Meet Maya Abed, IsraAID volunteer coordinator in San Diego

Other items in today’s column include:
*Global love for Israel
*Jewish American Heritage Month
*Recommended reading

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO — These are busy times for Maya Abed, who hopes that in her near future she will be even busier.

This weekend she graduates from California State University Long Beach, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in communications.  She also has signed up to learn Spanish this summer in an effort to add another language to her fluent English, Hebrew, and American Sign Language.  And, for the next several months, at least, she is working as an IsraAID volunteer coordinator with the Jewish Family Service food distribution program in San Diego County.

While doing all that, she is trying to build up the IsraAID organization in San Diego County, so that in times of recovery from disasters such as the coronavirus pandemic, there will be plenty of local volunteers who can come to the aid of San Diego County residents in need.  Her volunteer program is conducted under the aegis of IsraAID, which is a non-governmental disaster relief organization embodying the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repair of the world.   One can learn more, or sign up to volunteer, via this website.

Abed, daughter of Eyal and Dvira Abed, also anticipates completing the application process this summer to make aliyah to Israel, where her parents were born.  She plans to enroll next semester at Tel Aviv University for a master’s degree in public health with a focus on emergency and disaster management.

According to Seth Davis, the New York City-based CEO of IsraAid for the U.S, the amount of food pouring into food banks across the country is quadrupling, whereas the number of volunteers available to help in the distribution of that food has been diminishing.  This is largely because elderly volunteers are considered most vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic and are sheltering in place.  In response, IsraAID has been encouraging its cadre of young volunteers to work at local food banks.  Whereas in San Diego County, a major food bank is run by Jewish Family Service, in Los Angeles County, IsraAID partners with the YMCA, and with other such organizations across the country.

Abed says she has been working mainly in the warehouse, unpacking and sorting food for future deliveries.  Other volunteers may bring food to shut-in families, or help at food distribution stations throughout the county.

Growing up in San Diego County, Abed was active in Israel Scouts, which helped elementary school through high school students with connections to Israel to learn together about Israeli culture, speak to each other in Hebrew, and participate in communal events.  After graduation from Canyon Crest Academy, she enrolled at Cal State Long Beach, becoming involved in 2017 with the Israel American Council’s (IAC) student organization known as Mishelanu, translated roughly as “of our own.”  As president of the campus organization, she built it from six to 15 members, which was considerable progress on a campus not known for attracting many Israeli students.

She recalled attending a forum sponsored by StandWithUs that included a representative of IsraAID, and “I fell in love immediately, I knew that was what I wanted to do, that I wanted to be part of that.” The speaker told of IsraAID’s mission “to build resiliency in communities impacted by disasters and I just thought it was so inspirational,” Abed told me.

During the winter break of 2018-2019, Abed took a course at Miramar College for EMTs, which proved useful during the summer of 2019 when IsraAID sent her for two months to Puerto Rico.  She lived in the capital city of San Juan, while working mainly in the community of Patillas, which two years before had been devastated by Hurricane Maria.

She recalled the first time she drove through the community, where she saw “empty homes scattered through the area, large battered windows, open roofs, roads like a roller coaster, and there were trees all leaning in the same direction, with torn limbs, because of the hurricane.”

“What makes IsraAID so unique is that we believe in long-term development,” Abed said.  “Other organizations will go out into the field for a few weeks or months, and then pull out, whereas IsraAID will stay for years.  Once a community is impacted by disaster, it can take a lot more than a few months to rebuild. You have to take into account many factors.  It is not just the casualties and rebuilding homes, but rebuilding the economy and rebuilding their livelihoods there.”

Because of her emergency medical training, one of Abed’s roles in Puerto Rico was to teach volunteers such techniques as cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR), bleeding control, and other techniques of first aid.  She also helped in recruiting volunteers from such Jewish communal institutions in San Juan as Temple Beth Shalom and Chabad.

The idea, she said, is to recruit and train local volunteers so they can be self-sufficient at such time that IsraAID completes its mission.  For example, she said, many areas needed water filtration systems to make certain drinking water was safe.  IsraAID volunteers taught local volunteers how to install and maintain such systems.

After completing her master’s degree at TAU, Abed said her hope is that she will be able to join a team that flies from Israel to a disaster area, wherever in the world it may be, and help that area rebuild.

“That is my dream,” she declares.  “I want to be in the field to help countries and communities rebuild.  That is my purpose.”

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Global love for Israel

*A number of readers have recommended to us the video above showing people in countries all over the world singing Hatikvah.  In particular, I’d like to thank Bob Holloway and Phil Snyder for passing it on to us.

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Jewish American Heritage Month

*In its continuing salute to Jewish Americans who have made important contributions to the United States, EMET (Endowment for Middle East Truth) on Friday profiled Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who became an important figure in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

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Recommended reading

*In a review of Mrs. America, Linda Maleh writes in New York Jewish Week that Betty Friedan was the Moses of the women’s movement.

*inewsource interviewed mayoral opponents Barbara Bry and Todd Gloria on City of San Diego budgetary matters in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

*First it was a man wearing the hood of a Ku Klux Klansman in Santee.  In the same city on Friday, another man wore a swastika face mask to a grocery store, Times of San Diego reports.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com