Judy Lowitz
Rockville, Maryland
How is your Hero working to make the world a better place?
Judy Lowitz has selflessly devoted herself to the needs of other for the past dozen years. While serving as a pediatric nurse at NIH's Clinical Center she frequently cares with uncommon devotion for children whose only hope for getting better is some experimental treatment protocol, she then runs to work for numerous non-profits in the community. She is also a licensed massage therapist and donates her services to hospice patients through Bikur Cholim of Washington and volunteering to give massages to patients at the Hebrew Home and occasionally as shul fundraisers for our Shul - Ezras Israel of Rockville. This year she has donated a kidney to an unrelated Jewish woman in New York, soon after overcoming her own surgery to remove an abdominal benign cist. Throughout the dozen years that I have known Judy, she has been a weekly shabbat kiddush provider, frequently subsidizing its cost with personal funds, and making sure that congregants have an oneg shabbat at our shul. For her many years of service to our shul she was voted a "unsung hero volunteer" in 2005. In 2010 she was selected for service award by the Jewish Outreach Congregation of Rockville - JROC for her many volunteer activities. A highlight of her support of JROC was to donate back a laptop she won in a fundraising raffle to its Rabbi's learning disabled child. In addition to helping locally, she supports Zionist causes and works to strengthen the bond between Jews in America and in Israel. She supports a variety of organization aimed at increasing "ahavath israel" both here and in Israel. Finally, Judy is also generous at a personal one-on-one level, stepping in to fill a need that for help and support. One example, one of our congregant's elderly mother who lives in Israel became ill, but he did not have the means to buy a ticket to go and be in Israel and help her through her convalescence, so Judy donated her airline miles accumulated on her personal credit card to the congregant so he can be at his mother's bedside. With others, she has volunteered to help prepare and provide meals to young mothers coping with an illness, either their own, their husbands or is otherwise to preoccupied with an ill child to make shabbat. Judy has stepped in and always makes a difference in making ours, a better community and world.
How has your Hero impacted your life and inspired you?
Her extraordinary devotion to helping others is truly inspirational. Her example encourages others to emulate her and step in to fill a need that is arond them