Bryan Schwartzman:
From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations.

Sallie Gratch:
You have to believe in your own capacity to make change, and you have to believe in change. That change is possible, and I believe it is among people.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and today I'll be speaking with Sallie Gratch and we'll be discussing her evolve essay Project Kesher: Supporting Jewish Life in Ukraine and the Former Soviet Union. Today, once again with me for the introduction is my friend and executive producer Rabbi Jacob Staub. Jacob. How are you doing today?

Rabbi Jacob Staub:
I'm doing well, and I'm really happy to be here to connect with this podcast and Sallie.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Jacob, so glad you're here. Good to see you virtually, always love to see you in person too. So Sallie Gratch is an activist who, on May 21st will be honored at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's Graduation Ceremony in Philadelphia. She'll be receiving the Keter Shem Tov Award, which is an important award for the reconstructionist movement. You are not only a past recipient of this award, I believe in 2004. For many years you were also on the selection committee deciding who received the award, and you also really helped design the very special graduation ceremony as we know it. So I was wondering if you could just explain a little bit about more about what this award is, what it means to receive it in this particular setting. And I think that's it. I'll stop.

Rabbi Jacob Staub:
Okay. Be glad to. It really is a wonderful occasion both for the recipient and for everybody else who is there. The Keter Shem Tov is the highest honor, highest non-academic honor that one can receive from RRC and Reconstructing Judaism. And it's given for community service work, sometimes academics also, but for community service work. And I don't know who would exemplify community service better than Sallie Gratch. You'll talking more about everything that she has done, but she is a model of working for tikkun olam. She is a model of taking care of other Jewish people, and she reflects therefore the values of Reconstructing Judaism.
And as far as the ceremony goes, it's amazing when get called up by the president who's on the bema in the middle of graduation and people applaud and you're standing there and the most complimentary and laudatory bio you've ever heard gets read to you by the president. And everybody knows that it's completely true. And the recognition, as much as I would've it in my youth, is a nice thing. And it's especially nice when the recipient is so obviously well deserving. So I think it will be a lovely time at graduation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
And we can do this, we should put a link to stream graduation live on our show notes, right? Why not? Yeah, Jacob, I also found, we'll get to it. I also found Sallie's story in inspiring. There's just so many problems in the world and it's so easy to give into despair and she just has a way about her like, okay, there's a problem. Let's dive into it. And it's a simple message, but it's a powerful one.

Rabbi Jacob Staub:
I particularly was impressed by the walk from Cleveland to New York.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Yeah, my plantar... I'm feeling my plantar fasciitis just thinking about it. So yes, that's a wonderful, beautiful explanation. Today we're going to be talking about Sallie Gratch's path as an activist with her work in the anti-nuclear movement to her first meeting with Soviet Jews in the late 1980s. And ultimately her decision to step back, and what that says about leadership. Just a little more background and we'll get to it.
Gratch, of the Chicago area founded Project Kesher in 1989 to support a growing network of Jewish women leaders in Belarus, Georgia, Russia, Moldova, and Ukraine. And the idea was to empower and engage women to support Jewish life in post-Soviet states. And this was at a time when most of the organized Jewish world was focused on getting Jews out of these places. Gratch was among those who was really thinking about how to folks, how to help folks lead Jewish lives who wanted to stay there.
Ultimately, most Jews have left the former Soviet Union, but hundreds of thousands have opted to stay. And of course, with the onset of in February 2022 of the war, Russia's Invasion Project Kesher Ukraine, and by the way, we don't get into this so much, but there are several project Kesher offshoots that became independent organizations. Project Kesher Ukraine provided food and medicine for 30,000 people, distributed cash support of more than $110,000, and facilitated more than 8,000 evacuations, which is really saving lives. And more recently, it's working on distributing first aid rape kits. This is the realities of war and the Russian invasion. These kits have Plan B emergency contraception, and it's also working with Ukrainian OBGYNs in obtaining and distributing both basic and critical medical supplies.

Rabbi Jacob Staub:
Now, before we start the interview, a reminder. All of the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. The essays are not required reading for the podcast, but we recommend checking them out to get further enrichment and understanding of the issues.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Thank you, Jacob. And by the way, we'll have... You can find more information out about Project Kesher in our show notes, on our fireside webpage. So, okay. Onto our guest. Sallie Gratch, welcome to the program. It's wonderful to have you.

Sallie Gratch:
Thank you. Thank you Bryan. And I'm very honored to have this opportunity. Thank you for asking

Bryan Schwartzman:
And mazel tov in advance on the Keter Shem Tov Award, which you'll be see getting at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's graduation. So I guess I wanted to go back and there's so much to talk about specifically with the former Soviet Union in Ukraine today. I wanted to go back about 40 years. You told me a story when we talked a couple of months ago off Mike, about having a very alarming dream about nuclear annihilation. And I guess I wanted to hear about that dream, and what you did with it. I have a dream and I tell it to my partner and we both kind of laugh and say, it doesn't make sense. You had a dream and changed your life and impacted the world. So I guess I wanted to hear how that happened, what your thinking was after waking up.

Sallie Gratch:
Well, this happened, oh my gosh, it had to have been somewhere around 1985. And that was a time in my life where I was beginning to get involved in peace activism by getting signatures at markets or in front of grocery stores to abolish nuclear weapons. And whatever people could do by, and yet stay in their own home setting to try to change the world and keep the world from blowing up. And at the time, if you'll remember back then, 40 years ago, we were very much at odds with then Soviet Union. One night when I went to sleep, I had this dreadful nuclear dream, very vivid, where I looked and I saw this huge nuclear cloud, which was evidence that a bomb had been dropped. And all I could think of and all I could hear saying to myself was, I'm too late, I'm too late.
And the horror of that being too late when I woke up was, no, I'm not too late. There is something I can do. And as life goes, and I think when any of us look back over our lives, we marvel at how things just dovetail with one another. When you need something, oh my gosh, something comes out of the blue. And for me it was the recruitment for the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament. A gathering of people who were committed to stopping a nuclear war by walking from Los Angeles to Washington DC. Walking through towns, creating a community of devoted people, devoted to nuclear disarmament, and spreading the passion of the importance of not letting this happen. And actually they came through Evanston, and I found out where they were meeting, I remember looking at the different, much younger people than me, sitting around each about to talk about what they were leaving behind to join this peace march.
And I thought in my own mind, I'm giving up so much to join this peace march. And I ticked off what some of the issues were. My mother had just died, so my father was alone, my daughter was about to go off to college. And thirdly, my son had just been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, one of my sons. And I thought, those are reasons for me not to go, but I really want to go. And so I listened to what other people were giving up. I couldn't believe how much more they were giving up than I, how so much more important it seen this issue was to them. And to say, not to surprise you, I joined the Great Peace March, but not until it actually came to the Midwest because I had a contract with a job in a school that I had to fulfill.
It was a moving community where we dragged everything from porta potties to kitchens to sinks on wheels for washing up. An amazing group of people camped out every night, and everybody had a job. And the job I chose, and here again is the connection to Judaism, I decided that what I wanted to do on this march was to connect with Jewish communities as we walked along the road, which meant getting in touch with synagogues. This was before cell phones. My connection was with Arthur Waskow and Jeff Dakrow at the Shalom Center. You all know him well.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Arthur Waskow's been on this podcast actually.

Sallie Gratch:
Oh, really? Not a surprise. Not a surprise. He belongs on this podcast. And so without cell phones, I would look for telephone booths and I would call in to find out, as we approached a town, say Youngstown, Ohio, I would call and find out what are the synagogues that would be somewhere close to the March route. And then I would be responsible for getting in touch with those synagogues, and making arrangements to connect up with them at their Friday night services. And bring with me a group of Jews from the Peace March.
And it was just remarkable. You have to understand, and you probably know that when you're with like-minded people, you think you can do anything, and you think that what you believe everyone else is sure to believe. But anyway, so that's really how it started was realizing that if I was so horrified that that bomb really did explode over Wisconsin, and I maybe could have prevented it in a dream than in real life. I could do it too.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I guess related to that, but I wanted to ask, because you faced probably what all of us face to some level in deciding whether to get involved in some level in a social justice cause is we have people who are reliant on us, we have obligations, we have jobs. How do you make that calculation? Well, maybe my father could do without me for a little while because this cause is so important, or with you it wasn't a choice, it was I have to do this. I guess I was wondering if you could offer any advice to people who might be faced with that choice or those considerations, or have 10 reasons why they shouldn't go on that march.

Sallie Gratch:
It's feeling compelled in your soul that this is part of what you need to do. And you see, here's where I think who you are, how you're brought up, what your sense of self-belief is. And if you really believe your presence in something is more important than being somewhere else, you do it. You just do it. I know that doesn't answer it. But I think I mentioned to you, I was also brought up to believe in myself because my parents believed in me. And that's such an... You have to believe in your own capacity to make change, and you have to believe in change. That change is possible. And I believe it is among people.

Bryan Schwartzman:
And you got to the Soviet Union as a continuation of your work with peace...

Sallie Gratch:
Peace Walk. With different organizations. No longer the Great Peace March, but a new peace group called International Peace Walk.

Bryan Schwartzman:
And you first arrived there in the late eighties, I guess?

Sallie Gratch:
The first Peace Walk was right after the Great Peace March, 1987. And that was a peace walk to stop the war. Nobody Once was the tagline. That was the summer of 1987, and that's where I met Svetlana Yakimenko, the woman who I eventually teamed up with in the Soviet Union.

Bryan Schwartzman:
And you met her in Kyiv or?

Sallie Gratch:
No, I met her in what is today Russia, but was then the Soviet Union in the town of Solnechnogorsk.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Thank you for pronouncing it so I didn't have to mangle it.

Sallie Gratch:
Yeah, okay. Solnechnogorsk. Yeah, met her there. And that was... I went there with the backdrop of the free Soviet Jewery movement, which was get all the Jews out of the Soviet Union, they'll all be killed. They'll be another Holocaust over there.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, a lot of Soviet Jews wanted to get out. I mean, that's...

Sallie Gratch:
Right, right. But on that peace walk wearing a Magen, David, I met a lot of Jews who said, we're not leaving, this is our home. But we don't know the first thing about being Jews, the only thing we have is Jew in our passport. So we are identified as Jews, but we don't know anything about our heritage. There were chabadniks in the Soviet Union, Orthodox Jews who were trying to gather people to their beliefs. But I saw Jews who were not necessarily attracted to Chabad, but were interested in more about their heritage. And as I saw it, the many faces of Judaism. And so from meeting with Jews, in secret, because they were afraid to reveal that they were meeting as Jews in anybody's home.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So you're not afraid of KGB following you at this point?

Sallie Gratch:
We just joked all the time, bet that guy's KGB, look at how he's looking at us. Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah, KGB was all over, and we knew that some possibility of difficulty. But you're with a group that's like-minded, and the empowerment is amazing, and what you feel you can do... Look, we're going down main streets, say just take the town of Solnechnogorsk, they clear the whole city out. They line it with people. Granted, the Soviet gov government probably said, you get out there and you line those streets and you hold this flag, but you see thousands and thousands of people coming out to greet you, and you feel like you can do anything because you suddenly have friends on the other side of the world. The Soviet people are becoming real. And the Jews who would come up to me, the lady with the Magen David and who spoke English or spoke English through a translator, were fascinated with the idea to talk to a Jewish woman who wasn't afraid to pronounce in such an overt way, her Judaism.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Not only was much of the organized Jewish world focused on the goal of helping Jews leave the former Soviet Union, but I mean American policy, international diplomacy was there. And this had been a government that had discriminated it against Jews for decades, and basically suppressed Jewish identities so that they did know... Folks did know almost nothing when they came to talk to you. Were you at all thinking, why at all would you want to stay here when you would have a choice? Or did you immediately go to a non-judgmental, okay, these people I'm meeting need something, we need to figure out how to meet those needs.

Sallie Gratch:
Well, there's a part of my background I've not mentioned, which is that I'm a trained social worker.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Right.

Sallie Gratch:
And social workers learn and believe in the importance of listening. And so I did not go over to the then Soviet Union to tell people they ought to be leaving. I went over there to listen, and that's what I heard. And it was that summer of 87, hearing Jews say, well, tell us then what does it mean to be a Jew? And the number, strangely enough, that was given of the number of Jews thought to be remaining in the Soviet Union was 6 million, 6 million. And when I came home, all I could think of was, my gosh, that's reaching out somehow to replace the 6 million we lost in the Holocaust just sitting there. And so it was something I felt that that couldn't be ignored, that you couldn't just say, get them out, and decide that's what they need to do. 6 million people in general, were saying, I'm a Jew. I live over here. This is my home. I just want to know what it means to be a Jew. There it is.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So how then did Project Kesher, Kesher means connection, right?

Sallie Gratch:
Right.

Bryan Schwartzman:
How did Project Kesher come into being?

Sallie Gratch:
After the Peace Walk, the staff who were also people from the Great Peace March, and obviously we'd become very fast friends, got together and said, what are we going to do now? And we all agreed that getting arrested in Mercury, Nevada for crossing the line onto government property, to protest underground testing, that had to stop. That didn't go anywhere. That just was making a statement, getting arrested, sometimes being threatened with jail, most likely just dumped in the desert somewhere where you'd have other friends come pick you up. But we had to be more proactive than that. And peace marches and peace walks, not sure that was going to be a long-term future goal. So I remember we met in my house in Evanston, and one person came up with an idea for himself, and I realized something really beckoned me to go back to the Soviet, to the then Soviet Union.
I'd made a lot of friends. I had this strong desire to bring Jewish renewal to the former Soviet Union. I knew that. I didn't know how. I knew I had my friend Svetlana over there as a connection to being able to spring visas for me to get back to visit. And sort of like Hansel and Gretel, who walked through the woods and dropped little pieces of food along, or br bread crumbs along the road so they wouldn't get lost, I felt I had little evidence of people connections that I'd left behind of the ever so many Jews, of the many towns that we walked through who all said, come back, come back, tell us more, teach us more.
And I had the joint distribution committee that I was in touch with, because that's about connection, you can't do these totally these things totally alone, who were saying, there are no Jews in the small towns of the Soviet Union. They were completely wiped out. They're only in the big cities, Kyiv, Moscow, Odessa, et cetera. And I said, no. I spent two summers going through those little towns. I met Jews. They want to know about their Judaism.
Probably the first one I remember and I was always learning from people was we were in this small town, I think it was Cherkasy, which is in Ukraine today. And the room was packed. These apartments were small, you have to realize to begin with. But the room was packed. And I thought, oh, what a wonderful opportunity to tell them, there's so many different ways to be a Jew. It isn't only orthodoxy, but it is da da da da da.
And so I talked and I talked and I said, is there anything else I can share with you? And someone got up and said very much in awe, do you realize this is the first time we have all been in the same room as Jews? And that was the significance of the moment. It was not about, oh my yakity yakity. And it's like, whoa, this is a learning. This is a learning for me. And that's where I started.

Rabbi Jacob Staub:
Jacob Staub here, if you're enjoying this episode, please take a moment to give us a five star rating or leave a review on Apple podcast. These ratings and reviews really help other people to find out about the show. And we'd like to get up to 100 five star ratings. Please help us out if you have a moment. We really appreciate it. All right, now back to our conversation with Sallie Gratch

Bryan Schwartzman:
What did Project Kesher focus on in those early years, and how did you get to women? Because it seemed like at some point, you specifically...

Sallie Gratch:
Yeah, right. That's where I was headed. Well, there are a couple of things. First of all, how did I get to women? I would meet in small towns with the Jewish community. And say, we would meet in a factory. I have this vision of people huddled together in a room with warm coats on still freezing cold because there was no heat. But nonetheless, we were meeting, men and women. And this is the situation that happened again and again at the end of my talk, the men would ask all kinds of questions. The women would ask none. From their seats, the men would raise their hands, they'd make statements, everything would be translated. And at the end of the meeting when it was over, the women would rush forward and together, they just wanted to talk with me, be with me, share ideas with me.
Again and again and again. I saw the women are not part of this larger conversation. They are creating their own meeting with me alone. So when we went to... This time, I was with Svetlana, I remember because it wasn't too far from Moscow, the town called Bryansk, which continues to be in Russia today. So we went to Bryansk and I said to Svetlana, I only want to meet with Jewish women today. And she was just surprised. But again, after the meeting, somebody got up and said that famous statement, do you realize this is the first time we've met together as a group, just as Jewish women.
And I'll tell you from that point on, project Kesher took off. It truly was about women. It was about empowering women, giving women a chance to talk, to think, to express, to connect. And it felt so right, even being back home trying to recruit funds to support the work I was doing. The minute I switched to women only it felt like it bumped up like that.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I guess I don't know much about your Jewish background. Did you feel at all self-conscious about being a representative of the Jews? Or you're like, this is what these people need to talk to somebody now? I'm that person. I'm going to do it.

Sallie Gratch:
I was just totally proud of being a Jew from start to finish. My background was Reform Judaism, and it wasn't until my husband and I joined JRC in Evanston, in, oh my gosh...

Bryan Schwartzman:
Jewish Reconstructionist Community, right?

Sallie Gratch:
Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Congregation, thank you.

Sallie Gratch:
When our kids were right ready for preschool, whatever that was, 1968, 68, somewhere in there, I was introduced to Reconstructionism. And instead of a much more formalized Judaism that I grew up with through my temple in Chicago, which was Sinai Congregation, JRC without a rabbi except maybe once every four to six weeks, student rabbis would come in from the college and spend a weekend leading services, giving lectures, interacting with people. But I was introduced to a very user-friendly Judaism. So I felt thoroughly competent and comfortable in representing myself as a Jewish woman with knowledge of what my Judaism meant.

Bryan Schwartzman:
What were some of the things... I mean, what were some of the projects you were working on, or the organization was doing in those first years?

Sallie Gratch:
What was my focus? My focus was to... I brought Sveta to the United States to talk about being Jewish in the Soviet Union. We went up and down the East Coast to try to tell people they're Jews over there, and they want to know what it means to be a Jew. There's an opportunity for Jewish renewal in that part of the world, and Project Kesher can do it. So it was my voice and Sveta's voice alone. And again, another dream, it was, I can't do this alone. I need to multiply my voice. And the only way I can do that is to bring Jewish women to the other side, American Jewish women and European Jewish women, and Southeast Asian Jewish women to the Soviet Union in a conference to create a combined excitement, understanding of the situation in the Soviet Union. And by that time, let me think, that was 1994. It was then no longer the Soviet Union.
And so I remember calling Svetlana, she lived in a tiny town outside of Moscow called Pokrovka. She had no telephone, there was no phone connection at all into the town. She would have to take a train to the post office where she would initiate the call with funds. I would give her whenever I was over there to call the United States to have a conversation. And she was not excited with the idea of a conference, because she knew conferences were attended by mostly people in power, mostly men. I said, no, this is for the women who work in the office, not the men who run the office. And this is for women. This is just for Jewish women. Your job is to recruit 100 Jewish women from around your country, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, et cetera.
I will bring a hundred women, Jewish women from the United States. And the place that we met was Kyiv, Ukraine. Where I had, again worked on how do you create confidence among people over there in an American who isn't coming with money in her pocket, but with ideas and encouragement and belief in your ability as leaders and as Jews. Not Jewish women, yet, I wasn't there yet. So that was the agenda of one person with, and here's where that word chutzpah comes in, because the Soviet Jew remote movement was still strong in this country.
And I remember, what was it? The woman who ran the Soviet Jewery Office here said, we're getting the Jews out. Anyone who remains you can work with. She said, but there won't be any. So wouldn't that... If you believed you had just spent two summers meeting Jews who were saying, I care about living here. I'm a Jew. I want to know what it means to be a Jew. Wouldn't you say, I have friends over there, they're counting on me. I need to produce for them.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So how many women attended that conference, and what came out of it?

Sallie Gratch:
100 voices from this country who were totally empowered to talk about Project Kesher in their own communities and getting a financial base to it. The women who came from over there were totally empowered to not having gone to a conference where they sat and listened to people talk all day, but they sat in circles with translators and talked about things that each woman cared deeply about. So they had an important experience in personal empowerment and self discovery. And we had trips out to villages around Kyiv that I knew of where I had connections where they welcomed Americans and other Jews from their country. Was that still 19... I think the conference was 1996, right?

Bryan Schwartzman:
That rings a bell from what I've seen online.

Sallie Gratch:
Okay. So what came out of it was a lot of voices, a lot of voices than just this one voice, which is what was needed. And the explosion of the organization onto the world scene in Australia, in South Africa, in Yugoslavia, in England. The chutzpah had no end. When I was organizing for the conference, somebody said to me... I'd never organized a conference before, but somebody said to me, you need a keynote speaker. You got to get somebody who really has a zing to her name. And somebody said, oh my gosh, Alice Shalvi from Israel is in Chicago. You ought to get in touch. I'd never been in touch with Alice Shalvi. I'd heard the name, but I called her and I said, I'm organizing an international conference of Jewish women in Kyiv, and I'd like you to be the keynote. And Alice said, I don't know who you are. I don't know what you're doing, but I'll come and I'll bring a delegation from Israel. And that happened again and again and again. It was so on track and it was so exciting. Blu Greenberg was another. Somebody said...

Bryan Schwartzman:
Orthodox Jewish feminist, right?

Sallie Gratch:
That's right. Blu Greenberg came.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I hate to jump ahead, but hearing Kyiv and Ukraine mentioned so much, it's hard for the mind not to go to what is happening there today. I know you're not involved in a day-to-day basis. You used to be because Project Kesher has grown to be much bigger than a couple person shop. But can you talk at all about what the organization is doing today to help Jewish women there?

Sallie Gratch:
I'd really love to. The foundation of Project Kesher has been to develop a grassroots network to help women connect with one another, to express what their needs are as Jewish women, and to appreciate the fact that not only Jewish women are important in their lives, but non-Jewish women as well as they call it, they're non-Jewish sisters. So this incredible grassroots network from the get-go was developed within Project Kesher in the then former Soviet Union.
That grassroots network has been the lifeline to saving lives today in Ukraine because, and not just for Jewish women, non-Jewish women and their families as well, because women are connected. Without connection, you can't save a life. You can't know what's needed. If people are connected, they can let you know. If people have resources, they can get the resources where they need to be. And that's where Project Kesher's strength is today. They continue to track where women in their network are, no matter where they land outside of Ukraine, outside of the former Soviet Union.
And so my hope that the concept of Project Kesher, Jewish women working together to build stronger lives, not only as women, but as Jewish women, is actually going to come to fruition. Because we have our leaders now in Poland, in, I'm trying to think, in England. And these are women who were doing outstanding work before this war began and continue to do outstanding organizing, organizing work in the countries where they've landed.
And I would like to add that just based on why I've stepped back as founder, because I believe strongly that if an organization, and I'll say a women's organization can be strong and endure, it needs to have new leadership. And with a founder always in the background, that leadership's not going to emerge. The founder needs to become a support to the system, but not a key pin. So there are amazing younger leaders in Project Kesher today.

Bryan Schwartzman:
How difficult has it been for you to see read about, see the devastation in places where you spent so much time and have so much connection?

Sallie Gratch:
Exactly. As we read in the newspaper, yet another city that's been totally destroyed. Unbelievable. Inhumane. Fortunately in this country, we don't know war, but you can feel the impact of war when you know that town. And you knew it. There's a town called Uman that was just recently bombed, and it's also the birthplace of Reb Nachman of Breslov whose home we once visited.

Bryan Schwartzman:
And there's an orthodox pilgrimage there, at least was I think before the war started. To the grave site.

Sallie Gratch:
Right. Yeah. That's in Uman, yeah.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Some people consider Rebbe Nachman a forerunner of modern Jewish literature and connect him to Kafka. So not just for the Orthodox. So I mean, obviously there's this terrible war which has disrupted everything, but can you give us some sense of the impact that Project Kesher has made in on Jewish life in countries that are actually at war with each other? When you think about Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

Sallie Gratch:
Right, that's the sad part, is that these are women who were friends with one another and now are yes, at war with one another. It's as my friends Svetlana has said, with Russia back on the monster platform, we're right back where we started from with our two countries, Russia and the United States. That all of our efforts to bring countries together seem to have slipped through our fingers. But I think that what Project Kesher has done so well during this war is it's recognized what happens to women in war, and how can we help them. And issues, how do you prepare women for the probability or even inevitability of rape?

Bryan Schwartzman:
Wow.

Sallie Gratch:
What do you do to help women talk to their daughters about that? How do you help women dealing with general hygiene, monthly hygiene during war? How can you help them continue with that? These are issues that have never been in the forefront of women in war. We know women get raped, but what does a rape kit look like? How do you make it? How do you distribute it?
And beyond that, how do you keep families together? How do you take care of general human needs? How do you keep people warm? And being an organization that doesn't work solo, who are the players on the scene, for example, in real estate who are finding office buildings empty while families are without homes? How do you work with real estate agencies to help convert those offices into shelters for homeless people? How do you do fundraising around purchasing generators to continue to supply electricity, which means heat and water to homes and institutions where electricity has been discontinued through bombing?
So it's about really getting into the guts of war and how do you sustain people? If you have a network that goes beyond your grassroots network, but goes right into the community itself, which Project Kesher has, you can do it. And whereas you had a grassroots network for Jewish renewal, there's now a grassroots network to save lives.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Coming back to Sallie Gratch the activist, I mean, you mentioned that the reality is tensions between the US and Russia are as high now, if not higher than they were in the eighties toward the end of the Cold War. And nuclear armament, which maybe had fallen off the radar is sort of back as a big concern now, whether it's Russia, whether it's North Korea, whether it's Iran. Do you ever get your optimism or your chutzpah dented where we're not... Think we're not making any difference? Or if not, how do you maintain sustainable optimism?

Sallie Gratch:
That's a great question, because the optimism has not left, nor the hope. That's not been dampened. It's perhaps challenged. And I see groups reorganizing, rethinking, remobilizing. I think this is the yin and yang of life. We just have to believe in ourselves and our power to bring change and others to join us in that effort.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Any other advice you would give to somebody starting out in activism, wanting to make a difference, either in their local community or with people and communities halfway across the world?

Sallie Gratch:
Yeah, I would say don't hesitate to do what your heart tells you to do, because it may feel like, oh my gosh, do that? Yes, do that. And only when you get to my age, look back and connect the dots and they will connect. They will connect. But wait till you hit your late eighties, and you'll look back and you'll say, yeah, that worked, that made sense. And don't hesitate. Do it.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Sallie, thank you for a wonderful conversation, and thank you for all you've done on behalf of Jewish communities and for your words today. And I'm glad you'll have the chance to have your work recognized by a movement that you're part of.

Sallie Gratch:
Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I just hope... As you get older, what you really want to do is serve by example, and to share that example is important. And thank you for putting it out there. I appreciate it.

Bryan Schwartzman:
And thank you for your example.
So what did you think of today's episode? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about curating meaningful conversations, and that includes you. Send me your questions, comments, feedback, whatever you've got. You can reach me at BSchwartzman@ReconstructingJudaism.org. That's my real email address.
We'll be back soon with an all new episode.
Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub, and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song, Ilu Finu is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm Bryan Schwartzman, and I'll see you next time.