H eadlines
FELS Continued from Page 1
the Commonwealth. I feel so
fortunate for having spent
years — even decades — with
such compassionate, dedicated
professionals, many of whom I
consider family.”
Malis was forthcoming
about the strangeness of it all.

“I’m not old enough to be
anywhere for 50 years,” she
laughed. Malis’ career is as decorated
as it is lengthy. She’s won
countless grants for FELS, and
created departments within the
organization that make it what
it is today. She’s opened up new
branches to serve new popula-
tions, and kept educational
standards at an award-winning
level. Malis has overseen Child Care
Information Services Northeast,
a body that authorizes subsi-
dized child care to thousands
of residents of Northeast
Philadelphia. She was co-chair
of the Southeastern Pennsylvania
Child Care Coalition, served
as a board member and officer
for the Pennsylvania Child
Care Association and sat on
United Way’s Early Childhood
Education Advisory Committee.

She’s a graduate of the Wexner
Tri-State Jewish Leadership
12 OCTOBER 1, 2020
FELS CEO Maddy Malis will retire on Oct. 9.
program, and she’s overseen the
education of thousands of young
children. “It’s truly an accomplish-
ment that she’s A) with an
organization that long, and B)
that it has grown to what it has
become,” said Ron Perilstein, a
longtime member of the FELS
board and a past chairman.

Courtesy of FELS
“She has made her mark and
she will leave her mark on this
community, and on the early
childhood education commu-
nity, not only in Philadelphia,
but across the state.”
Pamela Thomas, who has
been vice president and chief
financial officer in her 12
years with FELS, calls Malis
“the sidewalk doctor,” a refer-
ence to Malis’ propensity to let
you know that you should get
medical problems checked out.

But more than that, she believes,
Malis’ legacy is as a true leader
of the people around her.

“She is more than just the
CEO,” Thomas said. “She
actually cares about everyone
that works under her, with
her, and always tries to bring
everyone along to meet the
goals of the organization.”
Malis grew up in Northeast
Philadelphia, attending Gilbert
Spruance Elementary School.

Her father, Jerome Ralph Malis,
worked for a lumber company;
now 96, he still works there.

Encouragement from “Mrs.

Mandy,” Malis’ fourth-grade
teacher, put her on the path to
JEWISH EXPONENT
Maddy Malis during her early years at what is now the Paley Early
Learning Center
Courtesy of Maddy Malis
education as a vocation and,
within a few years, Malis was
running her own day camp,
scooping up 10 toddlers from
around the neighborhood for a
few hours of story time, games,
Kool-Aid and art projects.

After finishing a program
at Temple University in child
care, Malis began her career
as a teacher at what is now the
Paley Early Learning Center.

Paley was a Jewish Federation
project and, in the early 1970s,
it was folded into Federation
Day Care Services.

Soon after that merger,
Malis’ talents for organization
were noted by Norman Finkel,
who was CEO then. Finkel
encouraged her to join the
administration and nurtured
her career for as long as he
was with FELS. Finkel’s ideas
about what a work environ-
ment should be — “a tight
family,” Malis said — were
hugely influential on her as she
worked her way through every
management job that FELS had
to offer.

She’s certainly needed that
family in the last few months,
as the COVID-19 pandemic
made education a difficult
prospect and gave it new polit-
ical dimensions. Malis was
proud that FELS committed to
in-person education early on
and, thus far, things have gone
smoothly, more or less.

Her real-life family, perhaps
more than anyone else, under-
stands what she has gone
through. Her son, Eric Malis, an
attorney in Palo Alto, California,
explained that it wasn’t only his
mother’s desire to do the right
thing every time that weighed
on her; the consequences of
those decisions stuck with her,
long after they’d concluded.

Watching his mother, Eric Malis
said, he wasn’t aware until later
in life that her dedication to
her profession was something
exceptional. “She really put her whole
self into trying to do what was
right,” he said. That pressure, he
believes, “helps build the person
that she is: the person I’m so
proud to call my mother.” l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
Hijacking Continued from Page 1
carrying pistols and grenades.

“This is your new captain
speaking,” the
woman announced from the cockpit
moments later. “This plane has
been taken over by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. We are taking you
to a friendly country with
friendly people.”
September marked the
50th anniversary of the 1970
Dawson’s Field plane hijack-
ings and the ensuing hostage
crisis, which drew interna-
tional attention and escalated
tensions that led to the outbreak
of the Jordanian civil war. Jerry
Berkowitz, a college professor,
was one of six men held captive
for nearly a month.

Boaz Atzili, an associate
professor of Israel studies,
Jewish studies and Arab studies
at American University, said
hijacking was an increasingly
common tactic for organiza-
tions like PFLP to negotiate
for the release of prisoners and
draw international attention to
their cause after the Six-Day
War in 1967, when Israel
won against Egypt, Syria and
Jordan and took control of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Until ’67, the Palestinians
were basically putting their trust
in the Arab states to eventually
bring the liberation of Palestine,
what became Israel,” Atzili said.

“But the ’67 war was such a
decisive blow to this vision that
the Arabs will somehow win
over Israel. So that’s where we
see this mind shift in Palestinian
operation, and basically they
decided, ‘OK, if we’re not going
to help ourselves, nobody is
going to help us.’”
Berkowitz’s TWA Flight 74
was one of four planes to be
hijacked that day, along with
Swissair Flight 100, El Al Flight
219 and Pan Am Flight 93.

The hijackers landed the TWA
plane and Swissair plane on
Dawson’s Field, a World War II
landing strip in the Jordanian
desert. Three days later,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Jerry Berkowitz
another hijacker forced BOAC
Flight 775 to land at the field.

Men with guns rushed
Berkowitz’s plane, collected
passports and instructed
passengers to fill out customs
declarations. “That kind of blew our minds,
because you had to be prepared
to have the declarations avail-
able,” said Berkowitz, who now
lives in Buffalo, New York.

The next day, the militants
issued demands for the release
of Palestinian prisoners held
in Germany, Switzerland,
England and Israel. They
included the United States in
the group of governments they
would negotiate with.

The hijackers told all women
and children to get off the
plane. Many, including Rivke
Berkowitz, were afraid to leave.

“I convinced my wife that
I’d feel a lot better if she and
my daughter were safe,” Jerry
Berkowitz said.

The guards separated Jews
and non-Jews before releasing
the non-Jewish passengers, who
were transported to Amman.

The Jewish women and children
were sent back on the plane.

That night, Jerry Berkowitz,
now 81, was called off the plane
along with five other men. Two
Courtesy of Gerald Berkowitz
were rabbis with American
and Israeli passports, and
three were U.S. government
employees. They were loaded
onto a truck and driven
through the desert.

“Every time we stopped
behind a large sand dune, I
figured, ‘They’re going to take us
out here and kill us,’” Berkowitz
said. He had nightmares that his
body would never be found and,
in accordance with Jewish law
when a body cannot be identi-
fied, his wife would never be able
to remarry.

Their guards drove them
to the Jordanian city of Irbid,
where they were dropped at
the house that served as PFLP
headquarters. The men were
kept in a small room and given
a single glass to share for water.

A few days later, the guards
brought the hostages an Arabic
language newspaper with a
picture of their plane being
blown up. Jerry Berkowitz
had no idea that his wife and
daughter were taken off the
plane on Sept. 12 and returned
to the U.S. on Sept. 14. He didn’t
know if they were still alive.

Atzili said the hijack-
ings and destruction of the
planes at Dawson’s Field
brought tensions between
JEWISH EXPONENT
Jerry and Rivke Berkowitz
Palestinians and Jordanians
to a boiling point. After the
Six-Day War, Palestinian
groups in Jordan attempted
to create an autonomous zone
where they exercised control
independently of Jordanian
authorities. When Palestinians
blew up the hijacked planes
on Sept. 16, King Hussein of
Jordan declared martial order
and ordered a concerted attack
on Palestinian forces.

Soon after the captives
arrived at the PFLP headquar-
ters, they heard the mortar
fire between Palestinian and
Jordanian forces that marked
the beginning of the Jordanian
civil war.

On Sept. 21, the Jordanians
occupied Irbid and the guards
moved the hostages to an
abandoned schoolhouse. On Sept.

29, the International Committee
of the Red Cross arrived along
with an official secretary from the
Embassy of Egypt in Amman,
who told the men they were being
released unconditionally.

After flying to Athens to
give a press conference, the
group boarded a flight to
John F. Kennedy International
Airport in New York, where
Jerry Berkowitz was finally
reunited with his wife and
Courtesy of Gerald Berkowitz
daughter. Police cars rushed
them to a family member’s
house, and they made it just
before sundown on the eve of
Rosh Hashanah.

Jerry Berkowitz, who is retired,
said the ordeal left its mark on
his family. He and his wife had
flashbacks and nightmares,
particularly when a hostage crisis
appeared in the news.

“In the 50 years since, I
don’t know if we flew 10 times,”
he said. The couple lived in
Buffalo together until Rivke
Berkowitz died in 2015.

He said he found solace
during his captivity by reflecting
on Jewish education and ritual.

On Sept. 26, the last Saturday
before Rosh Hashanah, he
prayed on the second floor of the
schoolhouse. “And I looked up at the sky
and a sentence from Genesis
came to mind: ‘God told
Abraham to look at the sky and
promised to make his descen-
dants as numerous as the stars in
the heavens.’ And I had the sense
that all over the world Jews were
at synagogue, and even if they
weren’t, they were praying for us
to return safely,” he said. l
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
OCTOBER 1, 2020
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