Danielle Pollack vividly recalls the first time she visited Hebrew University as a teen in the early 1960s. It was her first trip to Israel, and Pollack’s aunt and uncle, who lived in Israel, wanted to show her the country’s sights. “They showed me Jerusalem, which, of course, was magnificent and beautiful. On the hill in front of me was this beautiful-looking modern collection of buildings. It just made an impression on me as rising out of history – here was a new history. Seeing the Hebrew University with the buildings and the dormitories and the setting was just magical.” That vision inspired Pollack, who became a longtime supporter of Hebrew University, has served on advisory committees for Canadian Friends of Hebrew University, and has visited Israel many times since that day.
Pollack, who grew up in London before moving to Montreal, where she married and raised her family, still retains a trace of her British accent and fondly recalls other details of her early visits to the Holy Land. “My father came from a very large family from Czechoslovakia. He was one of 11 children, and part of his family got to Palestine in 1938. Others came after World War II. I have many cousins living on kibbutzim, and I spent time with them on Kibbutz Shoval, near Beersheba.”
Though she originally trained as a social worker, Pollack has enjoyed a long career in the healthcare field in Canada. In 2015, she traveled on a medical mission to Israel, where she and her group visited Hebrew University to learn about research and developments in the field of medical cannabis use at the university. During her visit, she visited the university’s School of Social Work, where she met Ethiopian women who were students in the social work program.
When she encountered the Ethiopian students, she recalled her visits to Beersheba years earlier, when she had met older Ethiopian women who were having difficulties adapting to Israeli society. “The saddest part,” she recalls of her visits to Beersheba, “was seeing older women from Ethiopia at the community center, who had come to Israel, didn’t know the language, and were illiterate. These women showed the Israelis their cooking skills because it was a way of helping them gain some confidence. They had also created some clay artwork of very primitive animals. I was introduced to what was happening in the Ethiopian community, both the good and the bad.”
Pollack was determined to help the new generation of Ethiopian women she had met at Hebrew University and made a generous gift to create a scholarship fund for Ethiopian-Israeli students studying at Hebrew University’s School of Social Work. Since that time, she has met with several of the students via Zoom who have benefitted from the fund. “They are very impressive young women, who already have children. They are fluent in English, raise a family while going to school, and are very amazing and traditional, committed Jews. The students that we’ve been supporting grew up in underprivileged circumstances. Most of them married young, had children, and then returned to school. They are social workers who have four or five children, and they are very educated women.”
Reflecting on the difficult absorption of many Ethiopians into Israeli society, Pollack recalls her trip to Ethiopia with a group of other Canadian Jews, who had been scheduled to accompany a group of Ethiopian Jewish families making aliyah. Unfortunately, the Ethiopian government refused to provide visas to most of them, and the final number of Ethiopians who were allowed to travel was less than 25. “It’s a very disturbing situation, because the Ethiopian community is waiting to go to Israel. Essentially, it’s a double-edged sword because, on the one hand, the Jewish Agency is trying to save Ethiopian Jews, and they’re bringing them to a central point and then telling them that they’re going to be going to Israel. But a lot of the Ethiopians now cannot prove that they’re fully Jewish. That has become an obstacle. They’ve been removed from their rural communities, where they lived with their people and had livelihoods, and they are in limbo in Gondar. The children have school, but it’s very, very basic. Families must live in those close quarters, sometimes waiting for years to go to Israel.”
Pollack says that being involved with others is what satisfies her most about philanthropy, and she points out that philanthropy means much more than giving large sums of money. “Philanthropy can be anything,” she shares. “It can be giving your time, which is very important, or having personal involvement, and I think that’s essential. There are people who are very philanthropic, and they give money, and that’s one activity. There are many ways to give and many ways to get involved.”
She points out that the Swords of Iron War and rising antisemitism around the world have required Jews to step up and volunteer their help. “There is a lot of pressure on the Jewish people, and I think that especially now, given what the world is going through and what Israel has gone through, we all have to give back on every level. And if it’s not money, it’s time; if it’s volunteering, that’s philanthropy as well.”
There are many ways to give and many ways to get involved in philanthropy
Pollack says that antisemitism in Montreal has increased in recent years, particularly at McGill University, where she received her degree in social work many years ago. She recalls an incident when a young woman approached her and shouted anti-Israel slogans into a megaphone. The policeman at the scene told Pollack to move on and not react, instead of warning the offending woman that she was disturbing the peace. “The attitude here is very mixed,” she says.
Pollack notes that years ago, many women did not participate in the workforce, and spent much of their volunteering in their communities. Today, most women work, and as a result, there is an even greater need for volunteers in the Jewish community than ever before. “There are people who are able to give a lot of money, but the most important thing is to be involved. That’s how we maintain Judaism. Not everybody goes to synagogue, but we can all make a commitment to the community in different ways. It is important to really involve people. It’s not only about giving money. It’s about giving time. We have to make Judaism real for people, and I think that community involvement is very important.”
This article was written in cooperation with Canadian Friends of Hebrew University.