Connection to past builds the future
Donor’s link to his roots a boon for needy community Toronto agency helps ‘adopted’ Jews of Moldova
Shortly after a 1999 visit to Moldova, Ted Sokolsky got a call from Toronto Jewish philanthropist Stephan Lewar, who was grieving the death of his only son, Richard.
Lewar, a Holocaust survivor from Poland who had made a fortune in real estate, wanted to donate to a worthy cause through the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto.
“ He was looking for a project that’d connect him with his Eastern European roots,” recalled Sokolsky, the federation’s president, who asked Lewar to consider helping rebuild the impoverished Jewish community in Kishinev — now known as Chisinau — the capital of Moldova, Europe’s poorest country. The billionaire, who by then had already given more than $30 million to charities, including local hospitals and the United Way of Greater Toronto, committed himself to a $ 500,000 gift for building the Kishinev Jewish Campus. Although Lewar didn’t live long enough to see the great facility he helped build, his generosity was remembered Tuesday by fellow Torontonians at the official opening of the 30,000square- foot community centre in downtown Chisinau. It came 102 years after an infamous pogrom in which mobs in the city killed 49 Jews and injured 500 others, spurring immigration to North America.
“ Mr. Lewar’s donation made the construction of the new centre possible,” Adam Minsky, director of the federation’s Israel and Overseas Committee, said by telephone from Moldova after the well- attended ceremony. “ He will always be remembered for his contribution to the community.” The gift from Lewar, who died last year at 91, was the largest single donation toward the $3 million project. It was initiated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an international aid group that helps Jews around the world by twinning poorer communities with wealthier ones, which help fund social and cultural programs. Kishinev was adopted by the Greater Toronto federation in the early 1990s. As the former Soviet Union broke apart, so did the social safety net in those former communist societies.
Sokolsky, who learned only recently that Kishinev was his late father’s birthplace, said he was appalled by what he saw during his three visits to Moldova.
“ The city of Kishinev is like a Hollywood set, with all these beautiful façades, but behind the façade, it is full of desolation and despair,” he recalled. “ Both the human services and physical infrastructures have collapsed. There are great needs emerging, not just for the Jewish community, but for everyone.” Leo Goldhar, who was part of a group of 22 GTA delegates in Moldova, said he was impressed with the new four- storey centre, which is built on the site of an old synagogue. Stained-glass windows complement the traditional design. The centre has brought the city’s major Jewish community organizations under one roof, providing a wide range of social, recreational and religious services to the city’s 18,000 Jews. There is a soup kitchen, health clinic, gym, library and a Holocaust centre, plus vocational training and classes in Hebrew and English. “We need to look after our
most needy, the Holocaust survivors who
have no family and are
living off a meagre pension of $ 16 ( U. S.) a
month,” said Goldhar,
73, an executive with
the joint distribution committee. The Toronto community has also pledged $ 150,000 to build a computer room with Internet access. It hopes to start a penpal program connecting Kishinev’s elderly with Russianspeaking seniors from Toronto’s Bernard Betel Centre for Creative Living.
Sokolsky said he’ll be forever thankful for the gift from Lewar, who lost his entire family during the Holocaust and outlived his wife, Sophie. She died in 2003.
“ It’s an irony how we found each other, how we found Kishinev,” Sokolsky explained. “ Life was so good for Mr. Lewar financially, but he never forgot his immigrant roots, despite his great personal pain at the time of losing his ( 41- year- old) son to a heart attack.”