JDC CEO Ariel Zwang: ‘Wherever Jews are in peril, we’ve rescued them’

Ariel Zwang fought back emotions as she told the story of a boy with special needs she encountered while visiting Gori, Georgia.

The child, who was on the autism spectrum, needed a speech therapist but there wasn’t one nearby. So, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee paid to have a therapist brought in from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.

“I saw that boy sing ‘Hatikvah,’” Zwang said. “That little boy only has us. There isn’t a government to provide those services. They’re not even available in this city, but he had you and me and the Federation and the Jewish community around the world.”

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Zwang has served as the CEO of the JDC since 2021 and has countless stories highlighting the work the nonprofit, created in 1914, is doing to help Jews around the world. She was in Pittsburgh this week, visiting the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and meeting with members of the local Jewish community.

“Someone called our hotline and said ‘I have food for two days but can’t go out because there’s shelling. I don’t know how to get food,’” Zwang recounted. “We knew her because she was already a client of JDC. We were already embedded there. We said, ‘OK, if you have food for two days, we’ll be there tomorrow because right now we’re bringing food to people who have food for one day.’”

It’s just one of the narratives Zwang shared while discussing the work JDC has done in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion of the country.

JDC, she said, has responded with the urgency needed to support the Jewish communities in the region because they were already embedded in the country.

Active in more than 70 countries, JDC offers aid to Jewish populations in Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East, through a network of social assistance programs.

The organization, Zwang said, “saves lives and builds Jewish life.”

JDC, she said, has provided relief to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Jews around the world.

“Wherever Jews are in peril, we’ve rescued them,” she said.

The JDC has helped Jews around the world, including where she said there, “might just be the poorest Jews in the world,” countries that were part of the former Soviet Union, like Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Since the war started in Ukraine, Zwang said JDC has helped evacuate people, brought in humanitarian aid, provided food, fuel and companionship, opened trauma centers, provided psychological support and helped with employment needs.

It has also responded to needs in Israel, Zwang said, noting that JDC was founded to respond to the needs of Jews who fled Europe for the Holy Land, even before there was a Jewish state. It assists Israelis, be they secular, ultra-Orthodox or anything else, including Arab Israelis.

Since Oct. 7, she said, the JDC has worked in areas within Israel, helping elderly people with challenges including disabilities, employment, social mobility, education and poverty.

“There are tens of thousands of people in Israel who have lost the ability to work because they were injured physically or emotionally, that were displaced, that have had their education disrupted,” she said.

Zwang said one program, Back on Track, assists people seeking employment.

“One woman studied metal arts. She created an exhibit called ‘Quiet Houses.’ She visited a neighboring kibbutz, Nir Oz, where 80 to 90% of the homes were destroyed,” she said.

The woman now creates and sells miniature metal homes like those damaged on the kibbutz.

“It perfectly evokes that feeling you have when you go there and see where a grenade went into a safe room, where people were murdered and where fire was set in a home that burned through the roof,” Zwang said.

JDC also has responded to the increased antisemitism experienced by Jews around the world.

In Western Europe, she said, Jewish communities have experienced more antisemitism than at any other time since World War II. JDC has provided tools to respond to that hate.

“It might be we put a social worker or psychologist in the Jewish school in a community or share best practices among community leaders,” she said.

Zwang, who lives in New York and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, previously served as the CEO of Safe Horizon, one of America’s leading social service agencies, and executive director of New York Cares. She was a White House Fellow and spent time with Morgan Stanley and the Boston Consulting Group.

She said that JDC’s relationship with Pittsburgh and the Federation is important to the work of JDC.

Federation, Zwang said, often supplies funds that are available to be used wherever JDC finds a need, rather than funds dedicated to a specific cause that often come from individuals who donate directly to the organization.

“If everyone in Pittsburgh who cared about the Jewish people donated to Federation we would be thrilled because it’s a great way to support our work,” she said. “The core support from Federation is the lifeblood of our JDC.”

In the end she said, the formula is simple.

“All the Jewish people are responsible for each other and we’re the living embodiment of that,” Zwang said. “We’re the practical delivery system.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.