By Gail Small and Howard Berger, Co-Executive Directors

Even as we move through our festive 150th anniversary year, life at Ometz goes on as usual.

On October 20th, we joined many other community agencies for the MONTREAL WALKS for Mental Health. Once again Margaret Trudeau lent her personal support as a special guest and featured speaker. More than 1,000 Montrealers turned up to wind their way through the streets of downtown Montreal. As a founding member of this event 5 years ago, we are delighted to watch the number of participants grow from year to year, as we try to raise the profile of this cause, demystifying this illness that affects so many members of our community. At Ometz, we support hundreds of individuals and families coping with mental illness through a variety of programmatic responses.

At the same time, a number of us were in Toronto attending a conference discussing poverty within the Jewish community across Canada. The Canadian Association of Jewish Family and Child Agencies representing 11 agencies, gathered to address this ongoing challenge which continues to grow despite our best efforts to identify and eradicate its causes. In our home communities we often have discussions with many partners in the general community as well as government concerning poverty in general. This was a rare opportunity to discuss the Jewish challenges we face – what does it mean to provide for basic Jewish needs – i.e. the costs of living a basic but observant Jewish lifestyle – and how to do this without fostering ongoing dependence? The answers are not simple but the ability to share our common challenges were a rare opportunity for all. Most importantly the discussion was held with representatives of the Federations network from across Canada, who are the principal funders of many of our programs. This precipitated a healthy exchange of information and discussion around developing a shared insight as to how to best to address these important questions together.

Finally, Hanukkah is almost here. This year the 25th of Kislev falls on November 28 and coincides with the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, which will not occur again for many, many years. Many of us have much for which to be thankful. At Ometz, we are reaching out to you, , once again via our direct mail solicitation to help us meet the many needs of our community. This past year more than 13,000 community members turned to us for a variety of reasons – finding a job, settling their family in Montreal as they arrive from far away, coping with addiction or mental illness, seeking counselling, and striving to making ends meet with too few resources. As we all look forward to the holiday of lights, we hope you will respond to our appeal, and bring the warmth and light of the holiday to those most in need https://www.ometz.ca/donate/

A Joyous and Happy Hanukkah to all!