Madison — There have been and will be a lot of “firsts” in the Madison Jewish community’s relationship to Israel during this Jewish year.
Madison held its first Israeli film festival this past February and March. The community had its first Chanukah day camp for five days last December at its Goodman campus.
It will, for the first time in at least 20 years, hold a ceremony marking Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day.
And all these resulted from one new development. This year, Madison has its very first resident emissary from Israel, Shirin Ezekiel, 28.
In fact, she and Madison Jewry have so enjoyed working together that she has been asked and has agreed to stay for the emissary program’s optional second year.
“It has been a very exciting thing for our community” to have Ezekiel here, said Steve Morrison, executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Council, in a recent telephone interview. “The number and quality of Israel cultural and educational programs is just a quantum difference from what it was eight months ago.”
Ezekiel also works with the Hillel Foundation University of Wisconsin on matters involving the UW-Madison campus. “It’s great having her,” said Hillel director Greg Steinberger in a telephone interview. Her presence is “one more very powerful opportunity to engage students about Israel.”
And Ezekiel returns the affection. “I’ve loved it,” she told The Chronicle. “I feel there is a difference in the community and that they appreciate that these things are happening.
“And the community is so warm, I’m always being invited, people are calling and asking me. It feels like I’m making some kind of difference.”
A ‘superstar’ candidate
It was a simple question that led Ezekiel to come to Madison: “What can we do to help you?”
Representatives of the Jewish Agency for Israel asked this in Jerusalem about four years ago to a group of directors of Jewish federations from smaller communities — Morrison among them.
And one of the answers, according to Morrison, was, “Can you do something to get us a shaliach [emissary from Israel] in our community?”
“We’ll think about it” was the answer, said Morrison. And JAFI officials did, announcing at the very next General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities that a pilot program would be launched in four communities.
There are differences between this and the emissary programs that larger communities like Milwaukee have. The shlichim to smaller communities are younger, unmarried, recently out of the army and college, able to use their service as part of their educations, and therefore would not expect to make much money, said Morrison.
A year after the pilot program was launched, Morrison said he met with representatives of these communities and learned that the project was succeeding. So, about a year ago, the MJCC board decided to apply to JAFI for its own shaliach.
The MJCC was able to afford this partly because shlichim in this program are paid a stipend for living expenses, rather than a salary; and because UJC permits MJCC to use for Israel-related local programming some of the campaign money it would otherwise donate to JAFI or the Joint Distribution Committee.
So the MJCC didn’t need to raise “new dollars” but could use existing funds for the program, said Morrison.
Moreover, Morrison said that from the beginning the job description for the Madison emissary would include sharing duties between the MJCC and the Hillel Foundation.
Once the project was approved, it only remained to choose the person. Morrison said that UW Prof. Ken Goldstein, who was in Israel on a Fulbright Foundation grant at the time, and a former Madisonian and educator Judith Edelman Green, who had emigrated to Israel more than 20 years ago, interviewed the candidates — and said that while all the candidates were good, “Shirin is a superstar.”
Jewish, not just Israeli
The daughter of immigrants from India, Ezekiel was born in Or Yehuda and has been living in Ramat Gan “for the last few years.” She appears to have shown leadership and teaching potential early; during her army service she was a trainer for new women cadets, she said.
After her military service and before beginning college, she spent six months in New Jersey, working at a Jewish summer camp and with a Jewish community center. She then obtained college degrees in political science and communications, and held various jobs, including assistant to a Knesset member and public relations staff for organizations involved with the New Israel Fund.
But a significant educational event for her was being one of four college students serving on the Israeli delegation to the infamously anti-Israel and anti-Semitic World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in early September 2001.
“It was a hard experience,” but also “very meaningful” to go to that meeting and “feel all the hatred in the air,” she said. That made her feel she was “Jewish, not just Israeli,” she said.
After completing her degrees, Ezekiel also spent time at other international conferences and participated in the Israel At Heart program in the U.S. and Canada. She also decided she wanted to try being a shlichah, to live abroad and work with a community and with students.
She decided to go to Madison because she thought that, being “alone with no family, a smaller community would give me a better chance to know people more and feel more influential” than would a large community with other shlichim present.
She arrived in Madison last September and “hit the ground running,” said Morrison.
“She is smart and charming and creative. She has one idea after another and finds the funding for them” — for example, obtaining grants for the Israeli film festival.
“She is driven and committed and wants to improve herself,” said Steinberger. “On campus and throughout the city,” there are Israel-related programs that “were not done or not done as well until she came here,” he said.
Ezekiel said that, during her second year, she wants to consolidate much of what she accomplished during her first, such as making the Israeli film festival an annual event. “After six months of learning what the community needs, I will continue the work that I started,” she said.
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