On a 1996 trip to the former Soviet Union to teach women how to start a business, Janie Kuznitsky presented four women with espresso machines, coffee beans and accessories and trained the women to lead seminars enhanced by the experience of great coffee.
Look in the dictionary for the word “volunteer.” It would make good sense to see a picture
there of Janie Kuznitsky.
The New Jersey native moved to the Valley some 11 years ago from Chicago with her husband, Jeff, who had recently retired. Their plan was to live near her two daughters and a gaggle of grandchildren. Janie had experienced a taste of volunteering “in a previous life in Pittsburgh.” Saying she “never really cooked, but liked a good challenge,” she volunteered to prepare 400 cream puffs for a YMHA fundraiser. (Speaking from personal experience, I can attest to the fact that Janie has since become a superb cook.) Unfortunately, the cream puff event was cancelled. It had been set for the fateful day of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Undaunted, Janie invited a houseful of friends to her home to watch the news and eat the cream puffs.
She agreed to revisit the recipe for the rescheduled event, which proved so successful that the powers that be invited her to chair an upcoming gala for 1,500 guests. The experience, she recalls, effectively launched her career as a “professional volunteer.”
Retired from an accomplished Chicago-based life as a businesswoman, with a resume including managerial posts with Williams-Sonoma and Gloria Jeans coffee, Janie learned about Project Kesher, a grassroots volunteer organization dedicated to working with Jewish women in the former Soviet Union “to identify their roots.” She was so impressed that she signed on to organize a Passover seder in the FSU. Throughout the late ’90s she made several additional trips there; with the assistance of an interpreter, she taught a class in “the democratic foundation of group formation.” One year she brought with her four espresso machines, coffee beans and accessories “to train women to lead seminars on their own – and enhance the experience with great coffees,” she says. “We helped more than 350 women to start businesses and gain financial independence.”
Once she and Jeff settled into their Cave Creek home in 2004, Janie attended a Jewish Family & Children’s Service luncheon in the Valley and recalls being “totally turned on” by a speaker describing a project to benefit foster kids. “We heard about misuse of food stamps by young people who were aging out of Children’s Protective Services foster care and group homes where all too often their dinner was mac and cheese. The speaker talked about the need to teach how to purchase and prepare nutritious foods – and that’s when I raised my hand,” Janie says. “On the spot I volunteered to start a cooking program – to teach what to buy – and what do with the food once it was bought.
“Jeffrey totally supported my plan,” Janie says. “And (he) welcomed the opportunity to underwrite the program, starting with an electric frying pan, a tabletop grill and a countertop oven – and of course the cost of the food.” At the outset only a refrigerator and a microwave were available in the room at the agency building at 23rd Avenue and Dunlap. With the help of some friends, Janie organized a “kitchen shower” at a private home. Working off of a “wish list,” more than 80 attendees contributed three vans full of kitchen equipment, “from wooden spoons to Cuisinarts,” to furnish kitchens for the young adults as they move into their own apartments.
At the first meeting of Janie’s cooking class, the main course was a meat chili, “because part of my goal was – and is – stretching dollars, and chili can work with tacos or mix with noodles – and more.” Salads are a very big deal, she says, recalling the time she introduced zucchini and had to convince class members that it wasn’t a cucumber gone bad!
As the project progresses, Janie encourages participants to come up with menus “to buy in” to the program. They are prompted to consider nutritional values (with the occasional exception of a special calorie-loaded dessert) while also learning basic rules of etiquette and socialization.
To date, Janie says, there has been no Jewish participant, but class members are well aware they are beneficiaries of a JFCS-based project. “I have brought in menorahs, candles, chocolate gelt and dreidels, and we made latkes at Hanukkah,” she says. She calls it a “stunning moment” when classmates of different ethnicities and color share a family game and compete in good fun for chocolate gelt.
More recently Janie lent her expertise to the design and setup for the extravagant Las Vegas-themed décor for the 2014 JCC Gala, with a commitment to do the same this coming year, especially because her son-in-law, Gary Weiss, is being honored. She serves as president of the Grandparents Club at Congregation Beth Israel, coordinating events for grandparents and grandchildren – and has co-chaired the Temple Chai gala with her daughter, Debbie Berkowitz. A loyal member of Brandeis Women, she belongs to a book group and has chaired publicity efforts for various book and author events. And she presently is exploring efforts on behalf of young victims of sexual and slave labor.
A committed volunteer, Janie Kuznitsky is many things to many people. But beneath it all, perhaps she’s just a girl who can’t say no!
