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Fleischmann honored by Jewish Family Service

Larry Rubin, Ilene Fleischmann and Paul Michaels.

Ilene Fleischmann accepts the Ruth and Abram Pugash Award, the highest honor Jewish Family Services can bestow, from Larry Rubin (left), president of JFS, and Paul Michaels, award presenter. Photo: Jessica Thorpe, Outside the Box

By UB REPORTER STAFF

Published June 7, 2016 This content is archived.

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Ilene Fleischmann, vice dean for alumni, public relations and communications in the School of Law, and executive director of the UB Law Alumni Association, has received the Abram and Ruth E. Pugash Award from Jewish Family Service of Buffalo & Erie County.

The award, the highest honor bestowed by Jewish Family Service (JFS), recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the agency and the community. 

Fleischmann has served on the agency’s board and on its executive committee in various leadership capacities since 2003, most recently as vice chair.

“JFS holds a very special place in my heart,” Fleischmann said in accepting the award. “Its long tradition and commitment to community service brought me to the agency and I try to give back to it, in some small way, as a member of the Jewish community.

"(Children’s rights activist) Marian Wright Edelman famously said: ‘Community service is the rent we pay for living.’

“When you are reared, as I was, in a family and community that valued community service — and saw it as an honor rather than a duty that accompanied one’s everyday work — it is humbling to be honored for doing what comes naturally,” she said. “As the Talmud says of repairing a broken world, we are not required to finish the work but we are commanded to begin it."

JFS is a nonsectarian, not-for-profit, community-based health and social service provider that has served its community since 1862. It offers integrated services in psychiatry, psychology, nursing, social work and rehabilitation counseling. Most recently, it has been working with the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the UB School of Social Work to help refugees who seek asylum because they were tortured.

A member of UB’s professional staff since 1985, Fleischmann is the recipient of numerous other awards, among them the Women in the Law Award from the Eighth Judicial District of the State of New York United Court System; the Community Relations Award from the American Jewish Committee, Buffalo/Niagara Chapter; and the Outstanding Service Award from UB’s Professional Staff Senate.