“It is hard not to see the footprints” of the Jewish National Fund in Israel, said Ariel Kotler to the about 200 people at the Wisconsin Region JNF banquet Sept. 5 at the River Club of Mequon. And he ought to know.
Kotler is the development officer for JNF’s Israel operations. In that capacity, he travels all over Israel, and, as he told the Milwaukee audience, “I get to enjoy what you do on a daily basis.”
He described how he went to Sderot for meetings and brought his wife Ranit, his son Chaim and two daughters of a friend. While he attended meetings, they played in the JNF-funded Sderot indoor playground — and because it is painted blue Kotler called it “the biggest Blue Box in the world,” in reference to the famous JNF Blue Boxes for donations.
Kotler also discussed the JNF-built park in Beersheva, which he called “the largest urban park in Israel” — part of the Blueprint Negev endeavor to develop Israel’s Negev Desert region, with Beersheva as the regional capital.
And of course, he spoke about the Timna Valley Park that Milwaukeean Avrum Chudnow was instrumental in developing near Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city.
Kotler said that the park today has some 120,000 visitors per year, brings in about 9 million shekels a year of which 70 percent stays in the region, and provides more than 300 jobs in and around the park.
He described how on a flight to Tel Aviv from Eilat, he happened to start a conversation with an Eilat resident who fondly recalled enjoying the Timna Park when he was growing up — a chance to hear “from the beneficiary side,” he said.
Read the rest of this article in the October issue.
