There is good news and bad news to report from the Partnership 2000 (P2K) steering committee meetings held Oct. 11-17 at Kibbutz Ma’agan near the southern tip of Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee).
In the good news, Milwaukeean Jane Gellman, current president of the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC and former chair of Milwaukee’s P2K committee, was named chair of the U.S. cluster of Jewish communities — Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Tulsa — paired with the Kinneret region through the P2K program. This is the first time a Milwaukeean has held that post.
Partnership 2000 links diaspora communities to cities and regions in Israel for joint projects that promote development in Israel and person-to-person contacts between Israeli and diaspora Jews. It was created in 1995 by the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Keren Hayesod and what was then the United Jewish Appeal (now United Jewish Communities).
Members of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s P2K committee travel to the region once a year to review funding for current and future projects with elected officials and volunteers from the region, and representatives of the Jewish Agency and Israeli government.
As the first P2K committee chair in Milwaukee, Gellman has been involved with the program from its beginning, said Penny Deshur, current chair, who was unable to attend the steering committee meeting. “She’ll be a wonderful chair [for the cluster] because she understands the process so well.”
As chair of the U.S. group of cities linked to the Kinneret region, Gellman will be working with the program’s regional manager, Smadar Perach, on “enhancing the programs we have, monitoring the programs we’re doing and working to expand the numbers of people involved in the projects” in Israel and the linked U.S. communities, Gellman told The Chronicle.
P2K continuing projects include the Educators Mifgash (Encounter), which Gellman said was the biggest single P2K program between the regions and which involves both teachers visits and collaborations between schools; the Young Leadership Forum; and Artists, Physicians and Teen Exchanges. For more information on the education program, visit www.yarden. ac.il/bloss/pro2000/p2kfront.htm.
“There will be a renewed emphasis on people-to-people projects,” Gellman continued, and work on “economic development projects,” as the U.S. partners will “keep open eyes for more business opportunities in the region, whenever it’s possible for us to do that.”
Jobs and water
That second aim leads to consideration of the bad news. The Kinneret region — an area of more than 210 square miles that includes the lake, the historic city of Tiberias and the Jordan Valley and contains a total Jewish population of about 70,000 — has already been economically “devastated by the [al-Aksa] intifada” that began last year, said Gellman.
But the situation “has been made worse” by the Sept. 11 attacks, Gellman said. “No one thought it was possible to be worse, but it is.”
Even during the week Gellman and several others were there, some 300 to 400 more people lost their jobs, said Jerry Benjamin, chair of MJF’s Israel and Overseas Committee, which oversees the P2K program, and a member of the delegation.
Some 70 percent of the local economy is founded on tourism, which has virtually halted, Benjamin said. This not only affects people in that industry, but has “all kinds of ripple effects,” said Benjamin. “There are no municipal taxes because nobody has a job,” so the Tiberias city government “is starving and cutting back on services.”
Adding to the troubles is an environmental problem. A drought has afflicted the area for the last few years, and the water level of the Kinneret, one of Israel’s primary water sources, is “at an all-time low,” said Gellman.
The region’s U.S. partners, Gellman acknowledged, “don’t have the resources to change the economic situation.” But through the various people-to-people P2K projects, the U.S. communities can “keep [the Israelis] from feeling totally isolated and abandoned by the world,” Gellman said.
Even small projects can help, said Benjamin, because this is “a setting in which the things we’re doing are all the more visible.” For example, “times are difficult, but Jewish artists are coming together to work on projects.” That offers “a glint of good will and hope” and adds to the area’s “quality of life in a way a small project couldn’t do in normal circumstances.”
Benjamin was referring to a new Artists’ Exchange project in which five artists from the cluster — two of them from Milwaukee, according to Gellman — will go to the region and meet five Israeli artists there. They will create works that will be installed at Poriya Government Hospital near Tiberias.
In addition to P2K projects, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation has launched a special Israel NOW campaign to raise $500,000 that will be devoted to specific needs in the Kinneret region. They include:
• Helping Poriya Hospital expand and improve its emergency care services. Benjamin pointed out that this is necessary not only for potential terror attacks but also for such commonplace emergencies as traffic accidents.
In either case, emergency victims currently need to be airlifted to Haifa, adding an extra half-hour to treatment time that sometimes can be fatal, Benjamin said.
•Helping increase and improve security measures to protect area children (see related story on page 1 about one Jordan Valley resident).
• Providing emergency training for volunteers.
Benjamin said some of the Israelis he met in the region were deeply moved when they heard about the Israel NOW campaign. He added, “They’re part of our community in a way now.”
The Israel NOW campaign to date has raised $146,253. For more information about it, contact MJF at 390-5700 or www.milwaukeejewish.org.
Loading ...