that had some sort of relevance to her life as a mother
with two young children.

“I didn’t really want to do anything that didn’t
impact them directly,” she said.

To further the feeling of not belonging, she was
far and away the youngest woman at the first meet-
ing she attended, held in Braude’s John F. Kennedy
Boulevard apartment. Braude, then president, con-
ducted the meeting in a suit, hat and gloves.

“I was horrified,” she remembered.

But she felt she had to continue for her grand-
mother and pressed on. Within two years, Braude
called Sklaroff to tell her that she was being unilaterally
declared treasurer. Since then, Sklaroff has worked to
make FHBS sustainable, helpful and meaningful to its
constituents, some of whom are Holocaust survivors.

Most of the women helped by FHBS are not made
self-sufficient by the help they receive, nor is that
really the point, Sklaroff said, although she certainly
doesn’t complain when it turns out that way. Some
women depend on the group for many years; others
get a one-time stipend and are never heard from
again. The object is to simply be a place for women
who need help, Sklaroff said.

“Our donors like us,” she said, “because we’re
quiet, we’re quick and they know their money is
going directly to a Jewish woman in need.”
Pam Stein, a tax partner at an accounting firm, is
the current FHBS treasurer. She finds herself fascinated
by the history of the group, and how changing societal
mores and women’s legal standing have allowed the Pam
Steins of the world to flourish in a way they couldn’t
before. Aside from her work as an accountant, Stein
worked for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia
at the local and national level for many years.

“I feel an obligation to perpetuate it,” she said of
the FHBS.

As one might expect of a low-key organization,
the main part of its anniversary celebration will
consist of a small, private affair: A ceremony and
stone-placing will be conducted at the Mikveh Israel
Cemetery, where seven original board members are
buried. What is certainly against the group’s M.O. is an anni-
versary banner ad on the PECO Building. Anonymity
aside, Sklaroff said, 200 years is a big deal.

The future of the group, Sklaroff said, will be up
to the women who run it, just as it was put to her on
the day she took a leadership position. “I would want
it to look like what the women who are leading it
want it to be,” she said.

Stein hopes that whatever form it takes, its con-
tinued existence is assured. For the 400th anniversa-
ry, she said, it’ll be good to know that “there’s still a
group of Jewish women in the Philadelphia area that
are helping other Jewish women.” l
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