Women’s Stories – Shula Mozes

As the new year is approaching, we want to share a conversation with Shula Mozes, one of iota’s founders. Shula is behind the initiative, the idea and the initial and the constant push forward.

Shula shows us that one can always create and do, at any age and in any situation. It is possible to suddenly become Japanese in the middle of life, to develop an idea that has been sitting in a drawer for years or connect to the world of social impact even though you knew nothing about it before.

Thank you, Shula, for a wonderful friendship, for lighting the way, for teaching us that commitment and determination derive also from the gut and not only from the mind, and above all, for the opportunity to make dreams come true together.

A conversation with Shula always fills us with inspiration and hope, a breath of air to take in for a new year.

Can you introduce yourself?
My birthday is on International Women’s Day. I always felt that this required me to be a leading woman, though today I’m softer to myself. I have been married to Zeevie for 52 years, we have 4 children and 13 grandchildren, but I feel like a mother and grandmother of many, many  more, thanks to “Lamerhav”, an NGO I founded 23 years ago. Young men and women of Lamerhav, who lack a supportive family background, receive support in the Lamerhav program, and enhance my feeling of motherhood. I am an entrepreneur and social investor, love opera, cooking and knitting, and intend to continue to fulfill dreams and ambitions. About eight years ago I founded iota together with Tal Zur, and I am enthusiastic to see the development of the company and its social contribution.

Tell us about your work?
haven’t had a paid job for many, many years, but work takes up many hours of my day. Mainly I mean my activity in Lamerhav, where I am an active chairwoman. We accompany young people who are motivated to succeed, for a long period of time, from the age of 20 to the age of 30, and enable them to grow and reach their potential in all areas of life.

I am involved in the decision-making at iota, accompany its activities and invest my money in it. One of the things I know how to do is enable the growth of people, and I also do this in relation to the iota team and its manager Tal.

What field do you come from?
I have a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biochemistry from the Hebrew University. At the end of the 70s of the last century, I was trained in computers and worked in the field for more than ten years. Another field in which I developed is cooking – I published a cookbook 34 years ago (“Italy in your kitchen”), I had a deli and a cafe where I worked in the kitchen (“Donna Shula” in Neve Avivim), and I also worked in other fields (music for example), so I can’t quite choose one field from which I come from.

In the last twenty-five years I have grown into the field of empowering and nurturing the success of others, and I am proud and happy about it.

What is your inspiration?
I read a lot, and many role models have influenced me and inspired me, as I take my work in directions that interest me. One of these figures is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a smart, independent and powerful woman who did not hesitate to work hard and make her voice be heard. Barbra Streisand is also an example to follow, I highly recommend her autobiography.

My thinking is analytical but also associative, and meetings with special women, exciting music, literature and cinema, and exposure to people’s pain and suffering arouse in me a need for creative initiative.

What is the effect of this period in time on your inspiration and work?
In the last months, since October 7, I’ve been more withdrawn. I feel the need to process what I see and experience. I continue to knit, and to be active in Lamerhav. I am happy that iota is active during this period, both in helping the evacuees and war victims (we donated carpets to the new homes of the evacuees, and held knitting circles) and also in continuing production and providing work to the women who knit for us.

How does craft and handicraft meet all this?
Handwork has always been close to my heart and served as a form of meditation as well as a way to realize creative ideas. In recent months, I led a knitting class, for young women in Lamerhav and also for women from the community, where we learned to knit and talked in a calm and sharing atmosphere. I believe that handwork, and craft, can also provide a good livelihood.

Tell us a story about a dream that came true for you. How did you make it happen?
The knitted tree sculpture. About 8 years have passed since I first felt the desire to create a soft sculpture of the tree of abundance, which has everything in it and is an allegory for the complex, multidimensional human being, until the tree knitted from hundreds of individual elements was hung on the wall. First I created a collage of photos of trees from New England, then I sculpted in clay a fantasy tree, with branches ending in the heads of strange, funny and scary characters. And only after several years did I start knitting leaves, flowers, fruits and roots, and assembled them into something whole. The work of assembling took about two years, in a process of trial and error (and doubt), until the result matched what I had in mind. This work inspired the establishment of iota, so the dream came true beyond expectation.

Recommendation for life/exhibition/album/motto. What are you working on these days?
My motto has always been “I can’t be well  if my neighbor is not well”. It hasn’t changed. We have a responsibility to act to establish a better and more equal society. Today more than ever. And if not me, then who?

And everyone who saves one starfish, contributes his share.