Please join us in supporting Fiona and Jasper's inspiring B'nai Mitzvah Project
For their B'nai Mitzvah Project, Jasper and Fiona are excited to be sponsoring two teenage students at the Yemin Orde Youth Village in Israel. Over the next four years, Fiona, Jasper, and their Yemin Orde peers will be sharing and learning from each other through regular communication and ideas exchange. In December 2021, Fiona and Jasper will make their first visit to the Yemin Orde Youth Village in Haifa.
Founded after World War II, Yemin Orde Youth Village was created to provide a safe haven and a home for Holocaust orphans and immigrant children. Today, Yemin Orde serves at-risk youth suffering from abandonment, loss, neglect, extreme poverty, and family dysfunction. Yemin Orde provides a forever home so they may thrive and embrace hope for the future. Yemin Orde’s mantra “from survival to leadership” has helped thousands of at-risk kids overcome their traumas to go on to become strong and contributing members of Israeli society.
Fiona’s and Jasper’s Scholarship Fund will cover academic enrichment, essential tutorial hours, computer literacy, extracurricular activities, special trips, and trauma counseling to strengthen the emotional well-being of the children at Yemin Orde.
Jasper and Fiona’s own family’s Holocaust story of loss and rebirth made Yemin Orde, founded to care for orphans of the Holocaust, an excellent fit for their Mitzvah Project. David Chazen Sr., Jasper and Fiona’s great-grandfather, was the youngest of seven children, and was orphaned at the age of six. Hoping for a better life for him, his family sent him, in 1912, from his hometown of Shumsk, Russia, to New York City. As he grew up, he stayed close to the family who remained in Europe.
Over the decades, both the European and American branches grew. In World War II, the 2,432 Jews remaining in Shumsk were killed in the Shumsk Massacre. But before that, a few people did escape, including the three daughters of David’s sister, Feyga. These three girls, Devorah, Frida, and Sonia, would eventually find their way, in 1939, to Palestine. These orphans of the Holocaust would serve in the British Army of Palestine, would help build the State of Israel, and would go on to create families of their own.
Fiona and Jasper recognize this rich heritage and obligation to both their family and the Jewish people.