SARINA ROFFÉ
MAURICE HEDAYA WAS BEST KNOWN FOR HIS OBSESSION WITH REGISTERING PEOPLE IN OUR COMMUNITY TO VOTE. IN THE LATE 1980S, OUR COMMUNITY BARELY EXERCISED OUR RIGHT TO VOTE AND HAD NO VOICE. MAURICE REALIZED THAT ELECTED OFFICIALS WERE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO OUR COMMUNITY FOR THIS REASON.
Maurice understood the importance of voting and its connection to our ability to leverage elected officials for the benefit of the community. It was as simple as that.
According to Sam Sutton, president of Sephardic Community Federation, “Maurice was one of the earliest guys to understand the voice of the community cannot be heard without voting. Only civil engagement can convince government officials to make significant changes that benefit us. No one registered more people to vote than Maurice Hedaya. He was a pioneer and a visionary. He was indefatigable worker on behalf of our community and the Jewish world at large.”
His grandson, Morris Hedaya said, “One time he brought voter registration cards to my sister’s dance recital. He showed us what dedication truly means and more importantly, we listened and followed what he taught us. There was never a shortage of voter registration forms in his pockets. He even took them to weddings at Shaare Zion. My grandfather was a leader with selfless devotion to so many others. He was a proponent of positive change.”
“We would go out to dinner, and we didn’t want him to bring the voter registration forms and bother people during their evening out,” said his daughter, Sarah Dabah. “He would say ‘Frisk me’ and we searched him and didn’t find any forms. Then we found out that he had them stashed under his shirt. My father set his eyes on a goal and never gave up. That’s what he taught us. It applied to everything we did. He told us to try our best and he raised the bar.”
“My father realized the Syrian community needed a voice in politics,” said his son Solomon Hedaya. “We gave so much in tax dollars, we needed to be heard and get government funding for tuition. He set out aggressively on Saturday mornings trekking from synagogue to synagogue and speaking in each. All the rabbi’s and committee members in each synagogue knew him well. They weren’t always happy to see him, but they always gave him the platform to speak. His speech was always the same. ‘In order to have a voice, we must register and vote—we as Jews have an obligation to vote and be heard.’”
EARLY YEARS, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY
Born in 1929, Maurice was a 1950 graduate of Massachusetts institute of Technology, completing a degree in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Very few people in the community went to college back then, much less to a prestigious Ivy League university in Boston.
He got a job in the engineering management of Martin Marietta (later known as Lockheed Martin). He was quickly promoted to financial control of a single $50 million atomic powered seaplane.
He met Gladys in the summer of 1951 in Bradley Beach. The love of his life, they were inseparable for the nearly seven decades they were married.
Maurice was drafted into the US Army during the Korean conflict. “They didn’t make him carry a gun. They gave him a pencil to work in weapons development and design rocket launchers,” said his son Ezra Hedaya. Maurice went on to work for three aircraft companies over a 10-year period.
Ezra said “My father was my hero. He always pushed us. If we had a question, he would make us look it up in the dictionary or the encyclopedia. He challenged me to move forward. He created new limits for us, and we had to go past them.”
A LOVING FATHER
The father of four: Betty Hazan, Sarah Dabah, Ezra Hedaya and Solomon Hedaya, saw to it that his children had memorable life experiences. He took them horseback riding, skiing, sailing, and to the Jewish Community House on Bay Parkway.
When his children were teenagers, Maurice organized Friday night dessert get-togethers for them, so they could meet and socialize with others.
“Those were the days before we had the center and regular young adult gatherings. My father felt an obligation to the teens and young adults of our community to give them a safe place to meet and spend Shabbat with each other,” said Solomon. “He dragged us to the young adult minyan at Shaare Zion each week. The goal was to get as many young people as possible there so they could get to know each other.”
Maurice taught his children respect for their elders, with weekly visits to their grandparents each Saturday after synagogue services.
A few years ago, he decided he needed to spend more time with his daughters, so they began taking annual road trips. One of these trips was to Boston for the 65th Reunion of his class at MIT.
“My father was very humble,” said his Betty. “He never, ever spoke lashon hora about anyone, and he taught that to the four of us. He did everything from his heart. He was in a category of his own. No one did what he did. No one understood how important voting was for our future. He spoke to congressman and senators about school choice, another issue he was passionate about. And he never stopped.”
“My family and I always admired my Grandpa and Grandma’s marriage,” said his great-grandson Joseph Balassiano. “They always spoke to each other with kindness, respect, love, admiration, and nothing less. They always pushed each other to do their best. They supported each other to do what they felt was right. They had a tremendously deep love for each other.”
SAVING THE SYRIAN JEWS
The plight of Jews in Syria was dire, and it was Maurice who enlightened a few community members to act and help them, long before people were aware of the situation.
In 1988, Maurice asked 28-year-old Ezra S. Ashkenazi “Do you know we have 3 to 4,000 Syrian Jews, our brethren, that cannot leave and they don’t have freedom?”
“We were in the dark and he literally begged me to get involved and help put Syrian Jewry on the map and to bring it out to the forefront,” said Ezra, who advised him to talk to men in their 50s and 60s who could network. “He explained to me a few of the problems and challenges that the people were going through in Syria, and I said to him, ‘Let me sleep on it.’”
Ezra continued, “Actually, I didn’t sleep too well the following few nights and that Saturday he came to my home, and asked me if I had made a decision.” Ezra told him that he was willing to go to the first meeting. Ezra recruited Ricky Cohen, and a meeting was held with Dr. Mayer Ballas, Clem Soffer, Alice Sardell, Albert Ayal, Janet Zalta, and Marcos Zalta.
“It was amazing that we were completely ignorant of our brethren. Even the names were foreign to us. At the meeting we were shown pictures of individuals who were physically abused. And of course, Ricky and I were very shaken up. We were pampered in America. The community did not recognize the horrible life going on in Syria and was told it was propaganda. But it wasn’t,” Ezra concluded.
The team raised awareness in the community as well as funds to hire a professional lobbyist to get Congress to negotiate the release of thousands of Syrians. This ultimately resulted in the 1992 airlift and the release of nearly 4,000 Syrian Jews who moved into our community. After they arrived in New York, Sephardic Bikur Holim and volunteers helped them settle. Maurice worked with authorities to help the new immigrants become citizens.
RELENTLESS COMMITMENT TO OUR COMMUNITY
Multiple people spoke of the fact that Maurice was strong willed and never stopped when he had a goal.
“Maurice had tenacity and his love for our community was boundless,” said Ezra Ashkenazi. “He didn’t care if he came across pushy. He had one goal—to give the Jews in America a better quality of life. He encouraged us to vote before it was popular.”
Rabbi Sam Kassin, of Shehebar Sephardic Center, said “Maurice was the conscious or our community. He saw what needed to be done for the benefit of the community before others did. And his opinions were not always popular. He was a true leader in that respect.”
Today the community is better off due to Maurice’s relentless commitment. As a result of his lifetime of work, our community receives government grants and funding that provide youth and senior programming, security, senior citizen housing, mental health services and a long list of other government benefits. Our voice is heard in government because we vote!
Correction: Last month, Freddy Zalta should have been credited for some of the research and quotes in articles about Charles Saka and Lou Jerome.
A journalist, genealogist and historian, Sarina Roffé is the author of Branching Out from Sepharad (Sephardic Heritage Project, 2017), Sarina holds a BA in Journalism, MA in Jewish Studies and an MBA.
