Occupational therapist Debbie Callif and her actuary husband Howard had been planning on visiting Israel for a long time — even before they had their two children.
But the trip they took there this past June was especially meaningful, and not only because they celebrated their son Ben’s bar mitzvah there.
The Callifs are involved in Partnership 2000 (P2K), a program that links Israeli communities with diaspora Jewish Communities. It is a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel that is supported by funds from the Milwaukee Jewish Federtaion and other federations across the United States.
Milwaukee — along with Tulsa and St. Paul — is paired with the Sovev Kinneret (around the Sea of Galilee) region. Among the projects linked with P2K is JAFI’s Young Emissaries Program, for which young Israelis can volunteer just before or just after their army service to do social service work in Israel or the diaspora.
Volunteers, called Shin Shinim from letters in the program’s Hebrew name, who have served in Milwaukee since 2002 have come from the P2K region. And one of them, Reut Gazit, stayed with the Callifs.
Not only was that in itself “a most wonderful experience … my daughter and son felt like they had an older sister,” said Debbie Callif. In addition, Gazit and her family attended Ben’s bar mitzvah ceremony. “It was like we had an extended family there,” said Debbie.
Moreover, Ben for his mitzvah project raised money for the Poriya Government Hospital in the region and bought toys for children in the pediatric wards there; and his mother gave a presentation at the hospital about her professional work.
This was just one of the ways that P2K projects this summer have fufilled the program’s overall goal of fostering people-to-people links and relationships through various joint projects.
“All these events,” said Roslyn Roucher, the federation’s P2K director, “were an amazing success story of what we hoped would be happening in Partnership 2000, connecting Israelis and Milwaukeeans to each other.”
Other such activities included:
• Milwaukeean William Burns, an internal medicine physician, last month went to the region to reciprocate a visit from medical professionals there.
Last December, two medical professionals from the Poriya Hospital visited Milwaukee for a P2K project. One of them, Ofer Tamir, physician and deputy administrator of the hospital, stayed with Burns’ family for two weeks.
Tamir and Burns became friends, exchanged e-mails over the following months, and then Burns decided to visit. He spent about a week there, doing medical things at the hospital and at area clinics, and also vacationing with Tamir and his family.
“I feel like I have nucleus of people I know there now,” said Burns. “And I’m thinking about when I’ll go back. I hope to go back next summer for a longer period of time and to take my daughter with me.”
• Last week, a group of eight Israeli teachers (pre-school through middle school grades) and a school principal from the region, joined a staff member of the P2K Education Bridge program in a visit to Milwaukee to learn about the Jewish community and to meet local teachers for a mifgash (encounter) and to plan educational endeavors for the coming school year.
These teachers have been working with teachers in corresponding grades in Milwaukee-area Jewish schools on joint educational projects with their classes, said Dr. Steven Baruch, executive director of the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the MJF, and mifgash coordinator.
In some instances, Baruch said, this was the first time these teachers met counterparts with whom they have been communicating by e-mail for about two years.
“It is just heartwarming to see these relationships form,” Baruch said. Moreover, in the various projects that the teachers create, “students study and exchange work. This is not just pen-pals, this is a real education program.” And it “really embodies all the goals and hopes for P2K.”
• Currently, two artists from the region, Ricka Cina and Esti Hermon, are working with campers at the Albert & Ann Deshur JCC Rainbow Day Camp of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
By the end of this week, they will finish a tile mosaic at the camp. Part of an artist-in-residence project, the artists also came to the JCC in Whitefish Bay this past weekend and guided some local families in making small mosaics.
• Next week, 19 teens and three counselors from the region will be coming to spend a week in Milwaukee and a week at the JCC’s resident camp, Steve and Shari Sadek Family Camp Interlaken. They will meet 10 Milwaukee teens, who return on Sunday, July 25, from the JCC Israel Adventure trip, which included a visit to the region.
Camp Interlaken will host not only the 19 teens but also a group of seven teens, who will have visited Minneapolis; two camp “shlichim” (emissaries) from the region, who serve as counselors; and Shin Shiniot Reut Gazit and Meital Saar, who are capping their year in Milwaukee with a summer as counselors.
• In June, Roucher and Milwaukeean Jane Gellman, who chairs the “cluster” of U.S. communities paired with the region, traveled to Israel. They met with the steering committee for P2K there and attended the opening of the Café Hafuch, a drop-in center for teens in Tiberias that was partly funded by $25,000 from the cluster communities.
• This past May, five people from Milwaukee participated in P2K’s Engliyada program. They helped teach English to new immigrants and veteran Israelis in Tiberias.
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