‘My passion is food and diversity’
The new executive director of The Joint NSW, Melissa Port hopes to use her experience in events, PR and marketing to bring people together to enhance awareness of the JDC's work.
A COUPLE of years ago, Melissa Port was about to visit one of Havana’s old synagogues when she got an unusual request.
“Can you please bring your suitcases full of toiletries … Panadol and toothpaste?”
When she arrived with a full suitcase, she was directed upstairs to a former women’s section, which had been transformed into a pharmacy where any Jew could come in and take what they needed.
Port would later find out that the free pharmacy had been set up by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) – the global organisation which has served as a lifeline to Jews around the world for over a century.
As the new executive director of The Joint NSW, she hopes to use her experience in events, PR and marketing to bring people together to enhance awareness of the JDC’s work.
Since its beginnings in 1914 supporting “the starving Jews in Ottoman-era Palestine”, the JDC has played key roles in humanitarian missions, including the airlifting of “16,000 Ethiopian Jews out of Sudan”; and bringing hundreds of thousands of refugees out of Europe after WWII. The JDC brought the “Dunera boys”, along with 25,000 others to Australia.
A current focus is the crisis in the Ukraine, which is leaving families without heat amid the northern European winter; and ensuring that 80,000 elderly Jews across the former Soviet Union are properly cared for.
The JDC also strives to stay future-oriented, connecting students with educational opportunities at any age, wherever they are in the world.
Port’s highlights include working with Max Markson to bring Bill Clinton to Australia; and the Shared Table Project, which grew out of her food startup – it “brought Jewish and Muslim women together, and we had incredible experiences breaking down those barriers between communities”.
“My passion is food and diversity,” said Port, whose first aim is to make people aware of just how much work The Joint does.
Looking to the near future, she wants to “showcase the diverse Jewish communities we support in India, Morocco, Cuba, Greece and Argentina”. She also encourages anyone whose family arrived in Australia as Jewish refugees to search the JDC’s online archive.
Explore your family history: archives.jdc.org
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