Her mother-in-law’s name sits, as it has for the past year, on the crowded waiting list of a Jewish senior home — and as the elderly woman deteriorates from Alzheimer’s, Ruthellen Harris can do little but wait.
So Harris, who resides in Foster City, is especially aware of the growing need for Jewish assisted-living and skilled-care facilities in the South Bay.
Now, as the new executive director of the future Helen Diller Center for Jewish Assisted Living, Harris hopes to help fulfill that need for many people like her mother-in-law.
“We’re blessed that our older generation” is living longer and fuller lives, said Harris. “Our goal is to serve those people who need extra help in order to lead their lives with dignity and independence.”
Aside from the need, the desire to keep communities and families together is one major impetus behind building the home in the South Bay, explained Harris. Other options in the Jewish community, including the Rhoda Goldman Plaza and Jewish Home in San Francisco and the Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living in Danville, are too far away.
“As people are getting older and frailer in the South Bay there is no Jewish place for them to go,” said Harris, “unless they go all the way to San Francisco” or the East Bay.
Harris came aboard in August and is currently assisting the center’s board in its preliminary capital campaign, which is aiming to raise $8 million to $9 million. About half of that amount has been covered through donations from the Diller family and other private donors.
The cost of the total project, said Harris, is estimated at approximately $35 million.
Although she has no direct experience with assisted living, fund-raising is a familiar area for Harris, who formerly worked as director of the Women’s Division of the Jewish Federation of Greater San Jose and executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater San Jose.
She has also served as director of development at the Peninsula Jewish Community Center in Belmont and as the regional director of the Jewish National Fund in San Francisco.
“I’ve had a lifelong commitment of working in the Jewish community, from childhood on,” said Harris, who belongs to Reform Peninsula Temple Shalom in Burlingame with her husband. “My parents were involved in various kinds of things having to do with synagogue and Jewish life and this is just a natural extension.”
Harris’ three children have likewise carried the torch of Jewish values into their work.
Her son will soon be ordained as a Conservative rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Her eldest daughter has accepted a position as director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at American University in Washington, D.C.
Her other daughter, who is currently working towards a master’s degree in water resource management at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, hopes to work on water issues in Israel.
So far, plans for the Diller Center call for 120 units — 84 for assisted living and 36 for Alzheimer’s patients or skilled-nursing care. There might be a kosher kitchen, beauty parlor, physical therapy center, computer room, coffee bar and dining area, but all this remains tentative.
The actual launching date is still several years off and the location, which may either be on an independent site in Los Gatos or as part of the Palo Alto Jewish Community Center’s future site, has yet to be determined.
Ultimately the center will serve as a continuum of care for residents in the San Jose Chai House, a Jewish independent-living facility, as well as for other elders in the community needing assisted-living services, dementia care or skilled nursing.