Forging a New Path

OUR COMMUNITY

DAVID SELMAR

Seema Selmar

Forging a New Path

JVS Human Services’ Women to Work program changes lives.

ALISON SCHWARTZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

For Seema Selmar, her chosen career path to become a lawyer hit a speed bump early on. She was living in Israel where she had just started her undergraduate law degree, when her family decided to move back to the U.S. With law being a postgraduate subject in the U.S., Selmar had to choose another profession to study, landing on business and ultimately becoming a credit analyst in New York.

Then came marriage to David and seven children, including one with special needs, so Selmar’s career was put on hold while she brought up her family.

Selmar of Oak Park, a member of Dovid Ben Nachum Synagogue and affiliated with Yeshivah Gedolah, eventually worked part time as a teacher. However, she “kept going back to my initial career idea, something in the legal field, but I didn’t know how to make that work,” she said.

Six years ago, Selmar heard about Women to Work, a four-week course run by JVS Human Services that provides critical skills to women who have been out of the workforce. Participants are given a myriad of resoucres vital to securing a job. The program has helped approximately 2,000 find a new direction for their working lives since its launch in the 1980.

For Selmar, now 63, the program led training in civil and domestic mediation, and she now works as a volunteer for the Oakland Mediation Center and is considering opening her own mediation business.

Judy Richmond, Women to Work coordinator, says there has never been a more important time for her program. “The pandemic has hit women in the workforce especially hard. Some have had to stay home with children when schools were closed, others were in jobs which simply dried up as businesses closed,” Richmond said. “Learning new and vital skills can make all the difference to finding work quickly.”

The next virtual session of Women to Work runs from April 20-May 13 and includes eight sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11 a.m. For more information and to register, contact Richmond at (248) 233-4232 or jrichmond@ jvshumanservices.org.

“CHALLAH TAPS INTO OUR FEMININE ENERGY.”

— PARTNERS DETROIT’S SHAINDEL FINK

FLOUR POWER continued from page 21

the Sunday class to make their dough alongside Turkin. An educator from Partners Detroit will also join the class to share details on the many positive influences that challah can instill in a woman’s life.

“Pam is an experienced baking teacher,” Fink says. “She has a successful business of teaching people to bake all kinds of things over Zoom, but challah is really her passion.”

Fink and Turkin, who are longtime friends, have recently been studying the mitzvah of challah and the blessings it can bring to those who are involved in it.

When Turkin had the idea of sharing this knowledge with others and turning the art of challah into a class people can participate in, Fink says Partners Detroit was all for it. They collaborated with nonprofit Jewish engagement and literacy organization PJ Library, plus JFamily Detroit, to get the idea off the ground. They developed advertising, what the program would look like and how to get it out into the local community.

‘A HUGE SUCCESS’

Generating excitement wasn’t difficult. “It’s really been a huge success,” Fink says. Flour Power has even seen three generations of women in a family sign up for the program together, connecting while fulfilling a timeless Jewish tradition. They practice different types of funky braids, ranging all the way from a heart shaped challah to a nine-braid loaf.

In each class, women get a chance to reminisce on their memories of making challah or other meaningful Jewish memories, something Turkin often asks participants to share with the group. It’s part of the reason why Flour Power limits classes to small sizes, despite demand. “Once 12 people register for any given class, we’ll close registration for that class,” Fink says. “We don’t want to give up the intimacy of it.”

Fink and Turkin plan to continue the program up to the summer, when they’ll take a short break from classes, and then resume later. “We’re definitely happy to go forward with it for as long as we can,” Fink says from a Partners Detroit perspective. “We’ve found that people, even people who’ve never made challah before, love the experience.”

Fink explains there is something “deeply satisfying” about baking, especially when baking is connected to a spiritual element. Flour Power gives participants a chance to learn to make challah from the comfort of their own homes, creating a variety of new challah breads for Shabbat and beyond.

“Challah taps into our feminine energy,” Fink says. “It’s really been a special class.”

To register for Flour Power, visit partnersdetroit.org/flour-power.