The headlines from Israel may focus on terrorist attacks and concerns about how a possible U.S. war against Iraq might affect it. But in the background, Partnership 2000 (P2K) provides “a bright spot in a difficult time,” according to Milwaukeean Roslyn Roucher.
Roucher works in the Milwaukee Jewish Federation as P2K cluster coordinator, serving as staff for the cluster chair, Milwaukeean Jane Gellman.
Together, they went to Israel Nov. 11-14 to participate in the fall steering committee meeting. These twice-a-year meetings bring together P2K officials from the United States — coming from the “cluster” of communities comprising Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Tulsa — and from the Israeli region to which the U.S. communities are linked, the Sovev Kinneret (around Lake Kinneret).
And “the relationship between [the participating] Americans and Israelis grows stronger every time” these meetings occur, said Roucher. “We enjoy each other at the personal and professional levels.”
Indeed, a highlight of the visit for Roucher was a reception for “all of the people [in the area] involved in a P2K project,” she said. “To walk into this room full of people touched by P2K that we know and work with, it was beautiful.”
And that, in fact, is one of the general goals of the P2K project, which was created in 1995 by the Jewish Agency for Israel, Keren Hayesod and what is now United Jewish Communities — to create direct people-to-people relationships between diaspora Jews and Israelis.
Indeed, fostering such relationships between the P2K officials was one of the direct goals of the fall meeting. For the first time, said Roucher and Gellman, the participants not only did their official business, but also had a “retreat” guided by an Israeli and an American facilitator.
“The purpose of the retreat was to work to better gain an understanding of each other and improve the working of the partnership,” said Gellman. After some seven years of working in P2K, “we needed to take time to better understand each other,” particularly the different ways of thinking and working found in the group.
New security systems
In fact, there are differences in goals and ways of working not only between the American Jews and the Israelis, but between the Jews from the different U.S. communities, and “understanding these … is important as well,” Gellman said.
The retreat was so successful, according to Roucher, that when the time came to do the main business of the meeting — planning P2K projects for the coming year and allocating the $500,000 contributed for them by the four U.S. communities — “it was easy and obvious what we would fund.”
Projects approved at the meeting included bringing members of the Young Leadership Group to Milwaukee to help with the next Super Sunday phonathon in 2003; expansion of the Education Bridge projects to link more classes in the U.S. cities’ synagogues and schools with Israeli classes in the region; a grant to a Small Business Association in Tiberias to help “build up the [economic] infrastructure” of that city, which is “in serious trouble,” said Roucher.
In addition, the participants had a chance to see how funds from UJC’s Israel Now and Israel Emergency Campaign were used to benefit Israelis in the region.
They attended the opening of the Lower Galilee Security Center, which received some $108,765 from Milwaukee. All the region’s educational institutions are connected electronically to this center, which can contact all emergency institutions to respond to any situation.
They also visited the Tiberias Educational Security System, which received about $145,000 from Milwaukee. This connects all the city’s educational institutions to one security system that includes, among other things, guards riding motorbikes that were donated by Milwaukee and Minneapolis.
“The reality that this need exists is very sad,” said Roucher. “But the fact that we can provide such a direct service” to Israelis “and have it happen so fast.… It obviously makes a difference. They have a whole level of security they didn’t have a year ago.”
The participants also visited Israeli schools linked to U.S. schools through the Education Bridge project, bringing photos, gifts and letters to the Israeli students and picking up similar things to bring back to the U.S. communities.
The co-chairs of the Israeli steering committee are mayor of Tiberias Benjamin Kiryati and Dr. Yaacov Farbstein, general director of the Poriya Government Hospital, the primary medical center for the region, which received $181,290 from Milwaukee’s Israel Emergency Campaign to expand and upgrade its emergency care services.
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