For many, now more than ever, it’s important for the Baltimore Jewish community to support Israel.
What is going on in the Middle East today is extreme, but past generations of Jews in Baltimore saw their own versions of today’s events (albeit on a different scale) and mobilized in similar ways to support the world’s only Jewish state.
In a May 7, 1982, edition of the Baltimore Jewish Times, the paper detailed the story of Shirlee Zilber, a then-58-year-old woman who was planning on participating in Baltimore’s fifth annual 18K Walk for Israel to raise money for aid in the country, despite “a deteriorating disc, a hip condition that necessitates the constant use of a cane, [and] an elevation in her right shoe.”
Zilber was dedicated to the cause, and she showed it at the walk.
“I can’t afford not to walk,” she said at the time. “I have too much money riding on me.”
That walk was started by The Associated in 1978 in celebration of Israel’s 30th anniversary. According to The Associated, a year later it garnered 3,000 participants and raised more than $90,000.
Zilber had, according to the article, “$1,505.85 in pledges in some 146 sponsors, the promise of another several hundred dollars in pledges, close to $200 already collected, and she had almost filled up ten sponsor cards” about three weeks before the walk. She added that she had “a number of additional calls to make.”
While that walk may not exist anymore, The Associated has a number of events and programs that raise funds for Israel, including some that feature volunteer missions and young-person’s intern opportunities in Israel itself.
Just like Zilber exemplified in the early ’80s, all corners of the community — big and small, young and old — come together to fundraise for Israel. In the 1982 article, Zilber told a story about one of the previous times she completed the more than 11-mile walk.
According to the Baltimore Jewish Times article, “Shirlee said that at the end of one walk, a policeman escorted her across the street to the JCC. ‘He held up my cane, and announced that I had walked all 18 kilometers. You should have heard the horns honking. It sounded like a wedding.’”
For Jews in Baltimore, fundraising and volunteering for Israel is as important as it was in the early ’80s. And it is probably safe to say that had Shirlee Zilber not passed in 2000, she would still be around finding ways to help out Jews in Israel.
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