ORT America Brings Education Around the World
A Celebration of 130 Years
By Marla E. Schwartz
ORT America’s Florida Region recently held its 130th Anniversary Celebration & Visionary Campaign Opening Brunch with its theme “ORT Visionaries Creating the Future Today” at the Polo Club of Boca Raton. ORT, which means organization through rehabilitation and training was founded in 1880 and has evolved into a multifaceted, universal alliance of training programs. It has established an astounding record of producing more than three million graduates from its schools, colleges and international programs. ORT America has a national board with national and regional offices, 400 chapters and couldn’t survive without the help of numerous volunteers who diligently raise funds to keep its many schools open, to make sure these schools are equipped with the most recent technological educational tools and supports its international programs, as well.
The 130th celebration began when co-chairs Lois Dermer and Barbara Siegel conducted their welcoming and opening remarks to a crowd of 165 people. Lois is from New York and came to Florida with her husband Arthur thirteen years ago. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College and has two Masters Degrees, one from Hofstra University and the other from Brooklyn College. Lois became an ORT member in 1970. Barbara joined ORT in 1972 and she eventually served as President of the North Woodmere-Hewlett Chapter of the South Nassau Long Island Region and has served ORT in numerous capacities. They both have extensive teaching backgrounds in New York.
Lois opened the event by remarking about the recent earthquake in Chile. “We do have a school in Chile and I would just like to very, very briefly update you on (the situation),” she said. “The National Director of ORT Chile said that ‘at 3:40 AM on the last Shabbat of our summer holiday just a few short days away from the first day of classes at schools throughout Chile, the earth moved; ORT in Chile has two headquarters which both seem to be alright and all personnel are safe and sound.’ Robert Singer, Director General of World ORT, said, ‘ORT has been actively working in Chile for more than five decades and we have a very good history in Chile and is home to our Latin America headquarters and we will continue to monitor the situation.’
“Today has great significance to us and all of you as we celebrate the milestones and achievements of ORT throughout the generations,” Lois continued. “We will also hear personal testimonies of ORT Alum and students about the quality of the education they received in ORT schools and programs. We will also speak about our 2010 campaign goals and objectives.”
Then Barbara took the helm. “Our personal life’s journey has been to serve in the field of education,” she began. “As educators, Lois and I, when we saw first-hand, the direct impact of our teaching and training in the classroom, our commitment everyday was to ensure a bright future for each of our pupils. Our own parents understood the value of an education and worked their hardest during their most difficult years to provide quality education for us and in turn, we’ve passed this core Jewish value onto our children and grandchildren. We believe that through education we are creating a paradigm shift in a child’s life giving them the opportunity to change a path of poverty with little or no hope for the future to becoming the best they can be and have choices in their lives. Education makes a difference and opens the door for our students to lead independent lives with dignity and pride as contributing members of their communities and society and this is why we became involved in ORT so many years ago.”
Barbara continued to explain how volunteer efforts have made it possible to educate “the students of today and tomorrow in fields of study that we never could’ve imaged years ago. Science, Robotics, Nanotechnologies, Smart Boards linked with computers and individual stations, teacher trainings, laboratories with high caliber technology, virtual learning with online training and tutoring with specific funding to lift up the underserved and underprivileged.”
These women have made great strides in their ORT efforts by traveling to places with ORT programs in locations such as Cape Town, South Africa, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Moscow, Russia. “These visits have left an indelible impression upon us and reinforce the moral imperative of our volunteer efforts,” Lois pointed out.
The invocation was then presented by esteemed ORT member Shirley Sokolsky. She opened her remarks by thanking God for “giving us eyes to see” and recognized the ongoing need for vocational and technological training in countries around the globe.
“By bringing the latest in high-tech training, as well as a Jewish education, to all our students from Israel to Russia from India to Argentina … to hear the voices of the disadvantaged in Israel who yearn for the opportunity of ORT’s expertise” are key elements, said Shirley. She then spoke about the science technology initiative that’s reaching 40,000 disadvantaged youngsters in over thirty of ORT’s campuses in Israel’s border communities. “These students at risk … will be technologically prepared to enter Israel’s high-tech work force,” she said. “Each of us is a Queen Esther committed to rescuing and responding with education. As visionaries we in ORT America continue to help create tomorrow today and every day.”
After Shirley’s moving invocation Elaine Bernstein stirred the audience with a mesmerizing interpretation of the Israeli National Anthem, Hatikvah as well as the Star Spangled Banner and then the Hamotzi (blessing before the meal) was recited very beautifully by Jona and Anny Lerman. Then it was time for a delicious brunch buffet. Afterwards there was a Mission and Mitzvah Video called “ORT American Mission & Mitzvah” (mitzvah means an expression of human kindness) shown to the gathered guests, an Introduction of Special Guests and the ORT America “Tzedakah” (charity) Message was presented. According to wordi.com, “there are eight levels of Tzedakah in Jewish tradition, ranging from publicly giving funds, so that the donor and recipient both know who each other is, to providing means by which a needy person can become self-sustaining.”
At this time in the program Esteban Koffsmon, an Alumnus of the ORT High School in Buenos Aires, Argentina, spoke about his ORT experiences. He graduated in 1993 from the ORT Technical School and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture with honors; a Masters in Architecture in Urbanism in 1999 at the University of Buenos Aires School of Architecture Design & Urbanism. He recently graduated from Columbia University with a Master’s degree in Real Estate Development and Finance. He spoke to the crowd about his personal ORT story. “The most important thing is to try to communicate how important what I learned in school was to me and how it contributed to my career,” Esteban said.
“ORT in Argentina is very popular as it has more than 7,000 students and two large schools and it means a lot to the Jewish community. So it’s in the process of expanding in order to accommodate everyone,” he explained. “ORT in Argentina is giving the students the tools and the possibilities to do something on their own no matter what you study, so you will always have a degree and that’s something that’s valuable.”
The next speaker was Julia Toubiyan a student at Bramson ORT College in Forest Hills, New York. She’s a delightful young woman who immigrated to the United States with her family from Iran in 2009 to have the basic freedoms and obtain the education that is denied to the Jewish people in that country. She was awarded a full-year scholarship upon her acceptance in Bramson through the Robert and Margaret Bloom Scholarship Program. “This group makes immigrants to this country hopeful about their futures in world Jewry,” she began. “This organization used to have a branch in Iran before the revolution. ORT was the connector for the Iranian Jews for the new skills, different languages and progress. Although I was a successful student in Iran they didn’t let me enter the high school that I chose because I was Jewish. In the United States I didn’t feel comfortable studying in English so I needed a school which could guide me for my future educational decisions. I decided to become a pharmacist.”
Then the Keynote Speaker, the dynamic and The Honorable Zevin Auerbach, gave a rousing speech. He started an ad agency in 1947 with forty-seven dollars in his pocket and twenty years later Zimmerman acquired the company, he became a board member, and this agency is now the nation’s sixteenth-largest ad agency with billings in excess of 1.5 billion dollars. Among his many other notable accomplishments he was elected to the city commission of Aventura in 2003 and as always is devoted to philanthropic work that benefits children and emphasizes education. In 2003 he became involved with ORT America in the Greater Miami Region. At the recent ORT America Convention he became a new member of the ORT America National Board. Additionally, he’s a devoted student of Kabbalah. “I hope you’re all excited because I’m excited and I’ll tell you why,” he said. “There are two reasons I’m excited today; one, I have been trying to get into the Polo Club of Boca Raton for thirty years (the audience laughs and applauds) and today I pulled up again and this time the security guard with the gun looked at me a little crossed-eyed and I looked back and him and said the magic words, ‘I’m with ORT’ and those gates opened. The other reason I’m so excited is because I’m going to pay tribute to a special group of people sitting right in front of me, you. Paying tribute because you have and continue to change the world. What do you mean change the world … with you there’s no Esteban and Julia.” He then tells a beautiful Kabbalistic story involving angels in which one angel repairs the barn of a rich couple in order to hide the pot of gold from their greedy hands and the poor woman, who treated them like royalty had her cow sacrificed by the elder angel, so the angel of death would spare her life. “The secret to life is that you never know what’s about to happen unless you look to the big picture,” Zevin said. “Education is one of those things you never know about, but ORT knows what education can do.”
He concluded his speech and then the closing remarks and raffle drawing concluded this most welcome experience. ORT welcomes you to contact the organization for more information. You can go to its website: , call: 561-997-1072 or email: .
A native of Toledo, OH and a graduate of Kent State, Marla E. Schwartz has been a professional journalist since she was a teenager. She’s a Senior Writer for Miami Living Magazine, and a freelance writer for CRAVINGS South Florida in Aventura, as well as Around Wellington Magazine, Lighthouse Point Magazine, and P.A.N.D.O.R.A. An avid photographer, her images have appeared in numerous Ohio publications, as well as in Around Wellington Magazine, Lighthouse Point Magazine, Miami Living Magazine, The Miami Herald, The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and The Palm Beach Post. She has had numerous plays published and produced around the country. Her short play, America’s Working? was originally read at First Stage in Los Angeles and in the same city produced at the Lone Star Ensemble. It was then produced at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL and taken to an off-Broadway playhouse by its producers Adam and Carrie Simpson. Her piece, The Lunch Time Café, was a finalist for the Heideman Award, Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has also written a handful of screenplays with one opted for production a few years ago. Feel free to contact her at: .