Grantees in the News

Charmaine Rice was a bright-eyed, recent Wright State University graduate when she realized helping others along their professional trajectory would be a fitting career path for herself.

“I was sitting in a six-week management training course at Ohio Savings Bank, and there was this woman who was facilitating that training,” Rice recalled. “We were not being spoon-fed information for eight hours a day. Instead, we were doing case studies and slowly building up our knowledge to the point where we could be confident that, even if we didn’t know the answer, we could find an answer. … It astounded me. I just appreciated being able to support people with feeling more comfortable that they have the skills and abilities to do their job effectively.”

Today, Rice leads a 12-person team responsible for overseeing the learning and development of AmTrust Financial Services’ nearly 8,000 employees. She was hired initially in 2020 to oversee diversity and inclusion for the global insurance company but “kept sticking” her nose into learning and development while championing cultural competence.

“For many of us, the workplace is the first time we are in an environment with folks who are very different than ourselves, communicate differently, have different observances, different values, different world views,” she said. “So, part of learning to work and be successful at your job can be less about the technical skill and more about the relational skills.”

Rice spent most of her elementary years at a U.S. Air Force base in Germany where her father was stationed, though a brief move to to the Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, exposed the sixth-grader to racism from her classmates.

Rice said the family returned to Germany 18 months later, where they lived until she was 16 and a final reassignment landed her father at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton.

At AmTrust, Rice is proud of the work she’s done “to create a culture that really amplifies employees as individuals, as well as part of the community.” Under her watch, the company has launched an executive diversity council, seven different “employee networks,” including groups focused on abilities, families, military service and multiculturalism, and an internal career development tool that helps employees personalize their professional paths.

“Of course, I can’t take credit for these things alone,” she said. “I have an amazing team.”

She puts her development skills to work outside of the office, as well, from her longtime partnership with the nonprofit Heart to Heart organization in Akron to the 2019 establishment of Cleveland-based Rekindle Fellowship, which she co-founded with Matt Fieldman.

Rekindle is a program that brings leaders from the Black and Jewish communities together for meaningful dialogue and collaborative action. With 116 graduates to date, the program is expanding to Akron this summer.

Fieldman said Rice’s “superpower” is her ability “to get people to shed all those layers of identity and just connect as human beings.”

“We more leaders like Charmaine who can connect authentically person-to-person and create safe spaces to have real conversations,” he said.

A high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is unfortunately one of the tolls that Israel’s wars have taken on both its military and civilian population. There are different types of PTSD, and each has to be addressed differently.

Understanding that vital need, Yuval Limon, 67, and Nir Lahav, 62, began to build a place to help heal military PTSD a year-and-a-half ago. They received 20 dunams (about five acres of land) that had been lying fallow from two families who had given 10 dunams each in the religious Moshav Chemed, near Ohr Yehuda, in central Israel. There, Limon and Lahav began building hothouses for agriculture, and facilities for group therapy to treat PTSD at three levels: physically, emotionally and socially. Sometimes army veterans are so traumatized by their experiences that the farm is the only place they’ll leave the house to go.

The initiative is called Ruca’s Farm, after Lahav’s mother, who came on aliyah from Argentina in the 1950s, and was one of the founding members of Kibbutz Gazit, in northern Israel. So Lahav is getting back to his roots, quite literally.

Ruca’s Farm has six greenhouses where vegetables are grown organically, as well as fields growing 200 fruit trees, and other crops like corn. The produce is then sold locally (farm to table), and helps support the initiative. It is also served for lunch to the participants and staff, and one of the religious social workers tithes it. The founders are also hoping to create a farmer’s market at the moshav. Everything is built by volunteers.

Research has demonstrated that treatment combining work in nature and agricultural cultivation can improve mood, reduce loneliness, increase physical functioning, raise the effectiveness of drug treatment, and contribute significantly to the future success of those suffering from the severe effects of PTSD.

Ruca’s Farm operates a unique and intensive treatment program for Israeli veterans —an eight-week course in groups of 10-15, which has proven to be successful. There are two types of groups; one composed of soldiers from previous Israeli wars, and a separate group for soldiers of the Israel-Hamas war.

Some of the participants who have come from the current war have witnessed horrible scenes that have affected them terribly. The brutal and bloodthirsty massacre and atrocities of Hamas on October 7 were in some ways more traumatic than the war itself.

The farm has about 50 volunteers, most of them older, who come to work once or twice a week. Many of them are academics and high-tech workers who are volunteering in their retirement years.

After their own army service, both Limon and Lahav had successful careers. Limon founded a famous chain of retail stores called HaMetayel that sells hiking and camping equipment, and Lahav worked for The Jewish Agency. Both were looking for something meaningful to do after their retirement, and they had met through various projects that each was involved in.

The participants of the Ruca’s Farm program are chosen in cooperation with the Rehabilitation Division of the Ministry of Defense. They work for an hour or two on the farm, have lunch, and then do group therapy sessions for another two-and-a-half hours. The staff is of the highest caliber and are remunerated by the donations made to the farm.

Ruca’s Farm is under the guidance of therapists and researchers who are leaders in the field of treatment of PTSD. One of the ranch’s psychologists, Ofer Chai was a medic in the first Lebanon War, in which he lost one of his eyes. He was awarded the Medal of Valor and decided to dedicate his life to psychology.

All of the participants are military, and although most are men, some are women. They encountered scenes they couldn’t have imagined in their worst nightmares. Sometimes, a post-service soldier will not display signs of psychological stress, but then something will act as a trigger, even long after the event.

Both Limon and Lahav stress that they want the people who come to the farm for rehabilitation to feel at home. They are expending much effort, planning and money in building a kitchen, a meeting room and other venues that will give the feeling of home and safety. Right now they are meeting in temporary buildings.

The farm is a work in progress and new things are being added all the time. They are also committed to the highest standard of agricultural high-tech innovation for organic and biological farming. They have also recently started an apiary with a few hives for the production of honey.

“We feel that we owe these people a lot. The trauma they experienced compromises their functioning and we want to help them find peace here so they can return to a normal life. We recognize the Divine Providence we have been privy to,” said Limon. “It isn’t a coincidence that Nir and I met.” He and Lahav want to expand their work, and not just meet the immediate need due to the war. “We’re only just beginning,” they said.

The waves were a bit strong and the breeze still chilly, on the official opening day of the Shirat HaYam gender-segregated beach in Bat Yam, Israel, last week as Waves of Hope began the first lesson of its therapeutic surfing course for a new group of at-risk girls from the Haredi community.

Exhilarated from her first foray into the sea with a surfboard, Elisheva David, 17, from the mainly Haredi city of Elad, was still wearing a wetsuit while a few of the other girls had already changed into their ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved shirts.

“I was afraid I would be cold, and that I would get water in my eyes, or that I would be stiff afterwards,” said David, who had come to the course for the first time at the suggestion of Elad’s educational and youth counselor, Odelia Levi. “It was freezing, but I am proud of myself. I for sure will come back next week.”

For Eliyahu Ben Zion, founder and director of the nonprofit, those words make his efforts worthwhile.

A former Israeli surfing champion who became religious when he was 19, Ben Zion brought the sport of surfing into the world of religious at-risk youth to help change the course of their lives. His goal now, he said, is to “return them to the path of being human.”

While using sea sports as a tool to help treat such youth is a widely used therapeutic form of treatment worldwide, the Waves of Hope program specifically for at-risk religious youth is the only one of its kind in the world, said Ben Zion, 46. Every year the nonprofit provides classes to 1,500 at-risk youth. All participants must already know how to swim.

Ben Zion initiated the program that eventually grew into Waves of Hope in 2016 when the mayor of Elad approached him with the idea of using surfing to help a group of 10 at-risk boys. Knowing the surfing world from up close since he was 6, Ben Zion said he was initially hesitant to introduce it into the religious community. But then as he created the specially tailored therapeutic program for the disaffected youth who left school and the community, he saw it as a unique way of helping these young people.

“In a classroom setting they can be troublemakers, but when they come to the sea they are really afraid. They feel the danger so I take advantage of that and can keep them on a tight leash and they have set limits. They need limits to bring them to a place where they can surf,” he said.

The religious community is no different than the rest of the population in terms of the problems youth are struggling with, he said, whether their disengagement stems from a history of academic failure, abuse, family crisis or spiritual alienation. At-risk youth from observant Jewish families, who have stepped out of their social framework, can be especially vulnerable because they often face hostility and exclusion from their families and community who regard them as rebellious, defiant or as a disgrace.

“Most of these at-risk kids go to sleep at 3 a.m. and wake up at noon,” he said. “I make it a point that they have to come on time to the course at 10 a.m. This requires them to change habits.”

Sometimes he even arranges for individual lessons at 5 a.m. to help build their self-discipline.

Facing challenges in the sea also helps them learn how to cope with obstacles and problems in their daily lives, he said. A social worker is always present during the classes.

Levi noted that she is in contact with the girls whom she recommends for the surfing course through the welfare office of Elad. The course exposes the girls to a set of experiences usually unknown in the Haredi world, she said.

“It exposes them to different places. They discover within the sea that they can succeed. Through the sea they see there are good things in the world,” said Levi. “You see the joy they experience. All these experiences go with them and give them inner strength, the sense that ‘I did something, I succeeded.’ Even if they don’t succeed, they were here, they came to the course and feel that if they want to succeed, it is all a matter of practice and effort.”

As long as he rustles up enough funding, Ben Zion says he is able to open a 10-session course for a new group of 14 youth — separate for boys and girls. It costs NIS 25,000 ($6,600) to open a course, he said, and the nonprofit receives funds from religious municipalities as well as private donations. There is always a waiting list, he added.

Recently the Good People Fund provided Waves of Hope with a matching grant for a new class of girls from the southern towns of Ofakim and Netivot who have experienced war-related trauma from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and he is working to raise his end of the funding. It is the second year the fund has supported the program.

“Clearly we fund organizations, but we also focus on the founder, and that was really what drew us in,” said Naomi Eisenberger, executive director of the Good People Fund. “Our focus is on individuals who have found creative ways to solve problems. Using surfing is a very creative way of dealing with the issue of at-risk youth in the religious community. And Eliyahu’s path to doing this is itself a very interesting path, he was a champion surfer before he became religious and he is clearly very passionate and committed to this work as is his wife. He is charming and he is very committed to these kids. He represents for us individuals who have found creative ways to do tikkun olam with this pretty unusual program.”

For modesty reasons, Ben Zion does not normally oversee the classes for the girls, but his wife, Katty — who said that while all nine of their children have learned how to surf, she only does “a little surfing” — is present, working out of their cramped storage room/office to help the girls who might be hesitant to take the surfing plunge. On one recent morning, for instance, there had been a mini-crisis with David, and Katty had to negotiate with her to give the lesson a try.

“Afterwards she felt like she had succeeded, and like she was worth something,” Katty said.

Those who excel in the course are sent to Wingate Institute for sports excellence, for certification as surfing instructors; they can later be employed by Waves of Hope as instructors for their private classes, which are available to the general public — both religious and secular — and their summer camps, also for the general public. Revenues from both go to pay salaries for the instructors and also help fund the at-risk youth program. Any graduate of the program can also come to surf with Waves of Hope on Fridays when they are open.

Esther Malka Nusbacher, 21, from Beit Shemesh, has been teaching the course for the girls for four years. She first took surfing lessons as a private student in the summer camp. Ben Zion saw her potential, sent her to Wingate and then employed her as a counselor for the girls program.

“Just getting to the sea is for them freedom and they enjoy that and get into the water. It is just simply something else. You come, you surf and you feel like you belong to something. When they succeed you simply see their joy on their faces,” said Nusbacher. “They learn and they succeed. Here we are, the first lesson for these girls and they are present and laughing.”

Some of their students return to their yeshiva studies or to their midrasha, Ben Zion said, while others he helps get drafted into the IDF or start working. Graduates have also gotten married and started families of their own, said Ben Zion.

“They always stay in touch after the course,” said Ben Zion. “Today they stand as human beings.”

The party — a low-budget wedding in 1995 at a Brooklyn venue aptly nicknamed Armpit Terrace — was to distract me from the horrific reality of my forced marriage to the stranger.

“Mazel tov!” they told me, beaming.

In the reclusive Orthodox Jewish community in New York City where I grew up, choices about whether, when and whom I would marry did not belong to me. At home and at the all-girls religious school I attended, where I learned to cook and sew and keep house, I was groomed from early childhood to expect a teen marriage to a stranger my family and a matchmaker would choose for me.

I was allowed to meet the stranger several times before my engagement, but I was not allowed to be alone with him nor to have any physical contact with him. I was a clueless 19-year-old who had never been allowed to “talk to a boy,” and suddenly I was given a matter of hours, over a period of a few weeks, to answer my family and his family and the matchmaker and everyone in the community standing there, tapping their feet, looking at their watches, waiting for me to tell them: You’ll marry this man we chose for you, right?

“No” was never really an option.

During my six-week engagement, I still was not allowed to be alone with the groom nor to have any physical contact with him, which left more time for me to begin experiencing the myriad other abuses that come with a forced marriage.

First, a virginity exam. The groom’s rabbi sent me to an Orthodox Jewish gynecologist, where I was instructed to disrobe, get on the examination table and put my feet in the stirrups. The doctor inserted her gloved fingers into my vagina and confirmed that my hymen was intact.

“Mazel tov!” she told me, beaming.

I attended one-on-one bridal classes, where the curriculum centered on the requirement that I have unprotected sex with my husband on my wedding night and on a monthly basis thereafter. A lifetime of rape.

Yes, the rapes probably would hurt, the bridal class teacher explained. Hence the K-Y Jelly.

“Mazel tov!” she told me, beaming.

My stranger-turned-husband turned out to be violent and abusive. I learned this exactly one week after our wedding, when he became enraged because he had woken up late, and he punched his fist through the wall — hard enough to leave a sizable hole.

His first threat to kill me came only days later. Soon these threats became more frequent, specific and gruesome. He was brimming with creative ideas for how he would end my life, and he took the time to describe them to me in vivid detail. A lifetime of fear.

Yet I was trapped.

My forced marital sex was carefully timed each month for when I was ovulating. The reason for this was obvious: My first child was born 11 months after my wedding, and soon I had a second child.

So I remained trapped in my abusive forced marriage. In accordance with Orthodox Jewish law, I was considered “unclean” every time I menstruated. While I was “unclean,” I was prohibited from having physical contact with my husband, sleeping in the same bed as him, handing him anything or undressing or singing in front of him. A lifetime of shame.

Once my period ended, I needed to count seven “clean” days without any menstrual blood, during which time the rules against physical contact continued. To make sure I stayed “clean” for the full seven days, I was required to wear white panties and, twice a day, to insert a white cloth into my vagina, swish it around and inspect it in sunlight to make sure it did not have blood spots. If I found questionable marks on my panties and could not tell whether they were blood, the rabbi would inspect them and give his pronouncement.

And the rabbi would keep my panties. A lifetime of extreme patriarchy.

Each month, after the seven “clean” days, I was forced to strip naked in front of an attendant who watched me immerse in a mikvah, or a ritual bath of rainwater, which frequently left me with a yeast infection and always left me shaking uncontrollably. A lifetime of violation.

All I wanted, every time I left the mikvah, was to take a hot shower and scrub the violation off me. That was prohibited. Instead I was required to go home and have nonconsensual sex with the man who had spent the day describing to me in graphic detail how he was going to murder me. The man who would not let me close the door when I used the bathroom, because “what was I hiding from him in there?”

No matter. I had to get on the bed and spread my legs and forget what had happened to me at the mikvah and ignore the pain while I waited for him to finish, and I had to remind myself how lucky I was that he usually was done after only three or four thrusts. A lifetime straight out of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Forced marriage — in which one or both parties do not give full, free consent — is recognized globally as a form of modern slavery. My story is far from unique: Around the world, 22 million people were in a forced marriage as of 2021.

Yet, even though the United States acknowledges that forced marriage is a human rights abuse, few laws and policies are in place to prevent or punish it, and the nation has paid such scant attention to this issue that we do not even know how often forced marriage happens here.

What’s more, child marriage remains legal in most U.S. states, even though it is recognized as a form of forced marriage and a human rights abuse. Some 300,000 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, mostly girls wed to adult men. At least 60,000 marriages occurred at an age or with a spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime.

My husband would regularly search through my personal belongings in front of me, including in the pockets of the clothing in my closet and in my bag of tampons under the bathroom sink. A lifetime of subjugation. When I finally realized at age 27 that I was the only person who would help me leave my abusive forced marriage alive and I decided I would secretly save up cash for my escape, I found the only safe hiding place in the house: a box of Whole Grain Total in the pantry.

I saved more than $40,000 in that cereal box over the next five years.

During those years I also defied my community and did something no one in my family had ever done: I became a college student. My husband forbade me from attending classes. I informed him, calmly, that nothing he did to me would stop me from getting my education.

And I did something no one I knew had ever done: I threw out the limp, ugly wig I was required to wear as a married woman to cover my own thick, healthy hair. I walked outside with my uncovered head held high — the equivalent, in that community, of walking outside naked.

My family retaliated immediately by shunning me. One of my sisters notified me that my family was planning to sit shiva — or observe the Jewish mourning ritual for me — as if I had literally died. I have had almost no contact with my family since that day. A lifetime of being dead.

But I graduated from Rutgers University (as commencement speaker, the equivalent of valedictorian) at age 32, and I escaped my abusive forced marriage on my own, with my daughters and my box of Total. I fled the Orthodox Jewish community too, and I rebuilt my life.

In 2011 I founded a nonprofit organization, Unchained At Last, to combat forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change.

The U.S. is one of 193 countries that agree forced and child marriage are harmful practices, particularly for women and girls, and have promised to eliminate these abuses by year 2030 to help achieve gender equality, under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Yet the U.S. is not on track to keep its promise.

I refuse to accept this. Not after I escaped my lifetime of oppression.

We at Unchained are fighting back by providing crucial wraparound services to a long-ignored population: those who are fleeing an existing or impending forced marriage in the U.S. To date we have provided legal and social services, always for free, to nearly 1,000 individuals, to help give them a lifetime of dignity, safety and hope.

We also started a national movement to end child marriage. In the last few years, our groundbreaking research and relentless advocacy have allowed us to help change the law in 10 U.S. states to ban child marriage — a stunning victory for the 7.5 million girls who live in those 10 states — and we are working on the other 40.

A lifetime of preventing other lifetimes of rape.

“Mazel tov!” I now tell myself, beaming, with each triumphant step closer to ending forced and child marriage in the U.S.

Fraidy Reiss is a forced marriage survivor turned activist. She is the founder and executive director of Unchained At Last, a survivor-led nonprofit organization working to end forced and child marriage in the U.S. through direct services and systems change. Fraidy’s research and writing on forced and child marriage have been published extensively, making her one of the nation’s foremost experts on these abuses. She has been featured in books (including as one of the titular women in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s “The Book of Gutsy Women”), films and countless television, radio and print news stories.