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May 20, 2005/Iyar 11 5765, Volume 57, No. 38
Former YWCA executive director honored for stand
DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSER
Associate Editor
It has been more than six months since Barbara Lewkowitz stepped down from the position as executive director of the YWCA of Maricopa County.
Now two Valley groups have honored her for taking a "principled stand" against the YWCA's failure to address perceived anti-Israel bias within the organization.
In a speech May 4 at the Hadassah Valley of the Sun Volunteer Recognition Event and Chapter Installation, Lewkowitz explained her Oct. 29 decision to leave the YWCA. She also described how "inaction and indifference" can hurt an organization, especially one that depends on the efforts of volunteers, and outlined what volunteers can do in the face of such inaction and indifference.
"It was hard to leave my job," Lewkowitz told the audience of some 100 people, mostly Hadassah members. "I loved my job - really loved my job. And I was good at it."
Lewkowitz was also honored May 15, at the Arizona Chapter of the American Jewish Committee's annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton, for "her principled stand against ... intolerance and her call to match mission with action."
Lewkowitz was not the only person to resign from the local YWCA over what some perceived as the organization's refusal to address anti-Israel bias, in particular the "Witness Report to Palestine." The report is an account of a visit to the Middle East by 14 members of the World YWCA last spring, written by Doris Pagelkopf, an American representative on the World YWCA board, who concluded that Israelis were trying to "rid the land of Palestinians" just as "Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews." The departure of board member Abbie Beller, now a member of Hadassah and seated in the audience May 4, preceded Lewkowitz's by several months. At least two board members, Camala Bailey and Gya Watson, resigned after Lewkowitz left, citing concerns similar to those of Lewkowitz and Beller in their letters of resignation.
In an interview with Jewish News in November, when the story of her resignation first broke, Lewkowitz said she felt that "this particular issue is not about Israel and Palestine. It's about social service agencies being balanced and true to their mission."
During her speech last week, she expanded on this theme, exhorting volunteers to encourage "balance and inclusiveness," and to remember that, "If we say we can disagree with someone, we should be able to disagree without rancor."
"I thought about my mother a lot as I was going through this process" of deciding to stand on her principles, Lewkowitz told the audience. She also thought about the kind of mother she wants to be for her own sons, and the kind of example she wants to set.
"I couldn't live with myself and show that kind of indifference," she said, to what she perceived as a "disconnect" between the YWCA's actions and its mission. At times, Lewkowitz said, she felt that if she just backed down, "everything will go away. But I couldn't."
In February, shortly before the YWCA's annual fund-raising event Tribute to Women, Lewkowitz, public relations executive Steve Carr of The Kur Carr Group, Inc., and Rabbi Arthur Lavinsky, the rabbi at Beth El Congregation in Phoenix, received cease-and-desist letters from an attorney on behalf of the local YWCA. The letters read in part: "The YWCA has received reports from Tribute to Women honorees and stated that (sic) the YWCA is insolvent and approaching bankruptcy and that the YWCA's Board of Directors has behaved unprofessionally toward its staff. These false allegations of unprofessional and improper conduct lack any foundation in fact, and are clearly vindictive and malicious acts in response to your professional differences with YWCA's Board of Directors."
Interviewed at the time, Lavinsky said that he was puzzled by the tone of the letter he received. "They accuse me of talking about the fiscal insolvency, or something like that, of the YWCA," he said. "I have no knowledge of that and made no comments about that to anybody."
He freely admitted that as part of the Israel Action Committee, a group headquartered at Beth El, he had called the Tribute to Women honorees to let them know that "while they are people of honor, and deserving of honor, the YWCA has been involved in some dishonorable activities."
"I have not told anybody not to contribute," Lavinsky said at the time. "I have not said anything about insolvency. That's their stuff. I just wanted people who're being honored by them to know that they're behaving in dishonorable ways ... I have nothing against the wonderful work that the YWCA does here, but I have a problem with the dishonesty about the resolutions and the actions they have taken to distance themselves from damaging reports and resolutions."
On the evening of March 1, a process server delivered to Lewkowitz's home an ex parte injunction against workplace harassment obtained by the YWCA that prohibited her from going to the YWCA facility, from attending the March 2 YWCA event at the Biltmore and from using "defamation" to dissuade others from attending. In addition, the injunction, issued by Central Phoenix Justice Court, prohibited Lewkowitz from contacting employees and volunteers of the YWCA.
Two other people were served with similar injunctions: former interim executive director of the YWCA of Maricopa County Herb Paine and Steve Carr, whose agency did work for the local YWCA for four years, until Jan. 31, when the firm resigned.
In an e-mail terminating his group's association with the Y, Carr cited "recent events and changes at the YWCA" locally, including a "lack of communications from YWCA management." Carr wrote that the organization "has failed to appropriately address the YWCA-Middle East issue on an ongoing basis, on a local level as well as with the YWCA of the USA."
At the March 2 Tribute to Women luncheon, Rabbi Robert Kravitz, executive director of the Arizona chapter of the American Jewish Committee, delivered an invocation at the request of Robinson. In it, he cited "failure to denounce publicly and immediately the slanderous, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements and resolutions of the World YWCA, ... failure to challenge the disingenuous announcement that YWCA Maricopa and YWCA USA are not related, though fiscally connected, ... failure to support positive efforts at reconciliation with fellow YWCAs in this state."
The injunctions against Lewkowitz, Paine and Carr were dismissed at the request of the YWCA on March 9, according to records at the Central Phoenix Justice Court, one week after the Tribute to Women.
On April 2, at the annual meeting of the YWCA of the USA in Washington, D.C., the organization's National Coordinating Board issued a statement to the effect that it does not endorse the Witness Report. The statement also clarifies the overall difference in position between the World YWCA and the YWCA of the USA on issues such as the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
"At the national level there's been some activity," agrees Michelle Steinberg, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix. But at the local level, Steinberg said, it's a different matter.
In early March, Steinberg and Robert Mautner, president of the JCRC, met with several board members from the local YWCA, along with a representative of the regional YWCA.
"We had given them some ideas for things they could do in terms of reconciliation," Steinberg said. "We offered to come and speak to their board, even to bring in other organizations, do a presentation or a workshop. We offered to help out in any way we could to build those bridges, and ... there has been no follow-up whatsoever since our meeting with them."
The YWCA of Tucson, by contrast, joined with the JCRC of Greater Phoenix and that of Southern Arizona to urge the National Coordinating Board of the YWCA of the USA to clarify its position with regard to the conflict in the Middle East.
Shelly Schnupp, interim executive director of the YWCA of Maricopa County, told Jewish News that she did not have the authority to go on record with answers to questions about the local YWCA's alleged failure to respond to the concerns of the JCRC of Greater Phoenix, the JCRC of Southern Arizona and the YWCA of Tucson.
At the Hadassah event earlier this month, in response to a question from the audience about the local YWCA's lack of action in the face of her resignation and since, Lewkowitz said that she didn't have an answer. In response to another question, she said that yes, she was still looking for a job.
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