Within Eretz Israel, our Ramsey Social Justice Foundation is in partnership in several initiatives with our family and friends residing in Israel, focusing on electronic interactive EMS/Healthcare active management work, the ecology, and education.
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Each year, Arizona State University’s Religious Studies Department sends our student to study abroad at the premier environmental research facility of our planet, the Arava Institute of Ben Gurion University, located within the Negev of Israel.

In partnership with JEWISH NATIONAL FUND’S  National President Russell Robinson, former (departed) Arizona JNF Board Member Nelson Lerner, and working with Arizona State University’s Professor Joel Gereboff, ASU Foundation’s Jill DeMichele, as well as Ben Gurion University’s Arava Institute Executive Director Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed and Professor David Lehrer, former Tree of Life recipients Jenny and Bob have established a scholarship for our Arizona State University students.

THE ARAVA INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Bob Ramsey and Jenny Norton were grateful to be honored as they received JEWISH NATIONAL FUND’S TREE OF LIFE lifetime achievement award for a lifetime of support for Eretz Israel. (Jenny’s dad, Ralph Silbert Norton had been a penpal/corresponder with David Ben Gurion and a JNF supporter since 1948).

Jenny Norton visited with the JNF guests about sharing moments.

It was a privilege for Jenny and Bob to be honored on October 24, 2013 at ADL’s annual Torch of Liberty Awards with the “Mayor Al Brooks Community Leadership Award”.  This award commemorates of the life and accomplishments of Mr. Brooks, the first Jewish Mayor of Mesa.  The honor was established to pay tribute to those who participate in humanitarian concerns and activism that exemplify the life of the Mayor and the principles of the ADL.

Please learn more details about JewishGen on our Visiting and Connecting with History page.

COMING SOON:  Information and details about our partnership with the Arava Medical Center and with United Hatzalah.

Rooftop view of the wondrous City of Jerusalem with Bob Ramsey, while celebrating Jenny Norton’s 70th Birthday.

It was a glorious privilege to celebrate Seder in Jerusalem, at the beautiful home of Gitty and Eli Beer and their lovely family.  (Eli is the Founder and CEO of United Hatzalah).

After spending Jenny’s 70th Birthday, April 7, 2015, at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust Museum, Gene Luntz, who arranged a meaningful personal tour with honor for our family, then presented Jenny with the First Edition of Holocaust Child Pavel Friedmann’s tragically beautiful book, entitled, “…I never saw another butterfly…”

Born in 1945 to a cantor-trained Jewish college professor dad and a Salvation Army Protestant social worker mother, Jenny met Bob at 17, having heard of the wonderful ninth-generation Quaker who was President of the Fellowship of Christians and Jews and President of his Class in his high school. They have spent a loving lifetime together, working to serve the underrepresented.
This section is being added to our social justice website just before the Winter Holidays of 2024, with an advisory to our readers that it has some rough words in quotes, during these times while antisemitism again rages.

From Jenny:

“When I was four, Grandmother Silbert offered to take me with her shopping downtown.  We boarded the bus, my little hand in hers, and we took a seat. A passenger across the aisle scowled at us and said, “Christ-killer”.  Grandma tightened her grip on my hand and moved us to the back of the bus, where she nestled me closer in protection.

When I was eight, I spent summer camp at our Jewish Community Center learning to swim and to sew, in those glorious summer days.

The following autumn, still at 8-years-old, the children of our little church’s choir director, choir director!, his children called me the k-word. I won’t say it nor write it.  Concurrently that autumn, two neighbor children who were my grammar school classmates told me that their parents would not let me play with them because “you killed Jesus”, they said.

My beautifully integrated high school and college years were free of any antisemitism. But then, at one of my early jobs during my early 20’s, a work colleague announced to a group of us that she was offered a promotion and a transfer to Florida. “How wonderful,” I said. “Too many Jews,” she responded. “But you know that I’m Jewish,” I said. “Oh, but you’re not one of those New York Jews,” she scolded. “I am, I was born in New York” was my response as I left the room, hearing another colleague cruelly call out “Jenny, there weren’t enough ovens.”  I resigned, and then I went to work in an inclusive job, starting an inclusive career, a loving career in social justice, in appointed and elected policy-making, and in directing a charitable foundation, welcoming indivisibility, with liberty and justice for all.