When Maureen Conklin and her colleagues at University Lake School in Hartland decided to teach a special interdisciplinary unit on the Middle East, Conklin called the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations for help.
Conklin, a history teacher for upper grades at the private K4-12 school, explained her goal to Paula Simon, executive director of the council.
“I knew that my students were introduced to the rise of Israel and to Islam, but that’s all in World History I [for freshman]. So I was looking for a way to introduce the topic from a historical perspective and also to bring into the forefront the contemporary issues,” Conklin explained in a recent telephone interview from the school.
So Simon and Kathy Heilbronner, MJCCR assistant director, helped Conklin set up a plan for two events last January. First, they would show a 45-minute visual presentation on the history of Israel and, then, a week later, they would send a speaker to participate in a panel discussion with a Palestinian Muslim about issues in modern Israel, specifically, the current conflict.
The events, Conklin said, provoked many questions from the students. “And that, to me, was important,” she said. “I ended up spending a lot of time over the next two weeks reviewing and looking at the region.”
ULS senior Tyler Hogan agreed that the programs were valuable. “It was great to have so many different viewpoints right in front of me for a live discussion,” he said in an e-mail interview. “It really allowed me to form my own opinions instead of hearing a more biased speech from one person.
“When they discussed the conflict it really affected my view. I was rather uneducated [about it] so it was good and informative.”
At the panel discussion, which Conklin described as “passionate and emotional,” MJCCR past-president Marty Katz sat with a representative from the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition.
“There was no hostility yet they took pretty opposite positions…” Conklin said. “It was probably one of the most real things our kids see; it brought real faces to the issue.”
And though discussing the Israel-Palestinian conflict is touchy, Conklin felt that the council presented the issue fairly. “Kathy and Paula were very upfront that the PowerPoint presentation looked at history from an Israeli [or Jewish] perspective.”
Presenting the Israeli perspective is one objective of the council’s Israel advocacy,
explained Heilbronner. “Since the beginning of the intifada, the news media have been all over this and there’s been a lot of misinformation,” she said.
Showing the PowerPoint presentation and speaking on Israel are just two components of the Israel advocacy that the council does regularly.
“We really are a clearinghouse,” Simon explained, noting that the council often distributes articles, helps organizations find speakers, coordinates programs and passes out information and referrals.
“We’re typically the address that the non-Jewish community goes to first…. We’re at the intersection of the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, so, because we’re involved in schools and we’ve done some teacher training and interfaith events, people know us.
“I think that’s one of the things that makes the council unique in the community — we’re intersecting with people who wouldn’t ordinarily intersect with us,” Simon said.
“We work will all kinds of populations … to give people accurate information, to give them perspective, background and knowledge to let them make up their own minds.”
Another part of the council’s Israel advocacy is its Israel Media Response Team, which includes some 40 community members who write letters and make phone calls to monitor the media’s Israel coverage.
“That’s been very effective. It’s been a way for people who want to do something to have enough information so they can write a 200-word letter to the editor, for example,” said Simon.
But the council’s Israel advocacy extends to deeper, subtler levels, she added. “We have a number of different avenues that we pursue, some of them are very obvious and some are less apparent.
“A lot of the work of community relations happens in the relationship. We can send a letter to a religious leader saying, ‘Thought you might be interested in this’ or ask teachers if they need information.
“I think so often people think that advocacy is just congressional or legislative. That’s very critical and we work on it all the time, but there are so many other avenues for building support, for education about Israel. We have to find all those different kinds of opportunities,” she said.
“And that’s just one piece of our portfolio,” added Simon.
The MJCCR board includes representatives of 27 local synagogues and Jewish organizations and an equal number of members representing the community at large.
Safeguarding Jewish security and the rights of Jews everywhere is at the core of its mission.
It received an allocation of $167,900 for the 2003-2004 fiscal year from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Annual Community Campaign 2003.
For more information on the ongoing Community Campaign 2004, contact the federation at 414-390-3700 or www.milwaukeejewish.org.
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