“I hear it all the time” from Israeli students and teachers who visit the United States, said Raya Strauss Bendror, the Israeli co-chair of Partnership 2000. “‘We went to the U.S. as Israelis and came back as Jews and Zionists.’”
Indeed, Strauss Bendror has gone on that emotional journey herself, as she said in an interview at The Pfister hotel during her visit to Milwaukee in early November, when she met with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s P2K steering committee.
“It was a sad thing,” she said. “As a secular Jew and Israeli, I was not so much connected to Jews around the world.”
Moreover, like a lot of Israelis, she was able “to take [Judaism] for granted” because it was deeply embedded in Israeli culture. “You know when it is Shabbat, even if you are secular,” she said.
Becoming acquainted with Diaspora Jews, who have to work at being Jewish, has transformed her views, she said. The experience can and has made Israelis “thankful they are living in Israel,” and made her believe that “We need to increase the Jewish identity in Israel for Israelis. We are not aware of our roots.”
Strauss Bendror is a renowned Israeli businessperson — co-owner and president of Strauss Investments Ltd., she formerly co-owned the Strauss-Elite Group — and a leading social activist in Israel.
She sits on the board of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the organization Maala-Business for Social Responsibility and has many roles in other Israeli business and social service organizations.
She is also one of Israel’s biggest and most important philanthropists, said Damon Rose, director of partnerships in Israel’s northern region for the Jewish Agency for Israel, who was with her in Milwaukee.
“She is not only giving her money but her heart. She wants to make sure things happen.”
The need for a renaissance in Jewish identity among Israelis is urgent not only for Israeli life, but to prevent so many Israelis from fleeing the country, said both Strauss Bendror and Rose.
Israel is “a number one exporter of brains,” with some 30 percent of the foreign-born professors in U.S. colleges and universities coming from Israel, according to Rose.
It is also urgent to help reverse the trend of Israelis and Diaspora Jews “drifting apart,” she said. Israel, she said, “will never survive” without a strong relationship to “our family” outside of Israel.
And P2K, she said, has been a superb means of strengthening that relationship.
The project was created in 1994 by the Jewish Agency for Israel, the United Jewish Communities (the umbrella organization of North American Jewish federations, now called the Jewish Federations of North America) and Karen Hayesod-United Israel Appeal, according to the JAFI Web site. It connects Diaspora communities with specific communities or regions in Israel for collaborative projects in many areas.
For example, Milwaukee, Tulsa and St. Paul are linked to the Sovev Kinneret (around Lake Kinneret) region of Israel.
Strauss Bendror first became involved in the project via the partnership between her hometown of Nahariya and the Jewish community of northern New Jersey.
“It was a genius idea to create this platform” 15 years ago, she said of the project, which she co-chairs with Iris Feinberg of Atlanta. “It is the only platform in the Jewish world” that develops “person-to-person” connections between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, she said.
Yet for all its success, Strauss Bendror and others feel it is time to reevaluate. Beginning about a year ago, she began a process of “reviewing the vision” of the project and she has been meeting with “my team” in Israel and the Diaspora to learn “what do we want” of the endeavor.
Apparently, Milwaukee’s steering committee had the same idea. Strauss Bendror said that Milwaukee is “the first community” that started to review the project “on its own.”
After the Milwaukee meetings, Strauss Bendror and Rose attended the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, held Nov. 8-11 in Washington, D.C., which was followed by a vision retreat for the global Partnership 2000 program.
They will then “start work” on the next steps in P2K’s development, she said.
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