Nationwide Jewish Aids Project Set Up to Help Victims and Their Families

A National Jewish AIDS Project was established here Friday to generate, mobilize and coordinate efforts in the community to respond to the needs of victims of the fatal disease and their families.

The project was launched at a meeting at the Reconstructionist Foundation which brought together key figures from Jewish religious organizations and welfare agencies with gay activist. The impetus for the meeting and the project came from Foundation executive director Rabbi David Teutsch.

Describing AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) as “the most rapidly developing health crisis in American society since World War II,” Teutsch pointed out that the number of people affected by it goes beyond the gay Jewish population and their families, and “is much vaster than people realize.” People who have had blood transfusions longer than six months ago are at risk, he said.

The project will provide education and information to the Jewish community about AIDS and how to help its victims, galvanize the “pooling of resources” on their behalf, and function as a clearinghouse for the victims themselves as to whom to turn to in the community for pastoral counseling, family and home care services and legal assistance.

A TOP PRIORITY

A top priority, Teutsch told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, will be to educate rabbis, rabbinical students, chaplains, and Jewish communal service professionals on AIDS and how to work with the victims and their families.

“Members of synagogues are afraid to tell their own rabbis their children are dying in another city,” he said. Educating rabbis, Teutsch believes, is crucial, not only because they do pastoral counseling but also because through their sermons and influence “they can open up the issue in the community.”

It is not only rabbis who need sensitization on the issue, Teutsch continued. It is also funeral directors, who need to treat AIDS victims in the same manner as other deceased persons; doctors and dentists; and synagogue groups doing “bikur cholim” (visiting the sick). All of these need information to be able to “overcome their fears” of contact with AIDS victims and their families, he said.

OTHER GOALS AND AIMS

A second major goal — mobilizing, developing and coordinating home care resources for AIDS victims — derives from the fact that they are “best cared for at home, “he said. Provisions need to be made for their meals, including kosher food for those who need it, and occasional transportation. Various Jewish agencies and bikur cholim groups could provide them with such services.

A third aim is to involve various Jewish civil rights organizations in “advocacy” on behalf of AIDS patients. This includes legal work for AIDS victims who are fired or evicted, and legislative lobbying for government funding of hospice programs and other non-hospital services.

The director of the project will be Daniel Najjar, a Board member of Bet Mishpacha, the 20-year-old gay and lesbian synagogue in Washington, D.C. who organized Friday’s meeting. Najjar told the JTA that Jewish AIDS victims feel “they can’t turn to the community for help even when they are dying. They have a desperate need to link up” with the Jewish community, he said.

NUMBER OF JEWS INVOLVED

Najjar estimated that at least 300 to 500 Jews have been diagnosed as AIDS victims since 1979. This estimate is based on taking 2.2 percent (the Jewish percentage in the population) of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) figure of 17,361 reported diagnosed cases. Of these 48 percent — about 163 Jews — are still alive.

However, he noted, CDC stated that 15,000 to 20,000 new cases will be reported diagnosed by the end of 1986–bringing the estimated number of additional Jewish victims to 440.

Najjar pointed out that “thousands of Jews may also be assumed to be carriers of AIDS since the federal government has estimated that up to one million persons are possibly HTLV-III positive (having the virus that causes the disease). These persons may become ill at some later time in their lives, even if they do not develop full-blown AIDS symptoms within the near future.”

Synagogues in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York “have lost members to AIDS, and most major cities’ Jewish communities currently have members who are sick and dying,” Najjar said. “Those areas of the country which have been hardest hit by the disease are also the largest areas of Jewish population — New York, California and Florida.”

Rabbi Yoel Kahn, spiritual leader of Shaar Zahav, the gay congregation in San Francisco, told the meeting Friday that he is being referred one AIDS case per week. Everyone in his congregation, he said, “has lost a close friend. Most lost several. Older members … have stopped counting after 20.”

JEWISH GROUPS INVOLVED IN PROJECT

The Jewish organizations whose key figures are involved with the project include the (Reform) Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the (Conservative) Rabbinical Assembly, the Association of Jewish Family and Children’s Agencies, the Council of Jewish Federations, the Federation of Reconstructionist Congregations and Havurot, and the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations.

Najjar said the project has already had some initial pledges of funds and that it will be seeking additional seed money to get it underway. The National Jewish AIDS Project will initially operate out of offices at 20251 St. N.W. (#721), Washington, D. C. 20006, (202) 387-3097.

“AIDS victims feel a sense of abandonment, which augments and intensifies their tragedy,” Teutsch told the JTA. The community can and must deal with this sense of abandonment by “reaching out” to them, and showing them that “the vast majority of Jews are deeply concerned.”

CORRECTION Princeton Lyman was misidentified in a story on Ethiopian Jews in the February 18 Bulletin. He is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, not Assistant Secretary.