On their first trip to Odessa 10 years ago, Stephen and Nancy Grand asked local Jews if they were hesitant to live openly Jewish lives, given Ukraine’s sorry history of anti-Semitism.
“They said, ‘No, we’re Jewish,’” Nancy Grand recalls of that conversation. “They were full of fire. We said, we have to help them.”
Help them they did, as the San Francisco philanthropists financed much of the construction of Beit Grand, Odessa’s new Jewish community center. The Grands flew back to the city last month to attend a June 7 dedication ceremony, complete with dancing girls, fireworks and ribbon cutting.
Nancy Grand is the new president of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation (she and her husband have served as past chairs of annual campaigns).
The Odessa center, built on the site of the city’s former Jewish hospital, is a project of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. It was renovated and expanded with funds from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the Grands.
Beit Grand now serves as home to Odessa’s Hesed Shaarey Tzion Welfare organization and its Jewish Family Services program, as well as Hillel and the Odessa Regional Association of Ghetto and Concentration Camp Survivors.
The center includes a library and community gym, an arts studio, Jewish writers’ club, Jewish kindergarten and teen club. “It’s magnificent,” says Nancy Grand of the 40,000-square-foot facility. “It’s comparable to our JCC here.”
As an unexpected bonus, once construction began, the couple heard from a long-lost cousin (Stephen Grand’s ancestors came from the area). That cousin had the honor of nailing the mezuzah to the front door of the center during the dedication.
The Odessa center isn’t the only recent act of philanthropy for the Grands. They also gave $20 million to the American Technion Society to fund energy research at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel.
The goal of the Technion energy program will be to discover new technologies to alleviate global dependence on fossil fuels.
Natives of Michigan, the Grands moved to the Bay Area in 2003 after years of philanthropy and activism in Detroit’s Jewish community. Nancy Grand has served on the board of the Joint Distribution Committee, which is how she and her husband discovered the needs of the Odessa Jewish community.
As for Odessa, the Grands intend to keep tabs on the center, because they were so moved by the community’s dedication to Jewish life. “In America we spend our time trying to keep people Jewish,” Nancy Grand says. “There we had the honor of bringing them back.”