doing this work and raising this money because of our values as Jews and as Americans, and that we didn't have an agenda. Like, we weren't. I wasn't trying to make them religious. I was trying to give them access to their faith tradition. They could accept it. They could accept religious. Any range of types of observance. It was completely up to them. I didn't have an agenda for how reintroduction to Judaism would impact them. And what I found over time is that for some people, being offered Judaism was such a gift, and they embraced it. But I found that for others, the Judaism came easily. What they also discovered with us was feminism. And so some people came for the. The. The religion and stayed for the feminism, and other people came for the feminism and ended up staying for the faith. And I found that the combination was very interesting for people. I felt like they felt more whole when they had both. But we weren't looking for people to be traditional, traditionally observant. We were just offering them back a path. And wherever they took it was their choice. And over time, what we discovered is that the common, universal values we were teaching them through Judaism really rolled over into the larger society. At which point they began to form interfaith coalitions around their work. In addition to doing basic Jewish holidays and values and life cycle events, they began to realize that many of them were dealing with issues like breast cancer or gender violence in the society, and it wasn't unique to the Jewish community, at which point they branched off into the larger community as well. And that was very exciting for us to see.
- [16:02]
Jay Frost
Why was this important to you? And why did it become important to them? For people who didn't, who may have internalized some of the stories of the, you know, the Jewish tradition, but they didn't even necessarily know that that's what they were initially. And then they began to own these stories, I guess, as they. As they interacted with you and with others. Why was this important? And why was it important for you to connect those dots between not just the American element of this, but Judaism and feminism specifically? And why did it become important to them as well?
- [16:38]
Karen Grossman Gershon
I always get emotional when I talk about these things. For me, when life is working at its best, there's an intersection of my Judaism, my feminism, and my activism. And they all can happily coexist, and they're not competing with each other. There's a very democratic framework in which they all can coexist. And what I found from a lot of the women I met in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, was that their societies had not given them a constructive infrastructure. They like. When I would talk about volunteerism, they would stop, and they were, like, not interested. And I thought, why? And then I realized that the government would talk about volunteerism as forced. Like a forced labor you did over and above your job every week. And the government would tell you what the volunteerism was. And I would look at them and I'd say, no, no, no, what I'm saying is, is you identify what is most meaningful to you, and you identify what processes in your society that might enable you to improve what you care about. And I'll find the funding, but, you know, we'll come up with joint values, and we'll come up with joint processes, and together we'll figure it out. And at first, it wasn't that easy because they thought that I was going to be very judgmental of them as opposed to being supportive. So, for instance, I would say, you need to have invoices, like, I need to see receipts for things. And they would say, well, what would that look like? I'm like, well, when you buy something, you get a receipt, you write what it's for, and then, you know, you give it to us. What I didn't understand is that nobody had ever asked them for this before. And so the first time I got receipts, they came in a cereal box. And I must have had, you know, 500 receipts with, like, little scribbles on them that basically said what the exchange rate was each day when they bought it. And they might have been for, like, $2.50 for supplies, for program, but they were. They were taking me literally but not understanding that I wasn't trying to control them. I was trying to start to understand, like, were we in sync? Did we have similar values on how the organization would be run? Would there be transparency? Did they understand that when we hit a certain level, there would be an audit? And that wasn't me sitting in the US Judging them. It was a process by which a healthy organization is grown. And so together, I would say to them, well, what's your process? Do you have a bookkeeper? Tell me more about your bookkeeper. How did you vet them? How long have they worked with you? Great. Now that we're going to be over a hundred thousand, who's going to be the auditor? It needs to be somebody else. They need to be certified in a particular way. So what started to happen over time is we thought that we would be one uniform nonprofit. We would be in the US And Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. But what we started to realize is that they actually needed to run themselves. And so we started to do is support them in incorporating in their own country and then registering, making a board where appropriate. Not all their countries required boards. And started to say, like, how would you be in full compliance in your own country? How would you get the support you need from local institutions? We just kept pushing down as much power as we could into the different places where we Work. Over time, that became so interesting to us because we would increasingly see the women in Russia becoming more and more concerned about the oversight the government was exerting over them and their inability to use certain language. Like, we would talk about gender violence, and they would create a program called Happy Family, Happy Life. And I'm like, what the heck is that? And they're like, well, that's programming that will pass the sensor. And we found that in Belarus as well. And the women in Ukraine, in contrast, would pick up, like, a program that we got out of Rutgers University called 16 days to end Domestic Violence. And they would start doing programming, and lo and behold, the Ukrainian government would adopt it. So, you know, we could see that this an area that we had thought was monolithic in 1994, you know, by like 2007, 8, we were starting to see this real bifurcation in the region and realized again, we were not going to be one organization, you know, where we fundraised in the US and sort of set standards, but really we were going to help them with processes and resources, but they would have to do the work in their own country to the level that they could in the countries where they were operating.
- [21:38]
Jay Frost
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of debate, and there has been for decades, but especially now, over whether an American model of running an organization is an imposition and everything from the language we use to the accountability standards and even the literal accounting. So you've just described a way that it sounds like that was then largely owned by the different organizations underneath Project Kesher. What were the program? What were and are the programs, though? Can you describe some of what is happening and who's kind of not controlling, but who's authoring those programs today?
- [22:26]
Karen Grossman Gershon
Sure. So, you know, when we started out, our initial programs were like Intro to Jewish Life, and we would do holidays, life cycle events, some basic text. Then we from there moved into, like, Jewish leadership training. And we were very much based on, I always thought, the work of a woman named Erica Brown, who talked a lot about how you present yourself is how you are perceived as a leader, how you think, how you influence people through your values. Those are part of leadership. We took away a lot of the sense of a powerful infrastructure and bureaucracy. And we talked more about people who lead by bringing others along, people who lead by decentralizing their power. The more power they give away, you know, actually the more power they have, because all these other people love following them because they can see their leadership track developing. And so for many Years, we started just in the Jewish community, and then we moved into sort of some women's activism, gender health, women's health, and civil society building. I would say what happened, of course, is in recent years, first there was Covid, and we had to move everything online. And we were still operating in Russia at that point. But then when Russia had their full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and sanctions were put in place, we pulled out of Russia and really focused our efforts primarily on Ukraine, to a small degree, Belarus. And then we followed everyone who wanted to leave the region into Israel. And so today, I would say that 90% of our work is in Ukraine and Israel. And we have two major tracks. We still have Jewish education and leadership development, but we also do a lot of work around sustainability. So how do you get women who are now creating over 50% of the small businesses in Ukraine, how do you get them launched? And so one of the things we've done very effectively is provide grants between 1500 and 2500 dollars to women so that they can develop successful small businesses. And what many people don't understand is that Ukraine is not a rich country. And so the people we work with there, if they had a salary of $3 to $500 a month, they were very average in Ukraine. So these grants are quite substantive by local standards. And we have three goals for them. That, you know, particularly if your husband is conscripted, he's in the military, that within year one, the woman we invest in can take care of her own family, that she's able to hire one or more displaced women, and that she gives back to the community. In Judaism, we refer to it as Sedaka, that she does a mitzvah. So she has a bakery, for instance, at the end of each day, she gives away the baked goods at the. If she has a sunflower farm every month, she gives away a certain number of bottles of sunflower oil. And so we're at about 82% of families are successful after year one. About over 90% hire at least one other woman, and we're at 100% with Sedaka. Even the women who are floundering start to realize that they have been given free money from the United States, from the Jewish community, and they want to give back. I mean, they really understand that this is just done because this is our values. And so they're very. They're very appreciative, and they want to pay it forward.
- [26:10]
Jay Frost
It sounds like it's making as much of an investment in philanthropy through grants, not Loans, which is an important distinction here as it is anything. I mean, of course this is all through the lens of. It sounds like building the, the Jewish community, but. But it's also building this community of trust and philanthropy in places like Ukraine.
- [26:34]
Karen Grossman Gershon
It is. We are very, very committed to Ukrainian based philanthropy. So we do a bunch of things. One, we've done English language courses for Ukrainian based nonprofits because we feel that centering the voices of the people you help is critical. So I could show up in Davos and speak about women in Ukraine, but that would be ridiculous when I have great people in Ukraine who could go to Davos and speak about their own needs. So through a series of grants, including one from the Jewish Federations of North America, we have been sending women from Ukraine to really important meetings where their voices should be heard. And I think this is particularly important because God willing, and there is peace in that region, there will be a whole reparations process. And what ends up happening very often is that a lot of the reparations money go to two places. One, very big companies and also two companies that are going to provide farm equipment and there will be US and European companies to. So when you think of these large quantities of money, it's not really always going into the hands of the people, it's going into the hands of the interest groups that are behind the reparations programs. And so we would really like to see a development of an understanding that when you put the money in the hands of women, it recirculates in the community like three times in the first year. So we require them to operate legally, we require, require them to hire other women who are displaced. And so each of these pieces ensures that this money recirculates. You know, when you look at big businesses and they're like, there's going to be a $50 million grant made to this. You're not going to see the same inflow of cash in the society. And I think that in the next wave of our work, because giving grants is not completely sustainable. I mean, we hope to scale it up, but giving loans is much more sustainable. And so we're in conversation with places like the Jewish Federation of San Francisco, which has a large endowment and they do what's called impact investing. And so instead of a loan that, let's say is 30 or 40% for one year, which is actually the case in Ukraine, could we make loans of 3% to a group of women whom we have already successfully granted money to? A couple of our people made the Forbes, you know, List of the most successful small businesses opened in, you know, in the past year. By offering them loan money, that is going to really help them scale up, but it also helps, like a large foundation, find a way to turn their endowment into more effective use, as opposed to just sitting, as in, like, savings accounts at the bank or CDs. So, you know, if we were able to put, let's say, 500,000 into our pipeline next year as loans, we think that would be a very exciting next level of work. So we're in conversation about whether that's possible. And those are the kinds of things.
- [29:59]
Jay Frost
We'Re exploring right now in this process of building these successful entrepreneurs. These women, and they're Jewish women. It sounds like they're.
- [30:10]
Karen Grossman Gershon
No, no, no, no, no. Some are Jewish, some are not. We are. We do not make religious affiliation a prerequisite. So, you know, you have to understand that the Jewish community, according to, like, UGA Federation of New York or Chabad maybe there's 250,000 Jews in Ukraine. Many of them are professionals. They are doctors, lawyers, academics. They do not need small business loans. When people need small business loans, we are embedded enough in the Jewish community, we can find them. We make loans available to them. But there are many, many more people who are not Jewish, and we are prioritizing investment in them. And the reason is, is that if you have a woman whose husband was in the military and he was killed and she has three kids and she is now the sole source, I am certainly not going to prioritize a Jewish woman who is middle, upper middle class by Ukrainian standards over somebody with a much more profound need. So I think that one of the things we're proudest of at Project Kasher is we are absolutely part of the Jewish community. We get funding out to the Jewish community. We act upon our Jewish values, but it is not a prerequisite to be Jewish to get support from our programs.
- [31:32]
Jay Frost
There's a history of anti Semitism, obviously, in the region. And in one of the things that I know that Russian channels were propagating was the story about Nazis or neo Nazis operating in Ukraine. And that's one of the reasons for the invasion. All these things. I'm sure I'm not characterizing that properly, but that was one of the stories, one of the excuses for the invasion. I'm wondering, as you've continued this work over time and you've worked with your partners there in Ukraine, if some of this also helps to address any kind of real or latent antisemitism as well. As misogyny that exists in a country where there has been this kind of profound history, but also misunderstanding and just lack of knowledge, even including in the community itself. As you talked about before, people learned the stories, they didn't necessarily know where the stories were from. How has some of this work helped to address perhaps those.
- [32:41]
Karen Grossman Gershon
Yeah, so Ukraine has one of the lowest rates of antisemitism today, according to Pew Research. But that doesn't in any way excuse the fact that it has a long and very challenging history of antisemitism. My leadership has always been very, very sensitive to understanding the history of Ukraine in that when we would go visit the Holocaust museum at Babi Yar, it is next to a Holocaust, the sacred site of Babi Yar. We would also visit Halodemor, which is a site where they memorialize the victims of Stalin, the mass starvation. And they wanted us to always understand that, yes, they understood the complexity of their country, but that there had been a lot of suffering at all levels of Ukrainian life, and we needed to have context for it. So we've been very, very sensitive to that. With all that said in recent years, between the political leadership, of course, President Zelensky, who grew up in the town where we are based, Krivyri, and previous leaders like Grossman, who was out of Kazakhstan, we have seen Jews in leadership in Ukraine for quite a long time. And so we know that it's not out of the question that Jews can really thrive in Ukraine. And we've seen it. I mean, we always sort of tease that they sort of hit, they punch above their weight in terms of their impact on Ukrainian society. Society. These projects are very interesting right now because people are so intrigued that Jews choose to help people who are not Jewish in particular. But I found that when the war really escalated in 2022, that even non Jews were sending us money. And one of the reasons was between organizations like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the JDC and others. Jews have a long history of being sort of straight shooters in the humanitarian care department in the region. We don't go in and out. We have decades of experience. There is long standing delivery of services. And so even people I knew who were not Jewish proceeded to send a $5,000 check and say, I don't know anybody who would administer this better. And I know that in wartime you will do right by everyone. And that was really moving to us. So I think it was also exciting to see the validation of Jewish communal work globally through what happened in Ukraine. And of course, the Jewish community Sent enormous resources. I think UGA Federation of New York alone raised 28 million. And the Jewish Federations of North America, and then each of the individual federations sent money. So it's been really a real commitment to Ukraine has been made through the Jewish community that I, for one, am very proud of.
- [35:46]
Jay Frost
Oh, clearly. And there's every reason to be. I hope there's also recognition of that, that sometimes when there's support coming from any community, any place, it's recognized and sometimes it's not, or sometimes it's seen as partnering and people are grateful for it and they're really willing. There's an atmosphere of trust. And other times. And I'm just thinking here about George Soros experience throughout the region. Then there are some bad actors who mischaracterize it for their own ends.
- [36:23]
Karen Grossman Gershon
I understand. Yeah. From our perspective, George Soros was quite a visionary. We have seen the impact of his work in so many places, and he did very controversial things like make computers, fax machines and phones available to people who had an interest in fighting for freedom. So from our perspective, you know, he's quite a hero. But from. I've lost my. My space for just a second, we.
- [36:53]
Jay Frost
Were talking on, oh, how, how sometimes there is recognition.
- [36:57]
Karen Grossman Gershon
So we are. We are beautifully recognized all the time. And at the governmental level, they've been nothing but gracious. They have been welcoming delegations of the Jewish community. I think the other thing that we've done that was very well received is we began to create all kinds of Jewish communal materials in Ukrainian, you know, because Russia was so oppressive in the region, there was nothing created in Ukrainian. And what people don't really realize is that some of the greatest heartlands of Jewish life were like, Odessa. And Odessa was where some of the great Jewish writers and thinkers came from. So when we created in the last two years the first Ukrainian language Haggadah, which were materials for the Passover holiday, we were able to find magnificent writings in Ukrainian, in Hebrew of people who, like, were celebrating Passover, you know, more than 100 years ago, before 1917 and the ascent of the Communist era. Now we're moving into other texts, like for, you know, just normal Jewish observance, like a sidor, a prayer book, so that people are in a position to pray in their own language and not in the language of their oppressor, the person, you know, the country that has invaded them and is fighting them. So I think that's been very well received, and I think the government has been very appreciative that as well, we've.
- [38:26]
Jay Frost
Talked a lot about Ukraine for obvious reasons. But you mentioned, I guess, departing from Russia, having a little activity in Belarus, spending a lot of time really between Ukraine and Israel. That must have been hard to leave Russia because you must have made an investment of emotional and logistical investment of time to work with the community there as well.
- [38:53]
Karen Grossman Gershon
We have enormous relationships in Russia. I'm incredibly fond of the people I worked with there. They actually have continued much of the work on their own. They renamed themselves and continue many of the operations. It is also troubling to know that many of them have drunk the Kool Aid. They do believe in their government's propaganda. And even people that I, on a personal level might adore, believe that the US was involved in the fight for freedom in Ukraine. And I always say to them, to the extent that the United States saw the desire for freedom among the Ukrainian people and supported it, okay, to the extent that they claim that the US Precipitated the Ukrainian fight for freedom, I think that's naive on their part. So that does make it a more complicated relationship when they believe that we were the, the force behind Ukrainian independence.
- [39:56]
Jay Frost
But the work continues.
- [39:58]
Karen Grossman Gershon
The work does continue and I'm really, really proud of that. The work in Israel is very complicated as well, because in the past people who've gone to Israel often went by choice. Like it was a, something that they might have prepared for for a long time. They might have learned the language, they might have organized their belongings and, and made a multi year plan to move to Israel. The people that we've been supporting in the last few years, I would call they're, they basically were part of a forced immigration in our network. A lot of the people are Jewish in, in Israel, but many are not. Many of the families that go over are interfaith and at least one of them, you know, they're not Jewish. They're not necessarily planning to convert to Judaism. So for them, being in a Jewish country is complicated. They don't have a sense that they're always fully welcome. And there's also another situation where we really admired what Israel did at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. They took out a lot of children who were in Ukrainian hospitals and not Jewish, non Jewish mothers. And they're now in Israel and they are getting world class health care. So that is very admirable. But they don't really have a place in Israeli society in terms of getting benefits. And so we try very hard to provide them with food, support groups, you know, cards that they can use like at a pharmacy to pick up tampons or, you know, like Advil or whatever they need. So, you know, again, it's a complicated situation, particularly right now in the Jewish community, where I think there's a lot of agreement that the attack on October 7th was horrifying, that the hostages must be returned, that Hamas is beyond problematic. But, you know, there's also concern in intergenerational Jewish families about how the war has been implemented in the region. And so we get a lot of requests from families that are looking to invest in an ethical way in Israel so that they don't feel that they're perpetuating some of the more complicated aspects of the Israeli government's policies, but rather that multiple generations of the family are really comfortable that what they're investing in supports Israeli democracy and inclusion. And so a lot of, like, our work, like, with the LGBTQ community is something that, like, an intergenerational Jewish family is more likely to be receptive to if particularly some of the younger people are struggling with some of Israel's policies. So we're constantly trying to navigate that because, you know, we can be very supportive of Israel and still recognize some of its challenges.
- [43:11]
Jay Frost
No country, no government is fixed in that state forever. We've seen that, obviously, in the United States. We've seen it in Ukraine. We've also seen it in Israel. For those who don't know the Israeli landscape, political landscape, as you would, because you have to work with them, what is it like to try and be engaged in these activities, especially when they're involving, I guess, essentially refugees or immigrants, not just people making aliyah, but others to Israel? What is it like to work with Israel as it is today in finding a place for not only these people, but also to do the work? Because NGOs are under fire in countries which are increasingly autocratic or where the government is stronger or under more control of fewer people.
- [44:12]
Karen Grossman Gershon
So one out of six Israelis is Russian speaking, or, you know, while people in Ukraine now speak Ukrainian, in Israel, most of the people from the countries of the former Soviet Union continue to speak Russian. And that's about one in six Israelis. And traditionally, they have been a more conservative voting bloc. It's been very complicated since October 7th when they've seen that the primary reason many of them voted in more conservative ways was because they believe that the Israeli government in power would protect them. And now there are certainly questions about whether they were protected on October 7th. And so we have a lot of programs in Israel where we do briefings in Russian about what is Hamas, what are Palestinians, what does it mean for those of you who live in Israel? How do you respond when the certain sirens go off? You know, like we are dealing with people we call the doubly traumatized. They, many of them left Ukraine or they left Russia under seriously oppressive situation and they end up in Israel and they really struggle to adapt because they don't have the language skills. And so we do a lot of briefing in the, in Russian. What we have found is that on the local level we get enormous support from the government. In cities like Ashkelon, Ashdod, where there's like large Russian speaking populations, our work is very, very well received. We pull people together once or twice a month. We have programs with them where they learn how to speak the language, they learn how to open a bank account, get a SIM card for their phone, get access to WI Fi and the Internet. And those kinds of things are very, very well received. And we can get space offered to us, we'll get offered buses, food for our programming, things like that on the federal level, on the national level, it's more complicated because the different voting blocs in the Netanyahu government are very religiously observant and they do not always welcome all of the Russian speaking Jews. They do not feel, observe Judaism in the way they would like. And so funding for programs at the national level, much harder for us to come by. So for instance, if there's a spike in gender violence due to wartime in Israel and we would go to, let's say the government, they're like, they will brush you off because they just, you know, meeting the needs of Russian speaking women in Israel at the federal level, not the highest priority. So you know, those are the kinds of things that we're constantly balancing. We spend a lot of time supporting women in beginning their runs for public office. We train women to start to attend public meetings and advocate for things they need. And we also just really try to help them become good citizens in that they should know that the people they vote for should be accountable to them. So they need to know their views, they need to know how they plan to vote on issues and they need to act accordingly because in the past they've often voted as a bloc and it isn't necessarily been in their best interest.
- [47:52]
Jay Frost
And so for an NGO operating in Israel now, how, how is that, Is that just, I mean you've, you've given the detail for, for your organization, but is it, is it an environment where like, you've seen the growth in philanthropy in Ukraine. Is that true also in Israel?
- [48:11]
Karen Grossman Gershon
The philanthropic sector in Israel is still emerging. There has been a real growth in. In wealth in Israel. There is, you know, certainly like a tech sector and the great pharmaceutical sector, but the philanthropy has not grown as fast. But there are groups like the Jewish Funders Network that are increasingly engaging with philanthropists in Israel and trying to support them in building out their philanthropy and encouraging people to sort of give according to their values. It's always complicated because you don't really always want to do this work through the philanthropic sector. You'd really like the government to do its share, and then the philanthropic sector should round it out. But right now, for instance, there was some serious LGBTQ money that was supposed to be given out through the different cities across Israel. And there are bureaucracies in place under different administrations that block the distribution of those funds. So they have been granted, and they're not necessarily getting out because there is disagreement about whether that's now a value of the Israeli government. And the nonprofit sector can make up some of the difference, and I hope increasingly they'll make up more. But it's a struggle. I mean, governments should play certain roles, and when the government abdicates those roles, it's frustrating.
- [49:44]
Jay Frost
I'm just imagining what this must be like for you when. Because this has been 30 years now, right, with Project Kasher for you. And there are a lot of things that have happened in the world. So your programming, it sounds like it been consistent, evolving, having this tremendous impact really does sound like that. Helping a lot of people in their journey, wherever they are, domestically, internationally. But during that time, you've had multiple wars and lots of changes politically in these environments and changes even philanthropically, who supports what and how. You've just described one that's happening right at the moment. What has been the hardest part of all this for you? Where is the biggest change that you've seen?
- [50:33]
Karen Grossman Gershon
Well, I don't think we felt the level of intense engagement every single day that we do now. And I think that we spend a lot of our time. I always talk to my staff. It's sort of like we're surfing, and every day we don't know how big the wave will be, but we're there, and we're going to surf the wave every single day. And some days we get wiped out, and some days we really. We really thrive, and we surf it all the way to the shore, and we're really great. But it's really. We have to adapt. And so, I mean, there are moments that I Look back on our history. And I think, you know, like, we had a lot of chutzpah. You know, we had a lot of nerve to do the things we did. I remember one day we were on a trip in, in Russia, and we were told that the Putin administration had made all outward signs of religiosity, they were now banned, and that we would be arrested if we engaged in like an openly religious event. But we were planned to be at Red Square that day at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with six Torahs and a bunch of rabbis and like all these women. And we went and we said Kaddish at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And I said to everybody in advance, don't come if you, if you live in fear. But I think that the young guards are going to look at us, have no idea what we're doing, and it'll be fine. And it was fine. And so sometimes we just do what we do and we're like, we need moral clarity like that. We have the right to mourn in public, even in societies that are not in that space. And could we have been arrested? Yeah, we could have been arrested. Did I anticipate it? Not really. And I think we're often taking those kind of conscious choices where we're like, okay, what will our administration do next? How do we get ahead of them in terms of our perspective? I get asked daily, what do you think will happen next in Ukraine? And I'm like, I have no idea. But I know that eventually 250,000 or so Ukrainians who've taken temporary shelter in the US will have to return to Ukraine. So I think about them and I think about what to do with them. And I know that the children in Ukraine of the age of five have probably never been in a preschool or a program together, because between Covid and now the war, there's going to be a whole set of programs that children need and there's going to be mental health programs. So it's like, I guess what I used to think about was like, I'll think a year and a half, a year in advance about like Jewish holidays and what will we do next year for the Jewish holidays, or what kind of domestic violence initiative will we do and what will we advocate for next? Could we get some legislation maybe in Ukraine, but Russia will be harder. Now, I don't plan like that. Now we think sort of really big picture, you know, God willing, there's peace, These soldiers will return home, they will need adaptive clothing, they'll need handicapped accessible buildings, and Sidewalks. Is there a role for us, like, what is our lane as a Jewish feminist organization in all of these issues that are going to come up? You know, women will get displaced from the workforce, and what do we do? And so we don't do it alone. We have large networks of women we work with and we admire and we talk to them about it, and we try to come up with some overarching ideas. We work very closely with a group called Razum, which is like the largest expat organization of Ukrainians in the United States. You know, and we, we, we shoot each other texts every day. And we're like, hey, I heard that this group spoke about, I mean, it was in the New York Times yesterday. It's like, you know, conflict related sexual violence, and what can we do to support the women who are coming out of that? What will we do if a peacekeeping force comes into the country? And we know that there will be a level of gender violence that accompanies 50,000 young soldiers plopping down on the border between Ukraine and Russia. You know, we're always thinking about these issues. So the issues are just much bigger than they used to be, and they're nothing that we can resolve ourselves. But the people that we have worked with over the last few years are extraordinary. Like, they're so delicious that every morning I wake up and we text each other, somebody's written an article, and we have become each other's cheerleaders, and they make it bearable. And I think the community. I didn't know that you could form such close relationships, like through WhatsApp and other things like that, but we do. And now whenever we visit cities, we visit each other. You know, we've often saved lives by passing evacuees through four or five sets of hands. And over time, I get to meet all of these people who have been part of this miraculous work. So for me, it's sort of like the stakes have been much higher on the thinking side, on the implementation side, but on the reward side, I mean, it makes life meaningful.
- [56:07]
Jay Frost
Well, that's it for this episode of the PM podcast. You can learn more about Project Kesher at projectkesher.org Our thanks to our sponsor, Donor Search, the world leader in AI and donor research for nonprofit fundraising. Our producer is Jack Frost, and our theme music is Moving Out, Moving in by Jay Taylor and is provided courtesy of Epidemic Sound. If you like what you heard, make sure to subscribe. Wherever you like to listen, check out our sister shows, Front Lines of Social Good and How to Raise and come back next weekend for another conversation with a leader in the world of social good. Until then, this is Jay Frost. Thanks for joining me.