Shalom, Baby!
A UJF program welcomes new babies into the community with support, love…and lots of goodies
By Zach Reff

Months of sleepless nights. Walls bathed in pastel shades. Stress and smiles, almost indistinguishable from one another. Welcome to the first year of parenthood.

Many new parents find that the joys of raising a newborn are often coupled with anxiety and strain. Without a proper network of family and friends, the first year of a child’s life can be rough for the parents. But, thanks to a touching program called Shalom Baby, San Diegan parents, especially mothers, have an easy way to make social connections and integrate into the Jewish community. Just ask Alysa Kaplan, a first-time mother with a beautiful 17-month-old daughter named Elianna.

“Almost anybody that is Jewish, as soon as you’re pregnant they say, ‘Oh, you’ve got to sign up for Shalom Baby!’ And I had no idea what it was at first,” said Kaplan. She first learned of the program from an info booth at the JCC when she was newly pregnant. She signed herself up for the mailing list and was on her way to becoming one of the hundreds of women who have received support and found social connections through the innovative program.

In the months leading up to the birth of Elianna, Kaplan received emails from Shalom Baby with listings of local mohels, preschools, and other helpful information. Kaplan also received a small card a month before her daughter’s expected birth date with a protective prayer written on it (the Shir Lama’alos) to put into her baby’s crib.
Then, a few weeks after Elianna was born, a trained Shalom Baby volunteer visited Kaplan to check in and give her a gift basket overflowing with things for her newborn and her family. But, it was the Shalom Baby playgroup that really made Kaplan thankful for the program.

When Elianna was just six weeks old, Judy Nemzer, the Shalom Baby Coordinator, paired Kaplan up with other mothers who had newborns of the same age to form a playgroup.

Although the infants themselves were very young, the mothers in the group formed instant bonds. “It just made it so much easier, especially in those first two months when your child is born and you don’t even know where to start,” said Kaplan. “Just having the support group of people to talk to who know exactly what you’re going through. I just can’t say enough about it.”

Like many of the playgroups organized by Shalom Baby, Kaplan’s group has become a sort of mini-chavurah. “It’s like family. I couldn’t imagine raising my child without them. I learned so much from every single one of these moms,” said Kaplan. “I’m so happy about this group.
I think that every mom should have something like this. I think that we have kind of grown up along together with the kids.” In fact, whenever Kaplan learns that a friend of hers is pregnant, she passes their name along to Nemzer so she too can sign up for Shalom Baby.

The Shalom Baby program, just like the infants it revolves around, is pretty young. The program officially began in San Diego in September of 20001 with a grant from the United Jewish Federation and the JCC, according to Jean Gaylis, the Founding Chair person of the program. At the time, the only agenda planned for Shalom Baby was to give gift baskets to new Jewish mothers in the community.

Gaylis moved to San Diego from Chicago, where a similar, though unsuccessful, program was carried out at the local JCC. According to Gaylis, the program never took root there, but she knew it had potential in San Diego.
“After I came to San Diego I thought we could reinvent and revitalize the Shalom Baby program,” said Gaylis. The program took awhile to get up and running, but in the end she was right.
Since its humble conception the San Diego program has become incredibly successful.

The San Diego team were inspired to hand out gift baskets by a practice they saw at hospital maternity wards, where new mothers are often given a basket full of things for them and their child when they give birth in a maternity ward. The Shalom Baby staff wanted to do something similar, but with a Jewish twist. The gift basket they give is actually a diaper bag filled with a treasure trove of Jewish-themed infant goodies. Every basket contains Shabbat candles, a tzedaka box, a bib with the Shalom Baby logo in either blue or pink (depending on the sex of the baby), small stuffed animals from Geppetto’s toy shop, four issues of “Apples and Honey” (a publication that gives advice and info on raising Jewish newborns and young’ins), Temple brochures for unaffiliated couples and brochures on Jewish day schools in the area, a copy of the Jewish Times and, of course, the Jewish Journal, among many other items. There is no solicitation involved and money is never asked for, according to Nemzer.

Nemzer claims that the program has already delivered more than 1300 baskets according to Nemzer! They now average giving around 250 baskets a year. “The young married couple was really an untouched area of our community,” said Alma Hadash Geiger, who supervises Shalom Baby and is also the Director of Early Childhood Education at the Nierman Preschool.
Rather than just gift giving, Shalom Baby has helped many formerly uninvolved San Diegan Jews integrate into the larger community. “Originally the big goal was to deliver the baskets.

Well yes, we still deliver the baskets, but now, it’s a huge community outreach program,” said Nemzer.

Beside the initial gift basket, prayer and emails, Shalom Baby now offers a number of programs for new parents that help keep them active in the Jewish community. First and foremost among these are the playgroups. The playgroups have been a huge success because they allow moms to meet each other, become friends and become a support structure for one another.
Geiger estimates that some 98 percent of moms who receive the gift basket
sign up to take part in a playgroup.

Belinda Feldman, who volunteered to deliver gift baskets for the program and later became a Shalom Baby participant herself when she had her first child, is also very pleased with her involvement in a playgroup. “It’s really interesting.
We all [the playgroup moms] live in different parts of the county and we might not have met otherwise. But we’re brought together since we all went through a similar experience.
We’ve all met, we’ve all become friends,” said Feldman. “It’s really for us to check in and meet and unload on each other and talk about things we’re going through at the same time.”

Demand for the playgroups was so high that other programs sprung up. Shalom Baby now offers a baby book club, weekly infant massage courses, and a once monthly program where moms and their babies visit the Seacrest Village retirement community to spend time with elderly residents. “We have envisioned, and I’m pleased to say, succeeded, in being the support network for these young families,” said Gaylis. Of course, none of the programs, or even Shalom Baby itself, would be possible without Judy Nemzer, the heart and soul of the entire operation.

Nemzer works fulltime for Shalom Baby at the JCC. She is a skilled networker and has connections with doctors, synagogues, schools and individuals who tell her whenever a Jewish woman in town is pregnant. She then calls up the women and invites them to join Shalom Baby. And, she often keeps in touch with the women long after they have given birth. “An important part of the outreach is Judy doesn’t wait for them [the parents] to call. It’s very important,” said Geiger. She will call and stay in contact, and there are parents who have said in letters, ‘I forgot about Shalom Baby, but they didn’t forget about me. And because Judy remembered me, I am now part of the Jewish community and otherwise I would have been lost.’”

Nemzer herself becomes the support person for many new mothers according to both Geiger and Gaylis.
The walls of her office are plastered with literally hundreds of photos of babies and their moms who she has helped integrate into the community. “I can’t say enough about Judy either.
She’s so warm and loving and she treats everybody like they’re her own children. It makes you want to go to all these programs,” said Kaplan. When a couple of moms at Camp Pendleton lost family members, Nemzer was there to help them, lend support, and connect them to other mothers for additional support.

The Shalom Baby program in San Diego has been so successful that the UJF is considering starting a “Shalom Newlyweds” program, according to Gaylis, and many larger cities with similar programs have called Nemzer to ask for advice and guidance. “The goal was to welcome people to the community unconditionally,” said Gaylis.
Shalom Baby has succeeded in that task and a whole lot more. Now all Jewish babies in town, and their families, have a lot to smile about.

Chances are that a volunteer will probably come to their door one day bearing gifts, friendship and a welcomed greeting, “Shalom Baby!” AIf you know an expectant Jewish mother in town, or, if you’d like to volunteer your time and support to Shalom Baby, call coordinator Judy Nemzer at (858) 362-1352. You can also email the program at shalombaby@lfccc.org, or find them online at www.lfjcc.org/shalombaby.

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