Bruce served a term as president of the Jewish Community Center of Nashville in the early 1990s. “Since then,” his mother volunteered in a telephone conversation from her home in Florida, “he’s done whatever he can to help the presidents who came after him.”  That, no doubt, helped clinch his inclusion in the dozen leading citizens of the Nashville Jewish community selected in 1998 to participate in a tour of work underway in  Ukraine and Israel by the agencies it helps support. 

In remarks still as moving as on the Shabbos when he delivered them before a gathering of the Nashville Jewish Federation, Bruce describes how he saw, in 1997, the work of Operation Exodus continuing:  “…Every day 166 people leave the Former Soviet Union, not on boats like our forebears, but on the wings of an eagle -- an El Al flight….”  His group flew to Israel "in such a plane, full of new immigrants … and we felt the excitement in the cabin.”  (For the complete text of Bruce’s remarks, click here.)  

In the Ukrainian town of Chernigov, about 50 miles east of  Chernobyl, the group visited a social hall for Jewish youth.  Everyone “danced in the dark,” said Bruce, because  “… electricity was available for only a few hours a day.”  The group also went to the small apartment they call “the warm house,” provided so the elderly would have a place to gather, as they had no synagogue.  

Bruce speaks of the gratitude of those he met and the need for additional funds “to help our brethren.”  That would provide more of the food packages sent out 6 times a year, which help some needy elderly survive.  Only a fraction are receiving help, said Bruce.  Many are housebound retirees who have to survive on a monthly pension of $20.  Sometimes, Bruce said, the check “does not even come.”

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