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July 1, 2005
JFSA's Broadway home
New location allows for greater client confidentiality.
PAT JOHNSON
Over coffee and fruit, in their freshly painted digs, the movers
and shakers of the Jewish Family Service Agency of Greater Vancouver
welcomed the public into the new, West Broadway location of one
of the community's backbone organizations.
The Jewish Family Service Agency (JFSA) provides social services
to Jewish and other Vancouverites in need, through job-match programs,
family counselling, emergency funds and housing assistance, among
many other programs. The open house, on June 23, was to showcase
the spacious new facilities of the agency. Plenty of natural light
and brightly painted walls give a sense of openness and air to the
warren of offices in the third-floor suite.
The event was of particular interest because, for the first time
in decades, the agency is located away from the core centre of the
Jewish community.
The JFSA moved from the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver
into the Wawanesa Building on West Broadway on March 1. Though there
are disadvantages to being apart from the rest of the communal institutions,
the agency's executive director said the change is positive.
"It's been wonderful," Joseph Kahn-Tietz said of the first
three months in the new location. Moving family service agencies
out of JCCs is an increasingly common trend across North America,
he said. The advantage of having the JFSA outside the JCC is that
it increases the confidentiality of the clients.
But the main reason for the move was simply that the agency had
run out of space at its JCC location. Staff had been sharing desks
and offices, working shifts to avoid piling atop one another. With
28 individual offices now, compared with 14 at the old suite, each
staff member has the space to interview clients in privacy.
"The location is good in terms of accessibility," said
Kahn-Tietz, noting that the new office is on the Broadway corridor
for public transit and close to both Granville and Burrard. "Staff
are pleased and the board is pleased."
With the new space, Kahn-Tietz said, they were able to hire three
new staff that were desperately needed, but whose hiring was delayed
due to lack of room.
With an annual budget of about $2.5 million and about 7,000 clients,
the JFSA is one of the community's largest and most influential
organizations.
Rabbi Philip Bregman, the spiritual leader of Temple Sholom who
was representing all of the city's rabbis in his role as head of
the Rabbinical Assembly of Vancouver, affixed the agency's mezuzah
during the event. But the celebration was marred by his announcement
of the passing of Naomi Gropper, a woman who had dedicated much
to the Jewish Family Service Agency and who lost her fight against
cancer about a half-hour before the ceremony. The mezuzah was dedicated
in her memory and in honor of all JFSA staff and volunteers, who
exemplify what the rabbi called "the holy opportunity to get
our hands dirty."
"Life is getting our hands dirty," said the rabbi. "You
people know this."
The work of the agency, which deals with people in the most difficult
passages of their lives, is an act of hope, Bregman said, calling
the agency's new bayit (home), "a wonderful, important place
in Jewish life."
Lani Levine, the agency's president, spoke briefly, noting the many
emotions of the day, saddened as it was by the passing of a longtime
friend of the agency, and the mixed feelings that accompany any
big change.
"We felt sad about leaving the JCC," Levine said. "But
we are filled with gratitude to be here."
Levine praised the leaders of the agency who came before her. A
wall of the office is dedicated to pictures from the past, and other
photos and memorabilia are scattered throughout the suite.
"Our founders were visionaries," Levine said. "Everyone
who's been involved has been a visionary."
The roots of the agency go back 95 years, to the founding of the
Hebrew Aid and Immigrant Society. The open house attracted dozens
of past board members, staff, presidents and innumerable volunteers
and recipients of the agency's helping hand. Though excited about
the future, Levine expressed the wish for a time when the JFSA could
close its doors.
"In a perfect world, we wouldn't need a JFSA," she said.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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