It was 19th-century French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr who coined the much-repeated phrase, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
And while the saying is often employed cynically — and Karr was a cynical guy — it sincerely describes the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay.
Founded 130 years ago in an Oakland home, the JFCS of the East Bay now has 50 employees, four offices, contracts with two counties and a multi-million-dollar budget. And yet, the goal is still the same as it was when Mrs. R. Biehl and 19 other volunteers founded the organization in the Biehl drawing room in 1877: Help the needy.
The organization “is not rigid. And because it’s flexible, it grows,” said Yael Moses, the organization’s clinical director. “I was just telling one of my [co-workers], ‘Life is a process. And we are in the business of helping people with that process.’
“The organization’s longevity can definitely be attributed to its ability to change with the times and be sensitive to the needs of the community.”
The Oakland women who participated in the 1912 “Fruit and Flower Mission,” delivering baskets of both to the needy, may not have been able to comprehend the drug addiction or mental illness work the JFCS does today. But they certainly would have understood the needs of recent Jewish immigrants to the East Bay. In fact, throughout the decades, while the immigrants’ origins changed, the JFCS’ outreach did not.
As the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union waned in the late 1990s, the organization took the step of redirecting its efforts to aid Bosnian and Afghan Muslims and Iranian Christians.
That was a move that “says a lot about the dual nature of our core mission — we’re committed to serving the Jewish community in the East Bay and committed to being a top-notch non-sectarian agency to serve the general community. We’re a Jewish face in the general community,” said Avi Rose, the agency’s executive director.
In recent decades, the JFCS, like other JFCS organizations nationwide, has begun accepting government money to do more work for the general community. The JFCS of the East Bay currently contracts with Contra Costa County to provide refugee and immigrant services and caregiver support for the elderly while in Alameda County it provides early childhood mental health programming.
In recent years, the agency has instituted a program titled Project Ezra that wouldn’t have been out of place 100 years ago — any Jew who can document a modest financial emergency can be quickly funneled the money he or she needs.
“Some are people who have been affected by a crisis in their lives, whether it’s an illness or divorce or domestic abuse or unemployment. If they need assistance with the utility bills or managing a chronic problem … we’re engaged in increasing this kind of program,” explains Rose.
The JFCS of the East Bay has also beefed up its disability programs of late — and, Moses notes, the organization put the “Children’s” in JFCS only two decades ago. In the future, Moses, herself an Israeli, hopes to make inroads into the Bay Area’s Israeli community.
“It feels good to know that people know of us — well, we’ve been around for 130 years, so people do know us,” she said.
“But they also trust us and rely on us.”