Members of the San Francisco community traveled to Israel to explore investment opportunities. Israel21c captured their thoughts at a seaside cocktail reception with their Israeli counterparts.
Earlier this month Federation staff spent their lunch hour planting, weeding and watering our rooftop garden. Check out the pictures:
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Access to the rooftop garden is given to all Federation employees. On that note, the Federation currently has seven positions available. Click here to learn more about these positions and apply.
Israel21c has produced third video based on footage they took of the Federation’s Israel@60 Mission to Israel. This one features an interview with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and varies in content from the Newsom Face of Israel video produced last week.
If you enjoy watching Israel21c’s videos, check out their collection of 200 videos (and growing) on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ISRAEL21cdotcom
We’re standing at Tel Fah’r, with members of Kibbutz Snir, to commemorate Yom Hazikaron. Tel Fah’r, near the top of the Golan Heights, is the site of one of the most difficult and decisive battles of the 1967 War.
Below us is spread the whole Hula Valley, with the Gallilee Mountains on the other side. As the sun sets and the sliver of the new moon glistens above the valley, we can see the lights of Kiryat Shmona, Metulla, and dozens of kibbutzim, moshavim, towns and villages in the valley below. And, just beyond Metulla, we can also see the lights of villages in Lebanon.
It’s Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for all of its fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. At 8:00 p.m. the sirens sound all over the State of Israel; and we can hear them successively, one right after the other, as they begin and end in the valley below. Everything stops - everything; and everyone stands in silence for a very long minute.
Then the ceremony begins. The head of the community welcomes the guests from San Francisco, in Hebrew and English. The remainder of the ceremony is all in Hebrew: readings, songs, and the lighting of a torch and a memorial spelled out in flames to one of their own, with a message in Hebrew, including the word “Yizkor” - remember.
Most of us can’t understand Hebrew, and yet we “understand” - the mother who participates in the ceremony, the families and the community gathering to honor their fallen heroes. And we understand a few words at the end, when the speaker asks, “until when?” and “why?”
We’ve shared an intimate moment with our Israeli family. Yet we can’t truly understand, and we certainly can’t provide any answers. The only things we can do are stand with and support Israel with our love, our energy and our donations. We can be here. We must be here. And that’s why we are here, on the “Israel at 60 Mission.
Betty Adler
On my last morning in Israel, I woke up before dawn, too restless to sleep. I wasn’t the only one. This being Yom Ha’Atzmaut, pretty much every teenager in Tel Aviv had stayed up all night partying, many of them on the beaches. That’s where I headed on my sunrise walk.
From the hotel I walked north along the Prominade. Evidence of the previous night’s revelry littered the sands and walkways: liquor bottles, fast-food refuse (picked over by the crows) and the kids themselves clustered in sleeping packs. City sanitation workers wearing yellow vests had already swooped in to begin cleaning up the mess.
As I walked I saw ahead a group of teens standing in a circle. They surrounded one of their mates, a boy, maybe 17, sprawled on the ground, dead. Or so he seemed. Passed out to the point where he sure seemed dead. Alcohol poisoning can kill, so no matter what, I knew this boy was in medical trouble. But his friends were themselves so drunk they didn’t realize what was happening, and they kept slapping him, yelling at him to wake up.
I looked up the street and saw the flashing blue lights of a police car 1,000 yards away. I ran to the car and in broken Hebrew tried to explain to the officers what I had seen. They stopped me, said they spoke English, and heard me out. In a second they raced off to save the boy.
As I walked away, I started crying, not only from the stress of saving someone’s life. I imagined this kid was a year or two away from army service, where his life would once again be on the line, at risk from an enemy he could not control. At least now, in his own juvenile way, he endangered himself on his own terms: with his friends, on his country’s defiant independence day. No excuses: he was a dumb teenager engaged in high-risk behavior. But he was just being an independent Israeli.
That night, with the sun going down, the Israel@60 mission gathered at the amazing cliffside home of entrepreneur Zaki Rabib and his wife Vivian, in Herzliya. At $24 million, it is the single most expensive home in all of Israel, and it showed. Built by an Austrian Jewish mogul, it was all glass, teak and Jerusalem stone, with a sloping lawn reaching to a cliff overlooking the beach, the Mediterranean and the sky.
This was our farewell dinner, and joining us was Assam Ibrahim, the Egyptian ambassador to Israel. In a week of miraculous incongruities, perhaps none topped this one: the ambassador of Egypt — a nation once utterly committed to Israel’s destruction — mingling with a group of San Francisco Jews in a town named for the pioneer of modern Zionism.
We ate and drank and toasted each other as the sun went down. For many of us it was our last Israeli sunset for a while. Soon after, we boarded the bus and drove through the dark to the airport and our long flight home. But it was a great source of comfort to know tomorrow the sun would again rise over the sands of Tel Aviv, over this beautiful land of ours.
– Blog b’Omer (Dan PIne)
The Jewish Community Federation, in conjunction with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), has opened an emergency mailbox to raise relief funds for victims following May 3rd’s Cyclone Nargis, which devastated portions of Myanmar. Funds are being collected to aid the estimated several hundred thousand cyclone victims without shelter and safe drinking water on a non-sectarian basis. The efforts are part of JDC’s International Development Program (IDP) which responds to natural and manmade disasters, providing immediate relief and long term assistance.
“Our hearts go out to those suffering. We are quickly mobilizing to assess the situation and help those in need in Myanmar,” said Steve Schwager, Chief Executive Officer, JDC. “We are now in contact with leaders from the local Jewish community in Yangon and with other disaster relief partners in the region to determine an appropriate emergency response, one that ensures that we reach those who are not being served by others,” he continued.
JDC, which is funded in part through the UJC/Federation system, has launched non-sectarian efforts to aid those affected by the cyclone in Bangladesh; the earthquake in Peru; the Tsunami in South Asia; the floods in Haiti and the Dominican Republic; the victims of terror in Turkey; the earthquakes in El Salvador, India, Morocco, and Turkey; the displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo following the eruption of the Mt. Nyiragongo volcano; and the war-torn communities in Kosovo.
Incoming Jewish Community Federation CEO Daniel Sokatch joined the Israel@60 mission in Israel this week, and if we could write his postcard home, it would probably read: “Having wonderful time and meeting wonderful federation.”
Though he doesn’t officially take over the post for another two months, he leaped at the chance to spend a week with so many dedicated federation donors and staff. His itinerary included meetings with Israeli business and political leaders, touring federation-funded social service projects, and even a little down time hanging out on the bus.
“The most exciting aspect has been the opportunity to meet so many of our people in such a wonderful setting, “ he said, “and to see the work federation is doing in Israel, which was one of the things most appealing about coming to this job. I can’t imagine a menu of programming that is more in line with what I think Bay Area Jews would want to support than what this federation is doing in Israel.”
Sokatch also spent time conferring with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who accompanied the mission for five days.
Incoming federation CEO Daniel Sokatch and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom
meet for the first time at the mission’s Shabbat dinner. Photo by Dan Pine
“My conversations with the mayor and his team allowed me to place our community in the context of the broader community,” Sokatch added. “It’s my firm belief that no Jewish community acts in a vacuum. We are part of the city; not separate.”
Even with all the meetings and tête-à-têtes, Sokatch still found time to enjoy Israel. Once upon a time, he lived and studied here, and even led guided tours of the Old City. But there’s always something new to learn, and this time, Sokatch was thrilled to explore the excavation of the Ir David, the original Canaanite city of Jerusalem outside the Old City walls.
Just one more marvel in a universe of marvels in Israel. There’s no doubt Sokatch will keep Israel, and the federation’s deep connection to the country, a high priority once he takes office in July.
“There is so much to fight for here, so much beauty and potential,” he says. “If we give people the tools they need, they will go out and fight for that dream. I see us building tools for that tool kit.”
– Blog b’Omer (Dan Pine)
Israel’s minister of welfare Isaac Herzog with incoming federation
CEO Daniel Sokatch in Tel Aviv. Photo by Dan Pine
Yom Ha’Atzmaut Observed at Kfar Blum, Upper Galilee
We all stood –
At first casually in a circle,
And then the siren sounded
And we all stood at attention.
The Young children stood and did not fidget.
The youth stood positioned to lower the
flag to half staff.
The young parents stood.
The army-expectant parents stood with
a touch of apprehension.
The memorial participants stood.
Even the memory-worn elderly stood.
The kibbutz visitors stood.
Even the wreaths of flowers stood perched
against the bereavement stones.
The scrambling dog stood as did the kibbutz
pet kitten.
We stood together in a tearful orb of memory
We all stood — except the fallen heroes
of Israel
So that we may stand today
- by Barbara Rosenberg
For years we have contributed to federation because we believed it was the right thing to do. Now I know why.
What I have seen on this journey has had a profound effect on how I view myself as an American Jew in relationship to Israel.
Where to begin with what this trip — this journey — has meant? How do I decide what the highlight of the trip was? How do I know what has impacted me the most? Was it facts like finally understanding what “Jerusalem of Gold” means? Learning that 90% of literate Jews were destroyed in the Holocaust? Or finding out the Wall has a hidden third underground?
Maybe it was the exhibit at Yad Vashem and the striking architecture of the building itself. Or maybe it was the view of the hills of Jerusalem from a balcony at the Shimson Center as the sun was setting on Shabbat. Maybe it was the walking tour of the Old City or the dance performance, “White Noise.”
Or maybe the highlight was the moment I realized that my ancestors likely walked across the very steps of the Temple I was sitting on. Or was it the little Arab girl in a pink tee-shirt at the ECHAD program I visited in the federation-funded well-baby clinic. Her grin was like that of my granddaughter, Thea, who also only wears pink. It might have been the Israeli teens who had spent a summer at Camp Tawonga. When I noticed the camp songbook and suggested the kids sing a song — and they did.
I also noticed tears rolling down my cheek.
Then again, it may have been the graves — row upon row — at the Kiryat Shmona military ceremony on Yom HaZikiaron.
It’s hard to say the best highlight or te thing that impacted me the most. Why do I even need to decide? Look’s like I’ll just have to come back again soon.
L’hitraot!
— Susan Borkin
Israel21c interviewed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Federation President John Pritzker, Israel Center Director Neal Levy, Israel Center Chair Orly Rinat, and Mission Co-Chairs Robert Blum and Robert Lent on the Federation’s Mission to Israel and planned investment in the country.
