"While in a camp that held 50,000 starving refugees at the Ethiopian-Somali-Kenyan border in 1991, I spent a day with a doctor in the camp hospital. The doctor asked me why a Jew was there helping Moslems. We talked for hours about religion and the fact that we are all created in God's image and that it is incumbent upon me as a Jew to reach out and help when possible. After seeing a dozen children die that day the doctor came to me and said that if only his fellow Moslems would be as forthcoming with their aid as the American Jewish community, there would be no further deaths in the camp. We became friends and have remained in contact on a regular basis."

Will Recant '75A, '77G

Will Recant, far left, reads from the Torah with leaders of the Jewish community in Havana, Cuba.

As director of special projects for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Recant works to repair the world in ways big and small.

Known as "the Joint," the JDC is the overseas arm of the American Jewish community that supports Jewish populations in need and provides non-sectarian humanitarian aid across the globe. Since its founding in 1914, the JDC has served more than 85 countries on every continent.

"Our focuses are essentially rescue, relief and rehabilitation of Jewish communities around the world," Recant says. "As a child of Holocaust survivors, I find it rewarding to be able to go out and do this work. To rebuild the Jewish community from the ashes of the Holocaust is a privilege."

The Recant File Hometown: New York City Education: University of Louisville: bachelor's degree in political science, 1975; master's degree in political science, 1977 The George Washington University (Washington, D.C.): doctorate in political science, 1981 Career history: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1992-present American Association for Ethiopian Jews, 1986-1993 Union of Councils for Soviet Jewry, 1981-1982 Personal: Resides in Wyckoff, N.J. with his wife, Nancy, and daughters Rebecca, 12, and Jennifer, 9

The JDC's presence is felt in more than 70 countries, including those in the former Soviet Union, the Baltic region, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Recant oversees the organization's non- sectarian and disaster relief programs.

Such efforts include the reconstruction of synagogues and gathering places destroyed in wars. In Argentina, where Jewish communities have been devastated by bombings, the JDC helped to rebuild a Buenos Aires community center bombed in 1996.

The Joint also headed relief efforts for Armenian earthquake victims in 1988 and for Central Americans who lost their homes to Hurricane Mitch last year. Recant most recently set up programs to aid ethnic Albanians forced out of Yugoslavia.

The global Jewish population is so far reaching because millions fled oppression during the Holocaust and ended up all over the world, Recant says. Many small, remote Jewish communities carry on outside of larger society. Cuba, for instance, is home to about 1,500 Jews in isolated pockets who often lack medical care.

"The JDC was one of the first organizations licensed by the U.S. Treasury and State departments to go to Cuba to offer non-sectarian medical assistance," Recant explains. "We send physicians to Cuba for two-week stints of teaching and treating both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals." Other Jewish populations-in countries such as Syria, Yemin, Ethiopia and parts of the former Soviet Union-face overt anti-Semitism every day.

"A large part of our work is to make certain Jews are not ghettoized," Recant says. On the national front, Recant raises public awareness of issues facing international Jewish communities. He briefs Congress and federal agencies on the work of the JDC and lobbies for funding.

When traveling abroad, Recant helps to build JDC programs from the ground up.

Recant at the White House with First Lady Hillary Clinton after a briefing on Rwandan refugees.

"Overseas, my work is a combination of meeting and working with Jewish communities to assess their needs and meeting with local officials, diplomats, heads of state and other religious organizations."

Recant spends roughly half of each year overseas coordinating and evaluating JDC programs. Fluency in Hebrew, Yiddish, French and Spanish helps Recant acclimate quickly to new places. The support of his wife, Nancy, and daughters Rebecca, 12, and Jennifer, 9, is another mainstay.

"They completely empower me to do this work," he says.

Recant came to the JDC after serving as executive director of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews. After a 1982 famine drove thousands of Ethiopians to refugee camps in Sudan, Recant began organizing a refugee airlift to Israel, which took place in 1991. Other high points of his tenure included briefing President George Bush and State Department officials on the condition of Jews in Ethiopia, and helping to establish the Congressional Caucus for Ethiopian Jews.

The American Association for Ethiopian Jews worked closely with the JDC, and Recant's colleagues there brought him on board when the AAEJ dissolved. His seven years with the Joint have been satisfying, he says.

Celebrating Passover in China While working to help Shanghai, China, establish new services for the elderly and children with mental disabilities, Will Recant attended a banquet with the city's mayor on Passover in 1997. He explained to the mayor and guests that he could not partake of the full 60 courses served because, in addition to the regular rules of keeping Kosher, this was a special holiday for Jewish people. "I had my box of matzo and a bottle of kosher wine and explained that for over 2,000 years my people restricted their eating during this holiday," Recant recalls. "I explained that during Passover all Jews are supposed to feel as though they are slaves leaving Egypt for freedom and that by not eating their lovely meal I felt more like a slave than when I celebrate the holiday at home and I can eat various foods." At the end of the dinner the mayor made a toast to Recant and said, "From the largest and oldest community on earth-the Chinese-to you, a representative of the oldest and smallest community on earth-thank you for sharing your holiday with us and for helping our people."

"Fifty-five years after the Holocaust, for me to be able to work on the rescue, relief and reconstruction operations is the great counterbalance to what Hitler tried to do to Jews and to the world," he says.

Recant has strong personal ties to the horrors of the Holocaust. His Polish parents, now deceased, lived to tell their stories. Recant's father, Joseph, was sent to a labor camp in Siberia, then was conscripted into the Soviet army and later defected. His mother, Ruth, escaped from a ghetto with her mother and two brothers. They survived in the woods for nearly four years.

Ruth Recant told her story as part of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History, a project founded by Steven Spielberg in 1994 to videotape interviews with Holocaust survivors. Nancy Recant interviewed a number of people for the project.

Recant worked in Washington, D.C., until 1996, when he moved to the JDC's New York City headquarters. It was a homecoming for the Manhattan native, who grew up in an apartment above the grocery store his parents operated.

He came to U of L on a baseball scholarship but injured his knee as a freshman. Continuing on an academic scholarship, he majored in political science and completed his master's thesis under the direction of former professor Israel Naamani, an expert in Middle Eastern politics. Political science professor Philip Laemmle was also an influence on his career choice.

"He was the driving force behind me getting a Ph.D.," Recant says. "U of L guided me to Washington. I became turned on to political science in Louisville."

One of Recant's closest friends at U of L was Phil Davidson '75A, '77K, grandson of former U of L President Philip Davidson. Attesting to Recant's early signs of promise, Davidson says it's no wonder that his classmate has helped so many victims of oppression, civil wars, famine and natural disasters.

"Will was the student who made us all jealous because he could read 10 books for every one of ours," says Davidson, who now has a psychotherapy practice in Norfolk, Va. "Even when we were freshmen and sophomores, it seemed obvious that he would go on to do great things."

Jennifer Recktenwald '94A, '99G is communications manager at Greater Louisville, Inc., the Metro Chamber