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Dec. 9, 2005
Moving the mission on
Incoming Hadassah leader has big plans.
IRENA KARSHENBAUM
The new national president of Hadassah-WIZO is refreshingly honest.
Sandy Martin is warm and approachable, welcoming a reporter with
danishes and coffee as we settle in for an interview in her comfortable
living room.
Martin speaks openly about her life, including her father's early
death from cancer – and shows a genuine interest in her interviewer.
But as soon as the tape recorder comes on, she takes on her official
role of Sandy Martin, the incoming national president of the Hadassah-WIZO
Organization of Canada, a position she officially began for a three-year
term on Nov. 23.
Martin is the 19th national president since the 1917 founding of
Hadassah-WIZO in Canada, and the first from Alberta. She is taking
the position after serving three years as the national vice-president
and 25 years of volunteering.
Hadassah-WIZO is dedicated primarily to health and education projects
in Israel. The organization's crown jewels are the Hadassah Hospital
in Jerusalem and the Assaf Harofeh Hospital in Zerifin. The extraordinary
work of the thousands of women volunteers has not gone unnoticed:
in 2005, the Hadassah Medical Organization was nominated for the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Martin speaks passionately about Hadassah and the important role
it plays in women's lives, helping Israel and being active members
of the local community.
"We help women," she said simply. "Women become friends
and we also believe in the same vision: a Zionist vision. We believe
in the projects we support in Israel. But at the same time, what
we do in Canada is we partner with certain organizations."
Hadassah-WIZO has partnered with women's shelters and provides scholarships
across the country.
"We believe not only in benefitting Israel, but to inspire
women to get involved in their own community," said Martin.
Hadassah-WIZO, she observed, doesn't just take of its member volunteers.
It gives back to them as well, through personal and professional
development programs such as speaking and fund-raising courses.
"Our organization benefits from women's expertise and helps
to develop women's expertise," said Martin.
She attributes the longevity of many members' involvement –
a number of them are in their 80s - with Hadassah's flexibility:
"The reason that women stay involved for so long," she
said, "is that women can come and go with the organization.
You give what you can."
It is thanks to this flexibility that Martin has stayed with Hadassah
since the age of 25. In that time, she has married and raised two
children while still being a volunteer member. After her children
left for university, she felt that the time was right for her to
take on a bigger role.
Martin may well have inherited her Zionist passions. She's the granddaughter
of Morris Soskin, founder of the Zionist Movement of British Columbia.
There is a certain sweet irony that she was installed as the president
of a national women's Zionist organization at last month's Hadassah
National Convention in Vancouver, where her family's Zionist roots
were seeded.
A longtime Calgarian, Martin lived in Vancouver in the early 1980s,
where she was a founding member of the Macher chapter, which is
still active to this day. Her twin sister, Susan, and the rest of
her family still live in Vancouver and are active members in the
Jewish community.
Martin is distinctly aware and concerned about the current world
political climate and has big plans for Hadassah-WIZO.
"All the things that are happening in the world today, such
as anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism – as an organization, we
have a role to play," she said. "We can tell the world
all the important things and contributions Israel has given to the
world, such as technology, medicine, ways of eradicating terrorism."
Martin wants to bring federal and local Canadian politicians to
Israel, so they can relay their experiences back to their home communities.
"Israel is not to be a well-kept secret," she said. "We
have to counteract a lot of the things we hear in the media. We
do public affairs seminars, but I think we can be more vigilant.
We can work together with other Jewish organizations."
It's a big responsibility to undertake, but then, in terms of energy
and passion, Hadassah-WIZO seems to have chosen the right woman
for the job.
Irena Karshenbaum is a freelance writer living in Calgary.
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