UJA FEDERATION דורך היברא פרי לאון נעמט שוין קרעדיט
Marking A 'Bat Mitzvah' Year At Loan Agency
by Doug Chandler
Special To The Jewish Week
When Shana Novick joined the Hebrew Free Loan Society in September
1995, becoming the agency's executive director, she saw the position as
one that brought together her many different skills, interests and
experiences.
And
the agency itself, a small but venerable organization formed in 1892,
saw in its new leader an opportunity to do things differently, move
ahead and perhaps even grow, say several people close to HFLS.
Now
marking her 13th year with HFLS — what one of the agency's staff
members called her ''bat mitzvah year'' — Novick recently discussed how
she came to the organization and how it has changed in recent years.
She was also quick to add that, for all its changes, the organization
remains true to its original mission
providing interest-free loans to families and individuals with the goal
of promoting economic self-sufficiency. It's an activity described in
the agency's brochures as rooted in age-old Jewish tradition.
Novick's
trajectory into the Jewish communal world began as early as childhood,
growing up, as she did, in a Modern Orthodox family with a strong
commitment to helping others. Her father, in particular, was a strong
influence, Novick said, adding that he was a trained social worker who
led a number of geriatric homes and was recognized as a pioneer in the
field.
In short order, Novick, now 59, attended social work school
after her graduation from Barnard College, became a case worker at the
Jewish Family Service, a forerunner to today's Jewish Board of Family
and Children's Services, and then entered law school, believing that
law was ''a more powerful way of helping people.'' Although she worked
for a while in corporate law, she eventually landed a job on the legal
staff of the Ford Foundation, one of the first organizations to support
microloans in the Third World.
That background captured the interest
of HFLS' board when Novick applied for the agency's top staff position.
Also of interest to the board was Novick's keen knowledge of the former
Soviet Union and its Jewish population, said Novick, who noted that the
agency's clients already included a large percentage of
Russian-speaking Jews.
Novick made her first visit to the Soviet
Union as a member of B'nei Akiva, the Modern Orthodox youth movement,
where, at the behest of the Jewish Agency, she and other teens made
surreptitious visits to Jewish families. She has since lived in Russia
with her husband, David Roskies, a professor of Jewish literature at
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and has made nearly a dozen
visits to both Russia and other areas of the former USSR.
The agency
Novick joined in 1995 was still ''a very traditional agency,'' one that
reacted to trends and developments without marketing itself or doing
much outreach, she said. ''Whoever we helped had come to us. ... The
assumption was that our natural clients knew about us.''
One example
was the agency's lack of any Russian-speaking staff members in
positions that served the public, said Moshe Soloway, HFLS' assistant
executive director and a native of St. Petersburg. Neither did the
agency have any forms or brochures in Russian, Soloway added.
In her
first few years with the agency, Novick began hiring additional
Russian-speaking employees, who now make up two-thirds of HFLS'
12-member staff. Working with the board, she also helped prepare the
agency's first strategic plan and its first written mission statement.
Programmatically,
the agency has established a microenterprise loan program, which has
provided interest-free loans to Russian-speaking émigrés and, now,
members of Brooklyn's chasidic community who hope to create or expand
business ventures. Working with various partners, including the Jewish
Community House of Bensonhurst, the agency has also tutored those
clients and helped them in developing business plans.
Other new
activities include an adoption loan program, which assists Jewish
couples and singles with the high cost of adoption and loans to Jewish
day-school teachers hoping to buy their first homes. Meanwhile, Soloway
said, the agency has been expanding its staff, adding, among others,
its first development expert, and has begun to look more scientifically
at the outcome of its programs.
One of Novick's admirers is Jacob
Ukeles, a former executive of UJA-Federation of New York and now a
consultant who has worked in the past with HFLS.
''She took a very
established, traditional agency — an organization that did good things
for people — and turned it into an agency that helps people for whom
loans make a difference,'' he said, adding that such change isn't easy
to accomplish. ''I think she's one of the unsung heroes of Jewish
communal service.''
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