Previous recipient Karyn Grossman Gershon
speaks at Jewish Women's Foundation event about her group's
work in Russia.
By Michele Dargan
Daily News Staff Writer
Palm Beach Daily News
Thursday, March 30, 2006
The Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches
has awarded $111,140 in grants designed to help Jewish women
in need, from assisting women in crisis to funding educational
programs.
In
its third year of existence, the foundation has gone from
30 trustees to more than 100. Last year, the group awarded
three grants totaling $30,000. This year, 11 programs benefited
from the grants, which were announced Wednesday at a luncheon
at The Colony.
Founding chairwoman Eileen Berman said the organization received
33 grant proposals this year.
“The trustees spent a whole year educating ourselves
on issues affecting Jewish women,” she said. “We
don’t just issue a check to those organizations. We become
partners with the organizations.”
The guest speaker was Karyn Grossman Gershon, the executive
director of Project Kesher. Project Kesher is one of the grant
recipients and the largest Jewish women’s organization
in the former Soviet Union.
Project Kesher is focused on helping Jewish women in Russia
in three areas: trafficking of women, domestic violence and
mail-order brides. She said that more than half of all Russian
wives have been battered by their husbands, as reported by
the Moscow Times.
“Approximately 36,000 women in Russia are abused each
day, and these are the reported statistics,” she said.
“Each year, about 14,000 Russian women die at the hands
of their husbands or intimate partners.
“Project Kesher and other organizations working in
this region are quickly discovering that women are ready to
be educated and that domestic violence is not a localized,
cultural phenomenon, which is what they originally believed,
and that continued silence is unacceptable,” Grossman
Gershon said. “Women in this region are quickly learning
how to lobby for better laws and enforcement.”
Trafficking of women for the purpose of sexual exploitation
is a multi-billion dollar industry and is growing in central
and Eastern Europe, she said. Prostitutes from the former
Soviet Union are so prevalent, she said, that the generic
term for prostitutes worldwide is “Natasha.” Eighty
percent of the prostitutes are believed to have been victims
of trafficking and were lured into prostitution against their
will, she said.
Grossman Gershon said that between 3,000 to 5,000 women
have been trafficked into Israel.
“Clearly it is unconscionable, from a Jewish perspective,
to traffic a human being, whether they are Jewish or not,”
Grossman Gershon said. “Many of the Johns in Israel are
Jewish, but do not consider visiting a prostitute a sin if
they are not Jewish. Moreover, the perception that Israel
is a place where Russian women are sent feeds anti-Semitism
worldwide.
” Regarding mail-order, or Internet, brides, Grossman
Gershon said the demand has increased over the years. She
said the Bush Administration passed a law this year to provide
foreign women with information about the violent criminal
history of their prospective husbands.
“Through this law, foreign women will be given critical
tools to protect themselves and often their children they
bring with them to the United States,” she said. “In
addition, the regulation contains provisions that will be
very helpful in communicating to immigrant women that are
the victims of sexual abuse, the protections available to
them in the United States.”
— mdargan@pbdailynews.com
