Suzzy Fromm Shimelman on joining Federation’s Legacy Circle

It is not at all unusual to meet members of our Berkshire Jewish community who have had meaningful roles with the largest and most impactful institutions in the wider world of Jewish philanthropy – contributing as benefactors and fundraisers, volunteering on boards and committees, or working as professionals in leadership positions.

Suzzy Fromm Shimelman, who now divides her time between Lenox and Sarasota, FL, served the Federation in New Haven for seven years as its executive director before moving on to high-level positions with the State of Connecticut, where she had as many as 50,000 government employees reporting to her. “I’m an administrator,” she says of her career. “I have an economics degree, a public health degree, and a management degree – a lot of ivy growing out of my head. What I love to do is to create opportunities for organizations and for the people within those organizations.”

This year, Suzzy joined Jewish Federation of the Berkshires’ Legacy Circle, a commitment to help ensure that opportunities for this Jewish community to grow and thrive will continue to accrue. “The legacy one leaves is really the future for a future generation,” she explains. “Jewishly, you're required to begin the journey – you cannot complete it. The Legacy Circle allows the Federation, the Jewish community, to complete a journey from generation to generation. I think it's a very exciting opportunity to leave a footprint.”

During Suzzy’s tenure in New Haven, her intermediate-sized Federation was one of five in Connecticut, each with a large base that allowed for the development of an extensive infrastructure of Jewish institutions. “We had a JCC, we had a Jewish Home for the Aged, we had an ADL office, and Jewish Family Service,” she remembers. “We had a community relations office and a statewide organization that worked with the legislature. We had access to academic resources for our youth. We had access to New York in an easy fashion. And because New Haven was a year-round community and not a summer community, we had access to each other all year round. At the time, there were 25,000 Jews in New Haven.”

With that perspective, Suzzy says “my first impression was awe at Jewish Federation of the Berkshires. As an executive director, Dara Kaufman is head and shoulders above me. The things that this small Federation is able to do, the connections it has made on a relatively small fundraising base, are incredible. With a community that swells in the summer, it provides an array of programming that is very, very impressive, and this has fostered a sense of community that is impressive. I am awed by what the Federation does here.”

Giving back has been an ongoing practice not only for Suzzy, but for her family, as well. Her father, mother, and older brother all narrowly escaped Nazi Germany before the war and, after they resettled in New York City, focused on helping refuges and asylum seekers from all over the world. Her mother, Kate Fromm, was president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization that advocates for and provides vital services to refugees across the globe. Her brother, Gary Fromm, was the first in his family to go to college, completing degrees in industrial management and mechanical engineering before earning a PhD in economics at Harvard. He and Suzzy (who also earned an advanced degree at Harvard) together honored their parents by creating the Walter and Kate Fromm Endowment Fund to support the Harvard Choruses’ programs focused on historically underrepresented groups.

In addition to joining this Federation’s Legacy Circle, Suzzy established legacy endowments in both New Haven and Hartford. Her commitment to ensuring Jewish security and continuity was born of her earliest memories.

“I am the child of Holocaust survivors, and I grew up in Washington Heights in New York City, in a German-Jewish community,” she says. “I think I know that my early experience was very formative in creating the way I looked at the world in two ways. One is I that heard the tales of escape on Sunday morning at the coffee klatches that my parents hosted. And as a two-year-old – I was born in 1942 – I could hear their terrifying tales. So, one of the things I learned was to plan an escape route. If things went wrong, how could you correct them? How could you make them better? So I spent a career in administering large organizations and being quite rewarded for the skills that I learned as a two-year-old: scan the environment, experiment, figure out what could go right, what could go wrong, what would be your tactics for creating safety for a community or for a person.

“I also learned that people who were immigrants, who had given up a life that they'd known, were really the heroes of the story. They were certainly my heroes – not knowing the language, not knowing customs, and coming to the United States and creating a life for their children. Who would have thought that immigrant children could grow up to take advantage of all the opportunities and not feel the constant sting of antisemitism?”

She adds about the current crisis facing American Jews: “Today, the world has so totally changed. Physical safety was never an issue for me growing up, and even as a young married person. But now, physical safety, the ability to speak out, the ability to be Jewish has changed. It is scary, disappointing, and concerning.”

Suzzy says she supports Federation as a major donor and now a Legacy Circle participant because our work aligns with her values and the communal needs of the moment. “I think Federation’s current Hate Has No Home Here program is a nomenclature that is understandable and digestible and important. I think the caring of the community that is here during the winter, the holiday support, the support of the Hebrew schools, and the support of the camping opportunities for young people are all very impressive. This Federation seems to do everything with very few personnel and a big heart.”

In conclusion, Suzzy shared her philosophy for others who may be contemplating joining the Legacy Circle: “I've not earmarked my legacy gifts because I'm trusting each Jewish community to make its own decisions in their own best interest. Because as I've watched things change from my young adulthood to today, who would have guessed that our major challenge would now be antisemitism?”

Consider making a Legacy gift today. For more information, click here.