Meet One of PANIM’s Young Jewish Activist Award Winner

PANIM, the Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values based in Maryland, runs seminars throughout the year for over 1,000 Jewish high school students throughout the U.S. The seminars focus on Jewish values, public policy, political advocacy and social action, and PANIM awards one outstanding student each year with the Aaron Goldman Young Jewish Activist Award. This year, the recipient was 22-year-old Ilana Cohn, from West Hartford. Below is her acceptance speech, in which she talks about her community service and Tikkun Olam.

Ilana Cohn, 2004 Aaron Goldman Young Jewish Activist Award Winner's Speech

There is a certain look that grandmothers have when they push down their glasses and peer at you from above. There is a certain amount of caring and a certain amount of sternness that comes across in the tenderness of their eyes.

I know such eyes because I know Peggy Busari. Peggy, a strong, round-faced, African American woman, is a grandmother and a community leader in the small city of Middletown, Connecticut. Over the past few months, Peggy has served as president of the North End Action Team, or NEAT, a grassroots neighborhood organization in the low-income northern side of town. NEAT originated in 1997 in response to the drug-related murder of a sixteen-year-old boy in the neighborhood. Peggy, as president of NEAT, leads the monthly meetings that bring together the diverse voices of the neighborhood: the older Italian landlord, the quiet and patient black grandfather, the young Latina mom. The eyes that look out at the group assembled around our conference table remind me of the eyes that look at a five-year-old child and ask, "Yes? This had better be good." Peggy brings up items for discussion: the status of the community policing initiative, the plots available in the community garden, the jobs available at the new hotel on Main St. When she looks out at the group and talks, Peggy's warm, grandmotherly way is what holds together and soothes the many voices and interests gathered around the table.

How did I, a middle-class Jewish girl from West Hartford, Connecticut, attending Wesleyan University, come into contact with Peggy Busari? Participating in PANIM el PANIM four years ago impressed upon me the importance of working for the type of social change that NEAT represents. On PANIM, making a difference in the world did not seem distant or elusive, but a tangible possibility. Participating in a community project, while thinking about the Jewish values motivating this activity, was tremendously empowering. PANIM made me see that we are all created in God's image, and therefore, we all deserve to enjoy fulfilling lives. A Jew's obligation is to ensure that all can achieve this quality of life. I have devoted so much of my time and energy during my undergraduate years to Peggy Busari and her neighbors because of the drive for social change that PANIM inspired in me.

Creating a group of volunteers from Wesleyan University and the Middletown area to work in the North End was a challenge. Despite much lip service paid to all the right causes, Wesleyan students didn't seem to care about the community of lower-income people just off the campus. I was determined to bridge that divide. As I spent more time in the North End, I realized more and more: Wesleyan students were potential partners with NEAT, but no one was organizing them. I decided to take on that task. Each community had something to gain. Inspired by Peggy's beaming face, I gathered more individuals into my work. The group that I began, made up of both Wesleyan students and local residents, now creates and distributes a quarterly newsletter, plans social activities for children and families, and generally serves as a liaison between Wesleyan student volunteers and the North End.

Since my time at PANIM, I have participated in a variety of community service activities: tutoring a number of elementary school students, serving food and washing dishes at the local soup kitchen, building with Habitat for Humanity. But NEAT is different from all of these activities. NEAT, and grassroots community organizing in general, purposefully directs people beyond doing good deeds and towards working on more long-term social and political objectives. My attraction to NEAT came from an interest in working to create positive social change with the people who live around me. This is only possible, I have discovered, when we become partners with the individuals in a community, helping people to help themselves. According to Maimonides, this is the highest form of tzedakah.

Though it has only existed for less than a year, the Needs and Resources Committee that I created has brought substantial changes to NEAT and the North End as a whole. We have standardized the community newsletter and distribute it to thousands of North End residents and stakeholders. We have hosted a fall Harvest Party to clean the beds of the community garden before winter, and we had a big Earth Day Clean Sweep in late April. We have updated and consolidated the organization's database of members. Not all of these activities are fun. After the first round of distributing newsletters door-to-door, volunteers no longer jump at the opportunity to pass the newsletters around a few extra streets. Working with NEAT, I have found that grassroots organizing is slow work, requiring patience. The frequent smiles our efforts seem to generate are our modest reward. What keeps me coming back to NEAT are the many new people who have been touched by our work. We pass the newsletters around the neighborhood, or weed the community garden, believing that we will inspire and enlist the next wave of community leaders.

The value for human life espoused by PANIM is at the heart of the North End Action Team's philosophy. That I have been able to share and foster that sense of self-worth with other individuals in the North End is what keeps me working with NEAT. Each experience leaves me hoping that next time I come to a monthly meeting I will see a new pair of grandmother's eyes peering at me from across the conference table, a vibrant reincarnation of Peggy, once again seeking the very best from all those gathered around the table. The circumstances in the North End of Middletown, Connecticut, are a far cry from those of my hometown of West Hartford, but I have learned that it is a place where change, empowerment, and knowing one's own worth are all possible. I feel proud that I have played a small part in that.

PANIM tied together for me the many strands of this path: social activism, the importance of political advocacy in initiating change, the value of locally-based initiatives, and Jewish values. I now see that all of these elements brought me to my work with the North End Action Team. Above all, PANIM infused in me, and all of the program's participants, a sense of optimism that change was truly possible. PANIM told me I could make a difference. They were right.

Many thanks to Rabbi Sid Schwarz and to PANIM for recognizing my work and the importance of local grassroots organizing. Thanks also on behalf of the thousands of other students who have similarly been affected by PANIM. Your generosity, and our work, are truly bringing about tikkun olam, the repair of the world, one neighborhood at a time.