Hallie Baron is the JCF Marketing Director reporting from Israel.

October 30, 2006

Shalom from Israel:

It has been an extremely intense and busy 40 hours for the Israel & Overseas Committee's consultation mission. We have absorbed an enormous amount of information already through organized sessions, conversations on buses and over dinner and the sights and sounds of this remarkable country. It's diversity is immense. As I sit here typing this message, the Muslims are being called to afternoon prayer by the adhan, a musical sound that rises above the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem commerce and echoes off the hills of this city that have stood through centuries of change and the history of the Jewish people.

Our activities have been inspiring, thought provoking and stirred emotion in all of us. There is too much to cover in length writing here, so I will try to sum up all that we have done briefly below:

We began our journey Saturday evening with havdallah and a wonderful dinner at the Taverna restaurant overlooking the hills of Jerusalem. Avrum Burg, chair of the Israeli Amuta, joined us briefly to welcome us to Israel and to inspire us for the days ahead.

Sunday morning began with an early winter rain storm as we gathered for breakfast to begin a long and full day. Our first stop was the Jerusalem city hall, where we met with two men committed to finding new ways to address the economic and social issues of the city. Jerusalem is now the poorest city in Israel -- a dramatic statement for this historic place that is in the hearts of so many. Nir Barkat, a global entrepreneur, city council member and founder of StartUpJerusalem (http://www.startupjerusalem.org) is focusing his business acumen, passion and energy on stimulating economic development and job creation in Jerusalem by focusing on the city's unique competitive advantages. He is working in partnership with Yakir Segev, chairman of the students union at Hebrew University in the program "New Spirit," designed to help inspire college students to look for jobs in Jerusalem and to help reenergize the city itself. It was a thought-provoking session that laid out the challenges of the city and began the discussion of solving them.

From there, we traveled to the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) central educational center, where immigrants from all over the world have the opportunity to become better integrated into Israeli society. This program is in part supported by funds donated through the Federation's annual Campaign as a result of our our annual allocation to the United Jewish Communities (UJC, which funds JAFI). One program in particular that we discussed was NATIV, a program focused on helping Israeli immigrant soldiers either learn more about their Jewish identity or take the first steps to conversion to Judaism. Most of the soldiers in this program are from the former Soviet Union, although all immigrant soldiers are welcome. In the words of a young soldier originally from Roumania, "The NATIV program changed my life."

After lunch, we split into two groups: one to visit Gush Etzion and two programs focused on youth at risk, and one to Sderot to visit Ethiopian Israeli families working with the Operation Atzmaut (independence program). Both were remarkable in that they showed what the power of community work can do to help change the course of people's lives, as well as for how our support is making a difference. I traveled to Sderot.

On the way to Sderot, a town on the border of the Gaza that has been under Kassam rocket fire for a long time and has suffered greatly from it, we stopped at a village called Netiv Ha-Asara, which is built in view of the border and the security wall. Importantly, this was the first time that a Federation trip has gone to the border with Gaza, and the sight of the wall was, indeed both awe inspiring and very troubling. This community, settled by South African immigrants and others who originally had settled in and then relocated from the Sinai, has tremendous tenacity. Once, they had hoped that they could live in peace with their Gaza neighbors, but now, they deal with the daily challenges of rockets, hostilities and the determination to stay and thrive no matter what. We left there a subdued group, impressed by the residents and saddened by the realities of the conflict.

In Sderot, we were invited into the homes of several Ethiopian Israeli families, where we shared coffee (the beans were roasted in a pan on the stove in a traditional style), stories and information on their lives there and how the Atzmaut program is helping them deal with language, work and family responsibilities. Life is not easy in Sderot thanks to the continuing barrage of Kassams, but through the work of this program, funded in part by the annual Campaign and administered through the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC), their lives indeed are improving.

The bus ride back to Jerusalem was long and quiet, as many of us digested what we had seen and heard. We returned to our hotel as the clouds broke, and headed to dinner or our rooms to think, to talk and to prepare for Monday.

And now it is Monday afternoon. The sun is shining and it already has been a remarkable day.

We began with a briefing by professor Dan Ben-David, an economist focusing on the economic challenges facing Israel. It was an eye-opening discussion of the realities of what issues face Israel from a social and economic view, and what Israel needs to do to survive and thrive. He focused in particular on the challenges of the educational system - how Israel has fallen from #1 in 1964 to 39th in the late 1990s, fallen to 39th place. 

Grade disparity is 4th in the world, putting it in 49th place out of 53 countries.

These statistics were particularly pertinent as we again split into two groups to focus on issues related to education for all of Israel's children. I went with the group that toured a girls school in East Jerusalem with Ir Amim, a program focused on raising the level of education in poor schools throughout Israel and in particular in the Arab communities. East Jerusalem is the section of the city that is predominantly Palestinian and whose residents are not citizens of Israel. Here, the world is Arabic, and school is taught in Arabic as well. The challenges facing these children -- which also can be seen in poor Israeli schools -- are those of overcrowding, inadequate supplies, not enough teachers, and so forth. This is also where the security wall has bisected parts of the city, and many of these children and their teachers must cross through a security checkpoint each day. Not an easy life, not an easy peace.

And with the smiles of these Palestinian girls sending us on our way, we headed to lunch with Yuli Tamir, the minister of education for the Israeli government. It was encouraging to hear her commitment to addressing the many problems facing the Israeli education system, and her thanks to the Federaiton for it's support of programs that are helping to make a difference in the lives of the country's children.

And now, I am off to explore streams of Judaism in conversation with committed professionals and then to dinner with members of the Amuta. I hope to be able to send another update within a day or two.

There is so much work to do here, and so much joy as well. It is truly an inspiring place.