Dr. Rabbi Analia Bortz
Atlanta, Georgia
How is your Hero working to make the world a better place?
Everyone who comes in contact with Rabbi Analia speaks about her as compassionate person with a large and giving heart. She reaches out to help anyone in need be they stranger, family, or community member. Rabbi Analia lives by and embodies the moral values and teachings of our sacred religion. Rabbi Analia has a brilliant mind and is an exceptionally gifted communicator. Born in Argentina, Rabbi Bortz studied in Argentina, Israel and Chile and served congregations in Argentina and Chile before moving to Atlanta. She speaks five languages and reaches out broadly to Atlanta's ethnically diverse communities. She is distinguished in three career areas, religion, and medicine and bio ethics. Hospital staff, physicians and patients hold her in high esteem. The interfaith community calls on her often for her wisdom in religion and ethics. In the interfaith arena she is active in the Sandy Springs Clergy Association, Faith Alliance of Metropolitan Atlanta, and World Pilgrims where she co-led a Jewish Christian and Muslim pilgrimage to Spain and Morocco. In the medical arena she has been a member of the bioethics committee at Scottish Rite and Egelston Hospital for nine years. Rabbi Analia started a non-denominational group for women struggling with infertility called SEEDS OF HOPE. She has a new ideas working very successfully, helping women during times of infertility with her new approach to both body and soul. Rabbi Analia Bortz is a champion for social justice and human rights and an activist for causes ranging from Women's Rights to Darfur. In her free time, she and her husband, Rabbi Mario Karpuj, started Congregation Or Hadash, with 50 members in July 2003 and now has over 390 members. Her ability to connect with and personally inspire everyone she comes in contact with is exceptional.
How has your Hero impacted your life and inspired you?
Dr. Analia Bortz is brilliant and has true "healing powers" yes!! Look at her work starting "Seeds of Hope" and with me personally, whom she helped understand my journey with infertility. She has a special approach in infertility both for the body and soul. She is a caring mother, wife, daughter and loyal friend. She taught me about God, Jewish values and finding faith and happiness in life, family and friends. She is a mentor, a teacher and scholar who loves life, loves teaching and has more energy than any four people put together. I have seen her give of herself to children in need, who have lost parents, to orphans and to the community at large. She spent day's in New Orleans after Katrina as a medical professional, only to race back to Atlanta perform a wedding, then visit someone at hospice with no family. Her home on Passover is the UN with people from all over the world, all speaking, singing and joining as part of her family by choice. She has made me thankful for my blessings large and small.