A woman who cared

Founder of the ‘Jerusalem Post’ Funds and a distinguished citizen of Jerusalem, Helen Rossi could get things done, no matter how challenging the situation.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
helen rossi 521 (photo credit: Dan Landau)
helen rossi 521
(photo credit: Dan Landau)
She was a short, feisty, gravelvoiced lady with a tough manner and a big heart – and she smoked like a chimney. Her name was Helen Rossi.
Though diminutive in stature, she knew how to push her way through and get things done. In that respect, she was a giant. For many years, she was the fashion writer, food editor and eventually women’s page editor of The Jerusalem Post, but was best known as the founder of the Jerusalem Post Funds, initially a one-time project that became her life’s work.
Back in December 1948, following the state’s founding, she was troubled that new immigrant children living in transit camps during the harsh Israeli winter had few if any toys and were not likely to get much in the way of Hanukka gifts.
So she launched the Jerusalem Post Toy Fund, which she believed would help bring a smile to these children’s faces. At that stage, she hadn’t done her homework, so she was unaware of just how many children lived in economically deprived circumstances. But she was haunted by the thought of those youngsters who were not yet living in proper housing and were facing a cold and joyless Hanukka.
Deciding that something had to be done, she stalked into the office of Gershon Agron, the founding editor of the paper, perched herself on a corner of his desk and demanded, “What are we going to do to give them some happiness?” Agron didn’t really need convincing.
The problem was what to do in so short a span of time.
But he knew from experience that no matter how challenging a situation, Rossi could get things done. Only a few months earlier, after the Post’s premises had suffered severe damage from explosives and gunfire, Agron had sent her to America to enlist support, obtain new equipment and sell advertising space.
She returned on May 14, just in time for the proclamation of the sovereign State of Israel.
Coincidence has a long arm, and just as she and Agron were pondering what could be done, the phone in his office rang.
The caller was Marianne Hoofien, wife of Eliezer Hoofien, chairman of Bank Leumi’s precursor, the Anglo-Palestine Bank. She was no less concerned than Rossi about the plight of the children.
“Why don’t you do something?” she asked Agron.
“We were just talking about it,” he told her.
The discussion continued well into the night. There was a consensus that what children wanted more than anything else was toys to play with. But even if there had been money available to buy toys, there were not many choices in the shops at that time.
When Rossi first started at The Palestine Post in 1939, she had worked in the advertising department, and now she drew on this experience, initiating an advertising campaign for toys. Agron gave the project his blessing. Rossi decided to have what she called a toy shower, in conjunction with the Sa’ad Home Aid Society.
In her campaign, she asked Israeli children to donate some of their toys to the newcomers.
The response was way beyond anything she had anticipated. Children on their own or accompanied by a parent flocked to the offices of what was then The Palestine Post at all hours of the day and night to deliver toys that would bring pleasure to children who didn’t have any.
Rossi recruited members of the administrative, advertising, editorial, printing and maintenance staff to help her make up gift packages and fill crates that were delivered to transit camps all over the country.
Everyone pitched in, including Agron. No one dared refuse. Rossi conducted the whole operation with the authority and efficiency of a sergeant-major, working almost around the clock herself, to ensure that all the gifts were properly wrapped and all the crates delivered on time.
No slouch at getting others to embrace her cause, she enlisted the services of the IDF for the distribution of the toys. And she was not content to leave the deliveries to the khakiclad couriers: She insisted on accompanying them.
Israel was largely underdeveloped at the time, and army vehicles, nowhere near as sophisticated as they are today, could not plough through every kind of terrain. There were times that the soldiers had to go part of the way on foot, plodding over rocks and mud, along uneven surfaces, up hills and down valleys – and Rossi, undeterred by nature’s obstacles, plodded along with them.
When she saw the conditions in which immigrant children were living, her heart went out to them. She knew instinctively that things would not be much better by the following Hanukka. If anything, they would be worse, because more people without means would be arriving in the country.
And thus her one-time initiative became the Jerusalem Post Toy Fund. Readers began sending in small sums of money, which were deposited in a closed account that increased throughout the year, so that by Hanukka there were sufficient funds to purchase toys.
Reuven Shemtov, the paper’s in-house accountant, was recruited to keep track of the finances and to invest them well so the interest could be used for the fund’s special projects.
The toy fund triggered a positive response not only in Israeli readers, but also in those abroad. Monetary contributions began to flow in from the United States and Europe, and even from as far afield as Australia.
Rossi acknowledged them all in a column that she published in the paper, in addition to sending out receipts. It was remarkable how many people from different walks of life were moved by her brief descriptions of what their gifts meant to the children.
Not everyone sent money. Huge crates of toys and children’s clothing came from abroad to the Post.
Now Rossi had another problem. The customs authorities wanted her to pay taxes on the merchandise, not all of which was secondhand.
Fortunately, she had connections in high places, and although the matter took a long time to sort out, eventually she was triumphant. No one who knew her expected otherwise.
She continued to ask children who had toys to part with some of them for the sake of those who had none. The concept became contagious, and while many children continued to drop off toys at the paper’s offices in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, others went to the transit camps to make direct contributions.
OVER THE next few years, it shocked Rossi to discover how many children were in foster care, in kibbutz facilities that in later years became youth villages, or in the care of the nuns at St. Vincent de Paul.
The more she got to know them, the more positive her attitude became toward those nuns, who looked after children of all faiths, providing for their physical and emotional well-being as well as for their schooling. The sisters also cared for babies, the poor, the homeless, the elderly and people with physical or mental disabilities.
Rossi established close contact not only with the sisters, but also with the Jerusalem Municipality, social welfare authorities, the army, charitable organizations – anyone who could help her cause. She also recruited her family, and her only son, Danny Koussewitsky – then a child himself – frequently accompanied her on her toy-distributing missions. So did Yissachar Aivas, who eventually became the paper’s maintenance manager.
Aivas had worked at the Post since boyhood, but even as he rose in the ranks, he remained Rossi’s loyal and self-appointed chauffeur, driving her and the sacks of gifts for the children all over the country.
She did not distinguish among Jew, Christian and Muslim. In her book, people were people and needs were needs, and religious bias was a non-starter.
As new needs came to her attention, she expanded her project. She established the Forget Me Not Fund, which provided needy senior citizens with heaters and blankets for the winter and which was also a vehicle for organizing groups of young volunteers to visit the elderly at home, to attend to necessary repairs or to spruce up the premises with a paint job.
During the First Lebanon War in 1982, she responded to civilian needs, and together with Israel’s Muslim population and other concerned elements, provided relief packages for Lebanon’s civilian population.
She also established the Tsofia Fund in 1978 to help wards of the state who were taking their first independent steps as adults at the age of 18. After that, she created a Welcome Home Fund for new immigrants who might need some financial assistance.
In all these enterprises, she was hands-on.
She wanted to be sure the funds that had accumulated so handsomely from countless small donations were being properly spent.
She also took an active interest in every member of the staff, alert to when things were not going well for them or when there was a reason to celebrate. She was unfailingly kind to budding reporters, always wangling assignments for them so they’d have the chance to prove they could follow up a story and write it well.
Twice a year, she edited a fashion supplement, and throughout the year she kept her finger on the pulse of what was happening in every department of the paper, undeterred by her failing eyesight or her difficulties in walking.
THOUGH SHE was known to be problematic when things didn’t go her way, Rossi did her best to be accommodating.
I visited Communist Hungary with her in the early 1980s for an international conference of women journalists. She asked me to buy her the famous Debrecen sausage to take back to Israel. When I refused, other colleagues waited for her temper to erupt, but she had the presence of mind to ask why. I explained to her that as a religiously observant Jew, I could not in good conscience buy non-kosher sausage for another Jew, regardless of whether she was religious or not. She snorted, but didn’t take the matter any further.
There were no direct flights from Israel to Hungary in those days, and we had to fly via Vienna. We had planned to spend a couple of days in Vienna on the way back, but our travel agent had forgotten to book a hotel for us. It was the height of both the conference and the opera season in the Austrian city, and all the hotels were fully booked.
However, because the city was a transit point for Soviet Jews who had managed to get out of Russia, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews maintained apartments where they could stay until they decided on their next move.
I knew of them and somehow got hold of the contact person, explained our plight and asked if we could stay over the weekend.
He was sympathetic and said we could have a fully furnished apartment free of charge, provided that there was no Shabbat desecration and that we brought in no meat products.
Maintaining these conditions came naturally to me, but I hadn’t realized how difficult it would be for Rossi. We moved in on a Friday afternoon, and she said she was tired and wanted to rest.
It was a two-bedroom apartment, and she went into her room and closed the door.
When I got up in the morning to go to synagogue services, her door was closed, and not wanting to disturb her, I simply left.
The door was still closed when I returned, and remained closed for hours. By mid-afternoon, I began to think something might be wrong. She hadn’t come out to eat, nor had she used the bathroom.
With some trepidation, I knocked on her door. When she opened it, a gust of smoke filled my lungs.
Rossi the chain-smoker could not desist, and not wanting to offend my sensibilities, she had locked herself in her room, where she almost choked to death.
Even though walking was difficult for her, I forced her to get dressed and come for a walk with me in the nearby park where she could breathe some fresh air. To her credit, she never held that adventure against me.
For her many good deeds for young and old alike, she received honors from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry and the Tel Aviv Municipality, and the Jerusalem Municipality awarded her the title of distinguished citizen of Jerusalem.
She died in 1990.