[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Page 6451]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              JACKIE EBRON

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, this past Sunday the Queens 
Jewish Community Council honored an important member of the staff of 
the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty (Met 
Council). Her name is Jackie Ebron and she helps serve the more than 
100,000 clients who are helped by this remarkable organization. Ms. 
Ebron, the Met Council's longest serving employee and Director of 
Crisis Intervention is an African-American whose exceptional service to 
impoverished Jewish New Yorkers was recently highlighted in New York's 
Jewish Week newspaper.
  In the past seven years the Met Council has developed 1300 units of 
special needs housing for the elderly, mentally ill and the homeless; 
every day they provide nearly three thousand poor elderly individuals 
with home care services; they provide job placement to more than one 
thousand people a year and have trained more than 20,000 home 
attendants since 1993. Their food programs impact on the lives of well 
over 100,000 people and they also provide furniture and clothing to 
thousands. The Met Council's coordination of a network of two dozen 
Jewish Community Councils across New York City helps deliver services 
where they are needed in a timely and efficient manner. The Met Council 
is also one of the most efficient non-profit organizations today. They 
spend 98% of their budget on programs and services; only 2% is spent on 
administration.
  I ask that the Jewish Week article on Jackie Ebron be printed in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

                 [From the Jewish Week, Mar. 19, 1999]

                      They Call Her `Mitzvah Mama'

                         (By Heather Robinson)

       By the time she was 8 years old, Jackie Ebron, who is soon 
     to become the first African-American to receive the Queens 
     Jewish Community Council's Chesed Award, had begun helping 
     the elderly.
       Growing up in the Grant Projects on 125th Street, her 
     family had an elderly neighbor who rarely left her apartment.
       ``My mother would never send me to the store that I didn't 
     knock on this woman's door and ask, `Do you need a loaf of 
     bread or milk?' '' recalled Ebron on a recent afternoon. ``So 
     [the motivation to help] was with was a child.''
       Ebron has channeled that motivation into more than two 
     decades of work helping the elderly and others in need. Over 
     the years, she has visited more than 5,000 needy homes and 
     helped many thousands more clients over the phone. And 
     through her work, she quickly overcame an initial prejudice: 
     ``In my background,'' she says, ``the words Jewish and poor 
     didn't go together. But there is a very big Jewish poor 
     population at the poverty level or below.''
       Now the director of crisis intervention services for the 
     Metropolitan Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty (Met 
     Council) in Manhattan, Ebron will receive the Chesed Award on 
     Sunday at the Third Annual Installation Breakfast of the 
     Queens Jewish Community Council (QJCC). Shea Stadium's 
     Diamond Club, the site of the event, will go kosher for the 
     first time in honor of the breakfast for the QJCC, an 
     organization representing more than 90 synagogues and Jewish 
     organizations throughout the borough.
       At the event, Ebron will share her honor with Jane 
     Blumenstein, family violence crisis specialist for Met 
     Council. The pair has been selected because of the 
     extraordinary dedication they bring to their work, according 
     to Manny Behar, executive director of the QJCC. He added that 
     he and other officers of the QJCC chose this year's 
     recipients, as they always do, based on character.
       ``We always give the award to someone who exemplifies 
     chesed, which is Hebrew for acts of loving kindness, and this 
     time, one of the people we selected happens to be African-
     American and non-Jewish,'' he said.
       Because the QJCC and Met Council work together frequently, 
     Behar said he has had many opportunities to observe the rare 
     sensitivity and respect for people which Ebron--whose 
     colleagues call her ``Mitzvah Mama''--brings to her work.
       Behar recently watched Ebron provide assistance to a 
     homeless, mentally ill man, and he admired her manner. ``The 
     patience and understanding she showed him were absolutely 
     inspiring,'' he recalled.
       According to Peter Brest, chief operation officer at Met 
     Council, Ebron ``combines a great and giving heart with a 
     common sense approach to problem solving.''
       While Met Council, which receives public funding, assists 
     many needy non-Jews, it also receives private funds and 
     specifically targets Jewish poverty. The result is that about 
     80 percent of Ebron's clients are Jews, a fact which is no 
     obstacle to her dedication.
       ``To me it doesn't matter what race or religion you are,'' 
     she said. ``If you are hungry or homeless, I see your need.''
       A social worker for more than 25 years, Ebron, 48, grew up 
     in Harlem, the eldest of seven children raised by a single 
     mother. She attended Washington Irving High School in 
     Gramercy, which was an all-girls school at the time.
       After graduating, she started working at Heights Senior 
     Citizens' Center, where her responsibilities entailed 
     escorting elderly people to the bank and helping them with 
     financial transactions. That was during the '70s, before 
     direct deposit, when older people carrying social security 
     checks were frequently targets for thieves.
       That job was followed by a stint as an investigator for the 
     mid-Bronx Senior Citizens' Council, a position that involved 
     a large amount of what she describes as ``leg work'' to find 
     elderly people in need.
       Met Council hired her in 1977 to work on a special project 
     arranged by a donor. In that capacity, she made home visits 
     to needy families, and reported what she observed to the 
     benefactor, who then provided financial aid to the neediest 
     cases.
       After a series of other jobs, five years ago, Met Council 
     appointed Ebron director of crisis intervention services. A 
     supervisor of six employees, she deals directly with clients, 
     working to provide them with assistance from Met Council and 
     a host of additional agencies. That assistance can take many 
     forms, such as securing job training for a young immigrant, 
     providing funds to prevent an elderly woman from being 
     evicted, or arranging temporary nursing help for a woman who 
     has just given birth to multiple children. About 65 percent 
     of her clients are elderly, 25 percent are families and the 
     rest are young single people, Ebron said.
       As an African-American woman serving the needs of a mostly 
     Jewish population Ebron has encountered resistance on both 
     sides of the racial and religious divide.
       ``I've been asked, `How come a black woman is in charge of 
     Jewish money?' '' said Ebron, adding that she responds, `` 
     `Does it matter what I look like? What matters is I'm able to 
     serve you to help you overcome your problem.' ''
       Similarly, she said, African American colleagues have 
     questioned her choice to work for a Jewish agency.
       ``I'll say to them, `My clients are Jewish. Well, I didn't 
     know. I was so focused on the fact that they're people who 
     need my help.' Usually when I answer that way there's no 
     problem, no fight . . . It seems my calling is above all of 
     that.''
       Ebron, who is single and describes herself as ``married to 
     [her] job,'' said she is gratified to work for an agency 
     which began modestly and has since launched an array of life- 
     and hope-sustaining programs.
       ``After 21 years I feel I made the right choice,'' she 
     said.

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