Dear Readers,
On a trip to Thailand prior to his junior year at Yale University, a young man saw something that disturbed him: teenage girls walking around with older, Western men. "It didn't take too much time to figure out this was the sex trade," Andrew Klaber told me in our interview for our "36 Under 36" issue. At an age when most students are looking strictly to party on vacation, Klaber turned his moral outrage into action, founding a non-profit to provide scholarships and healthcare to those girls and other Thai children, many of whose parents had died of HIV/AIDS.
Wall Street Humanitarian: Andrew Klaber
When asked about his many accomplishments, Andrew Klaber states the facts: summa cum laude graduate of Yale; MBA/JD from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law; investor at Paulson & Co. Inc., a leading hedge fund in New York. He sits on the boards of over half a dozen nonprofits, serves as co-chair of UJA-Federation’s Young Wall Street Division, and has run nine marathons.
But when Klaber discusses Even Ground, the nonprofit he founded in 2002 to help children in the developing world affected by HIV/AIDS, a light comes into his hazel eyes and his voice resonates with enthusiasm.
Visiting Thailand during college, Klaber saw something that distressed him: scores of teenage girls, including young teenagers, walking around with older, Western men. “It didn’t take too much time to figure out this was the sex trade, and most of these girls were in this line of work because they were trying to provide for their siblings because their parents had become ill with or had passed away from HIV/AIDS.”
Turning his outrage into action, Klaber founded Even Ground. Built on the principal of “social entrepreneurship,” or empowering young philanthropists and local communities to create and sustain their own programs, the organization, originally called Orphans Against AIDS, provided education and healthcare to 250 youth affected by HIV/AIDS in Thailand. After empowering local groups to take over, Klaber turned to other areas of need, namely South Africa and Uganda.
Today Even Ground provides academic scholarships, improved nutrition, and healthcare to over 700 children affected by HIV/AIDS. The organization also provides hundreds of women with the drug Nevirapine, which reduces the rate of congenital HIV transmission from mother to child.
Utilizing the social entrepreneurship model, Even Ground volunteers have launched and sustained numerous projects to promote education. One subdivision of Even Ground is Thanda Zulu, a financially self-sustaining company employing 100 South African women who make beaded jewelry and arts and crafts, and whose earnings help support their families.
“Thanda Zulu helps provide a living wage and promotes entrepreneurialism, not dependence,” Klaber says.
Family man: Chicago-raised Klaber, who is single, is very close with his family of origin, including his paternal grandmother Anne Klaber, 90, a Holocaust survivor. This year, he co-led a second-night seder to which he brought a gift she gave him: her 1929 hand-printed Weimar Republic Haggadah. “We are a small but close family,” Klaber says.
www.dikatole.org
Heather Robinson
36 Under 36
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Klaber is one of 36 young Jewish leaders featured in The Jewish Week's 2014 "36 Under 36" issue. Now in its seventh year, the issue profiles up-and-coming Jewish leaders making a splash on the world stage - not only in their careers, but also by giving back to the Jewish people and the world.
As coordinator of 2014's "36 Under 36" issue, it has been my privilege to select, with the help of my colleagues, from a field of hundreds of remarkable nominees. We looked for individuals notable not just in terms of their personal success in fields including business, law, media, medicine, the rabbinate, education, and the arts, but also, to paraphrase the sage Hillel, who have demonstrated they are not for themselves alone.
There's the cancer researcher, Gleneara Bates who discovered her Ethiopian Jewish roots and returned to the faith; the professional boxer,and aspiring rabbi, Yuri Foreman, who analogizes his perseverance in the ring to the spiritual perseverance life requires; and the New York State representative, Nily Rozic, born in Israel, who is expert in environmental issues and more. In hundreds of ways, large and small, they are demonstrating that the Jewish people live - and not for themselves alone.
Cure for Cancer: Gleneara Bates
First, Gleneara Bates thought she’d become a senator. She liked the idea of “arguing” on the floor of Congress. She studied political science and economics in college, and she got a law degree. Then, she went into social work here and in her native Arizona, working with children, and disseminating Sexual Health Care information to foster care agencies. “You’re working with a vulnerable population.”
Now, she’s a research assistant — junior research scientist at the Columbia Mesothelioma Center at the Columbia University Medical Center in Upper Manhattan. She works under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Taub on improving cancer patients’ quality of life.
Next: medical school and a Ph.D. program. “I want to cure cancer” — her mother is a breast cancer survivor, she says. “But I need to find out what causes it.” First, she’ll pursue the M.D. degree. Then the Ph.D.
Growing up, she always had an interest in things Jewish, but did not find out till her teens that her mother is descended from Ethiopian Jews, which means she is Jewish.
(Her mother had suffered discrimination growing up as a black Jew, and didn’t want her children to experience the same fate).
Bates has studied Judaism intensively; now she leads an observant life. Her apartment is kosher, she’s shomer Shabbat, and she’s active at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, and the Jewish Center on the Upper West Side.
Biblical name, a queen: After she discovered she was Jewish, Bates gave herself the Hebrew name of Esther, her favorite biblical character. “She was a strong person,” Bates says. “She was a complex person. I am a complex person.”
Favorite movie, a prince: Bates’ favorite film is “The Prince of Egypt,” the 1998 DreamWorks’ animated musical about the life of Moses. “I just love the story of Moses,” she says.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
36 Under 36
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Fighting for the Jewish Soul: Yuri Foreman
For Yuri Foreman, boxing, like Judaism, is about sparking one’s inner fire.
“The main person you are struggling with is yourself,” said the former World Boxing Association super welterweight champion, 33. “You need to conquer lack of motivation. You feel pain, but still have to spark this force within to keep going. With Judaism it’s the same thing — you have to master yourself and your emotions, and in the ring it is vital. ”
The first time Foreman, who is studying to be a Chabad rabbi, entered a synagogue, it reminded him of the first time he entered a boxing gym; he was, he says, “a deer in the headlights” encountering the unfamiliar and determined to conquer his fear.
His quest to become a world champion boxer — a dream he realized and will seek to repeat in a much-heralded comeback fight on June 7 against Jorge Melendez at Madison Square Garden — springs from his roots in the former Soviet Union: Foreman’s mother signed him up for boxing when he was seven because he was bullied for being Jewish.
Despite the beatings, he said, and despite immigrating to Israel at age 9, he didn’t really know what being Jewish meant until many years later in the U.S., when his then fiancée, now wife, Leyla Leidecker, took a passionate interest in the religion, and converted.
“If I hadn’t met her, I’d be a Russian non-observant person,” he said.
For the past several years, he has studied in Brooklyn with Rabbi DovBer Pinson, a scholar of Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah, to become a rabbi. He and his wife observe Shabbat with their two young boys, Lev, 3, and Elijah, 1.
Would he want his sons to box when they are older?
“A kid will either like it or hate it,” he said. “If he wants it, fine. But if it’s not his thing, that is OK because there’s a whole world out there.”
Glove story: An avid reader who loves music, among Foreman’s favorite artists are Simon and Garfunkel, especially their song — you guessed it — “The Boxer.” “Pure poetry,” he said. “On a daily basis, we are all getting hit with punches life throws us. Certain things, like loss, you can’t duck. You need strength to just keep going.”
www.yuriforeman.com
Heather Robinson
Contributing Editor
36 Under 36
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Inspired to Serve: Nily Rozic
Nily Rozic, who was elected last year as representative of the State Assembly’s 25th District in Queens, tells of two constituents who walked into her storefront office on Union Turnpike in recent days. Both needed help getting government services, both had language difficulties — one spoke mostly Spanish; one spoke Russian.
In a few weeks, she and her staff helped arrange the needed services.
Which is why Rozic, the youngest member of the State Legislature, ran for an open seat. Since being inspired by a teacher at Townsend Harris High School, “I knew I wanted to help people.”
A native of Israel, she came to the U.S. with her family when she was 2. Her parents and two brothers still live in Queens, “all in my district.”
A graduate of Solomon Schechter School of Queens, which she attended through eighth grade, active in Hillel at NYU, a member of the Hillcrest Jewish Center, Rozic is Sabbath observant. “I don’t work on Saturdays.”
Her first name, she points out, is an acronym of a biblical phrase (Netzakh Yisrael Lo Yishaker — The Eternity (God) of Israel will not lie: I Samuel 15:29), and was the name of a Jewish espionage network in Palestine during World War I.
Rozic, a Democrat, is an expert in environmental and transportation issues, and an avid supporter of Hillary Clinton. “If she runs” for president, “sign me up.”
Athlete: A dedicated runner, Rozic is training for a 15-K (9.3-mile) race this summer. … and linguist: Representing a district with a large number of residents with roots in China, Rozic is teaching herself Mandarin, the country’s main dialect. She’s using the Rosetta Stone tutorial software. “I have a good ear for languages,” says Rozic, who already knows Hebrew and Spanish. Mandarin is a challenge. “I didn’t realize how tough it would be.”
nilyrozic.org
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
36 Under 36
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We hope reading about them will reinforce your hope for the future, as they have rekindled ours.
Warmly,
Heather Robinson
Coordinator, 36 Under 36
Contributing editor, The Jewish Week
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