The tendency to “Do it yourself” has been thought a stereotypically American trait. But Israelis also have a “Do it yourself” value in their culture, whether it comes to military tactics and weapons, building high tech businesses, making the desert bloom — or doing diplomacy and public relations.
At least, the latter is what Oksana and Chami Zemach of Moshav Kadesh Barnea decided to do.
Since Aug. 1, 2011, they and the younger three of their four daughters have been traveling literally around the world as part of a self-organized and mostly self-financed one-year endeavor to tell people about Israel.
Their plans for what they call “The Israeli Family Project” involve visiting 27 countries on four continents. By the time they stopped in Milwaukee for a three-day visit Jan. 7-10 — they spent Jan. 6 in Madison — they had visited 11 countries in Europe, and Wisconsin was their 12th of the U.S. states.
Chami, 42, explained to a group of Milwaukee Jewish Federation staff members on Jan. 9 that he was the prosperous creator and owner of a food-processing factory located near the border with Egypt. This factory is also located in one of Israel’s prime desert agriculture areas, where some crops can be grown 12 months out of the year.
Over the last few years, people from all over the world have visited his factory and village, and have met him and his family, he said. Eventually, he realized that he and his family were giving these visitors a positive view of Israel — “People connect to the values we share with them,” he said — and he and his wife decided they “wanted to do something more influential.”
“We wanted to use our abilities to let people know about life in Israel,” he said. “We understand that many people around the world want to know about Israel.”
What most people know about Israel comes from news media that “usually cover the conflict” between Israel and the Arab world, he said. Chami said he “can’t blame” news media for doing this.
Nevertheless, “Israel is much more than the conflict,” and Israeli life involves “more than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,” the country’s two largest and most famous cities, he said.
The Zemachs began planning this do-it-themselves public relations project about two years ago. They contacted people within Israel and around the world, including Israelis living abroad.
Although they did make connections with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Jewish Agency for Israel, the project remained “completely independent” of any official backing, and is funded “80 percent from our own pocket,” Chami said.
Most of the family’s speaking engagements in Europe were for non-Jewish groups, while most of them in the U.S. have been for Jewish groups, he said.
In fact, while news reports indicate that many European government officials and academicians-intellectuals are increasingly hostile to Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinian Arabs, the Zemachs were “delighted to find so many people supportive of Israel” in the European countries they have visited to date, Chami said.
Moreover, they have seen enough of both the European and U.S. Jewish communities to have some insight into their differences.
For example, the Zemachs were eating in a restaurant in Morristown, N.J., when another diner, a young woman, approached to ask what language they were speaking. When told it was Hebrew, the woman said she thought it was, but wasn’t sure; and added something about how a large part of her family was Jewish.
“In Europe, this would not happen,” people “would not say they are Jewish like this,” Chami said. “Jewish people in the states, they are natural with being Jews and open about it.”
The Zemachs made careful provision to make sure their daughters — Gali, 13, Tamar, 11, and Michal, 4 — who were traveling with them continued their educations. (Their oldest daughter, Yulia, 22, is a college student.)
But the girls also participate in the project, helping to communicate to children their age. And in any event, the experience of traveling provides what Oksana called a “world school” for them.
The Zemachs have some tentative plans for what they will do with their experience after their return to Israel, which is scheduled for this coming Aug. 1. Chami said they have been collecting stories about some of the interesting people they have met, and may create a book about their trip.
Above all, Chami said, “our goals are to keep on with finding creative ways to show what Israel is.”
The Zemachs stopped in Milwaukee at the invitation of Ro’ee Peled and Michal Makov-Peled, Israel emissaries and directors of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Israel Center. Milwaukee’s emissaries met the Zemachs at a JAFI convention for emissaries in New York City this past November.
The Zemachs’ activities in Milwaukee included presentations at Congregation Sinai and at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
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