Vassar Quarterly - Summer 2018 - 22

in July 1992, seven weeks before the birth
of their son.
Later that year, wanting to continue his
mission of combatting religious prejudice,
Bennett founded the Tanenbaum Center
for Interreligious Understanding (tanenbaum.org), whose mission is to combat
religious prejudice and religion-based
violence. The nonprofit offers trainings,
programs, publications, and other resources
that combat prejudice in schools, workplaces, health-care settings, and areas of
armed conflict.
She initiated the Tanenbaum InterReligious Peace Fellowship at Vassar in
2008 to cultivate the next generation of
interreligious leaders. Fellows receive a
stipend to work with a project or organization that engages two or more religious
traditions.
After recognizing the scope of the
Syrian crisis, Bennett worked with Alan
Gill, then chief executive officer of the
American Jewish Joint Distribution

A man seeking asylum warms himself after crossing part of the Aegean Sea from Turkey to the
Greek island of Lesbos. right: Georgette Bennett
'67 co-founded the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian
refugees to help those who have been displaced.

Committee, to found the Jewish Coalition
for Syrian Refugees, which funds humanitarian groups providing direct assistance
to Syrian war victims.
Their work led to the creation of the
Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees

SuMMEr 2018

(MFA; multifaithalliance.org), which
advocates for humane refugee policies,
cultivates partnerships in the area, raises
funds for humanitarian relief, and
counters negative stereotypes about
refugees. It also shares information and
resources with Vassar Refugee Solidarity,
a campus initiative supporting refugees,
which is one of the nearly 100 faith-based
Kew Gardens in Queens and see signs for
alien registration. I knew that alien was
me," she recalls.
"It's because I'm a child of Holocaust
survivors, because I'm a Jew, because I
was a refugee myself that I feel compelled
to act when I see such horrific tragedy in
the world," she says.
She was also motivated by her late
husband (Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum), a
well-known human-rights activist and
international-affairs director of the
American Jewish Committee. She took his
seat on the board of the IRC after he died

and secular organizations that make up
the Alliance. (See page 25 for more on the
Vassar group.)
One of MFA's most extraordinary
achievements is the fostering of partnerships between Syrians and Israelis, which
has resulted in the delivery of $120 million
in humanitarian aid directly into southern
Syria.
Bennett sees these partnerships as
one of "the few glimmers of hope coming
out of this horrific crisis, because such
bridge-building plants seeds for future
stability in the region," she says. 

AP Photo-Santi Palacios / Bennett, Karl rabe

provide sanctuary." Leviticus 19:16
reverberated in Bennett's mind: "Thou
shalt not stand by idly while the blood of
your brother cries out from the earth."
But advocacy work is hard these days,
says Bennett. "It's an uphill battle trying
to introduce more reason into the debate,
but we focus on where we can have some
impact."
After losing 120 family members in the
Holocaust, she says, "I believe in trying to
do what I can do to pay my debt for being
alive." Bennett was born in Budapest in
1946 to Holocaust survivors who fled
Hungary's Communist regime in 1948. Her
family made it to France, where she spent
her early childhood. In 1952, they emigrated to the United States, as stateless
refugees, but her father died shortly after.
She understands a thing or two about
rootlessness. She often felt like an
outsider in her new country. "I remember
when we would go into the post office in

http://www.tanenbaum.org http://www.tanenbaum.org http://www.multifaithalliance.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Summer 2018

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