HomeMay 2010Celebrating the Ezra Center

Celebrating the Ezra Center

The Ezra Center 14th Anniversary Gala is on June 6, at 12 noon, at the Anaheim Park Hotel. Honorees are Sylvia Oster and Terri Moses.

Oster is a founding member of the Ezra Center, who also works at Disneyland. She has secured Community Grants from Disney for our mission of serving Seniors in the North Orange County Community.

“Sylvia is a loyal and valuable member of the Ezra Center, who has been a member from the beginning and who has devoted countless hours in the kitchen and elsewhere,” says Margalit Moskowitz, Ezra Center director.  A member of Temple Beth Emet for 50 years, Oster has three children, David, Mark, and Leslie.

Moses and the Jewish Family Service are being honored for bringing the JFS to North Orange County. The partnership with Ezra Center has a JFS staff member at Ezra during Mondays and Thursdays, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. for consultations. Prior to having this field office at Ezra, North Orange County Jews had to go down to Irvine, or the JFS staff had to travel to member homes. In addition JFS provides transportation to Ezra and the synagogues for those unable to drive and buses for some of our field trips.

Born in La Mirada, California, and raised under the dual influence of a political activist and an artist, Moses received an early education in community service and over-the-top event planning.   She got her degree in history from U.C. Berkeley and worked a number of unlikely jobs, such as art museum security guard, pizza maker, and cocktail waitress.   She ran a catering business while getting her teaching certificate, and then taught English-as-a Second Language for several years at community colleges and adult schools.

Moses served as the associate director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay, where she developed and launched over a dozen mental health, family support, and senior service programs, both for the Jewish and broader community, most of which still exist today.  She, her husband Brian, and their 6-year-old son Liam, moved to Long Beach five years ago, when Moses began consulting with Jewish Family Service of Orange County as a program developer and grant writer.

While conducting an older adult needs assessment for Jewish Family Service, Moses met and fell in love with the folks at Ezra Center, and they fell in love with her, according to Moskowitz.  On behalf of Jewish Family Service, Moses designed and secured funding for the Silver Streak Senior Transportation program and spearheaded the establishment of the JFS satellite office at Ezra Center, where Ezra members now can go for many types of assistance.  She is a devoted wife and mother, an avid themed-party thrower (“If it doesn’t have a theme, it’s not worth doing”) and a newly-minted astronomy enthusiast.

For further information about attending the Ezra Center Anniversary Gala contact Margalit Moskowitz at 714-7761103.

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