While the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee was spared by the wildfires that consumed thousands of acres in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the death and destruction resulting from the fires has moved Dolly Parton to help those left in need. With funding from Dollywood as well as her Dollywood Foundation, she has established the “My People Fund” which will donate $1000/month to families who lost their homes in the disaster. Earlier in Dolly Parton’s life, she did something that provided an inspiration to someone in the “Jewish” world. What was that?
Dolly Parton by Eva Rinaldi is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
A. In 1996, Parton established the Imagination Library to distribute free children’s books in Sevier County, Tennessee. The program has grown and now provides free books to children in over 1600 communities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Philanthropist Harold Grinspoon learned of the program and helped establish a branch in Western Massachusetts. This became his inspiration to create the PJ Library which has distributed nearly 10 million Jewish children’s books to families throughout the United States and in Jewish communities around the world.
B. In 1980, Dolly Parton starred in the movie 9 to 5, about three working women and their sexist, somewhat crazy boss. Following the success of the movie, Parton was instrumental in the creation of the 9 to 5 Foundation, which worked to empower women in the workplace, fighting discrimination and providing training to enable women to advance in the corporate environment. In 1984, an Israeli delegation from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel visited the United States to learn about organizations which were helping women, and they met with Parton and representatives from the 9 to 5 Foundation. As a result, they set up an Israeli NGO, Tisha Ad Chamesh (Nine to Five) with a particular focus on helping Sephardic women who had immigrated from Arab countries and who were struggling with cultural and educational issues that prevented them from working and succeeding in the workplace.
C. One of Parton’s biggest successes as a composer and performer was with the song Coat of Many Colors, written in 1969. The song is about a coat which her mother had stitched together from rags, and which her mother described in connection to the story of Joseph’s coat of many colors in the Bible. Though the other children laughed at her ragged coat, Parton was not ashamed, because this coat was made by her mother with such pride. When Parton performed in Tel Aviv in 1981, the producers of the show organized a coat drive called “Dolly’s Coats of Many Colors,” and concert goers donated more than 5000 new and gently-used coats which were distributed to Israeli families in need.
D. In 1980, there was an incident in Sevier County, where Dolly was born. A gay teenager attempted suicide, leaving a note that he felt no one loved him. After visiting the boy in the hospital, Parton founded a non-profit agency to support young gay people, and named the organization the “I Will Always Love You Foundation,” after her most famous song. In 1994, following a similar incident involving a gay Orthodox boy in Jerusalem, an Israeli businessman who was familiar with Parton’s organization started a social service agency in Israel providing support to gay Orthodox teens in a confidential setting. The organization is called Ahavah l’Yeladim (Love for the Children).
E. In 1986, Dolly Parton took over the amusement park called Silver Dollar City and reopened it as “Dollywood.” She was pleased to expand the park, bring more jobs to the area, and highlight the history, culture, food and music of the part of Tennessee where she grew up. In 1997, an Israeli entrepreneur visited Dollywood and was inspired to do something similar in Israel. He opened an amusement park in the Galilee with a theme built around the chalutzim, the pioneering founders of the state. The park offers rides, animatronic figures including David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, and a music venue featuring Israeli performers and an original musical about the founding of the state. The park is called Zum Gali Gali Wood.