Healing Tamara
, NJJN Staff Writer | 11.22.07

Thanks in large part to local Jewish philanthropists and UJC MetroWest, a girl underwent plastic surgery in Israel that will enable her to live the rest of her life free of the taunts she faced for much of her first 13 years.

Tamara Bazazashvili, of Tblisi in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, underwent a second round of surgery this month at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem to restore the outer left ear she had been missing since birth.

The operation was arranged through the combined efforts of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, and the New York-based Mortimer J. Harrison Trust.

According to the Cedar Grove couple who administer the trust, healing disfigured teens is one of its priorities.

“One provision of the trust subsidizes plastic and reconstructive surgery for indigent adolescents,” said Dr. Frances Stern Lashinsky, a trustee who along with her husband, Arthur Lashinsky, has been a big benefactor in MetroWest.

Max Kleinman, UJC MetroWest executive vice president, came up with an idea to connect the Harrison funds with a needy Jewish teenager.

“I thought it would be great to have someone from the former Soviet Union who is Jewish benefit from the trust,” he said.

Kleinman asked the Joint Distribution Committee to search among its clients in the former Soviet Union and identify adolescents who need reconstructive surgery. Tamara became number one on that list.

According to her mother, Marina, Tamara was “a very angry child who was embarrassed that she did not have an ear.”

Other children would tease Tamara by pulling her hair to expose her birth defect.

“As you can imagine, this can ruin the life of an adolescent,” said Amir Shacham, director of UJC MetroWest's Jerusalem office, on a recent visit to the Aidekman campus in Whippany. “She is a beautiful girl, but she couldn't get a life. She had a lot of psychological problems.”

That has changed since the operations.

“Tamara has become a very happy child who now puts her hair in a ponytail and is no longer embarrassed about how she looks,” said Atara Muoio-Tastas, Shacham's administrative assistant, who visited with Tamara after her most recent surgery.

“Children are curious to see what she does have there now as opposed to looking at what she didn't have there before,” wrote Muoio-Tastas in an e-mail to NJ Jewish News.

Family secrets

Such a change would not have been possible in her hometown of Tbilisi, where Tamara lived in a basement with her mother, a single parent.

In June, she and her mother were flown to the Hadassah Hospital, where surgeons used a bone from her hip to construct her missing ear.

Kleinman and Shacham paid them a visit on the eve of the operation.

“She was very shy. She had been humiliated,” said Kleinman. “Her hair covered her ear. But now, I'm told she has a whole new hairstyle to show off her new ear.

“This is a situation where you change lives. Now she can have a normal life.”

Stern Lashinsky said the trust has given some $6 million in such grants in the past 10 years.

“We were proud to make the difference in the life of a needy person,” said the doctor, “especially when that person is a teenager.”

Tamara returned to Israel for follow-up surgery in early November.

“She is totally different now,” said Shacham. “This is an amazing change.”

Her trip to Jerusalem also unlocked some family secrets.

When Tamara was young, her father abandoned the family, moved to Israel, and remarried. When she and her mother arrived at Ben Gurion Airport, two strangers came to greet her. They were her half-brother and half-sister, Boris and Soso Bazazashvili, who live in Rishon Letzion.

“Not only did she get her ear, she got her family back. This was like a soap opera,” said Shacham.

Now Tamara and her family in Tblisi are talking about coming to Israel permanently, he said.

“We will certainly remain in contact, and we would like her to make aliya,” Kleinman added.

“I think helping her have the operation is something unique that we are able to do,” said Shacham. “This is like a worldwide cooperation to save the life of one person. Her life was ruined by this thing, and we were able to get her a life. It is a pure mitzva.”

Local stories posted courtesy of the New Jersey Jewish News