ERETZ
Three-Day Whirlwind
My lightening mission to Israel to show solidarity for a shared society. RABBI ASHER LOPATIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
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FROM THE TOP: A 1,000-year-old hotel in Lod. With Yuval Bedolah and Sharon Avis of Totzeret Haaretz. With Eyal Betzer of Jezreel Valley Regional Council and his wife, and Federation’s Yoav Raban. With Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam, and Eli Barda, mayor of the nearby Jewish city Migdal HaEmek.
ust days after the rockets stopped flying over our brother and sisters in Israel, I received a call from the Israeli Consulate to the Midwest asking if I could possibly head to the Holy Land to show solidarity. The Israeli foreign minister had called the Consulate asking for as many leaders of Federations and JCRCs to show that the Jewish community in America has Israel’s back. After I got the thumbs up, I booked my flight. Little did I know that there were PCR COVID tests to take, forms to fill out, and an antibody serology test in Israel that would need to be positive to avoid a two-week quarantine. In fact, I first booked the trip for just one day, but my wife, Rachel, persuaded me to extend it, and I rebooked for three days: Arriving Monday morning — in order to test and quarantine till the results came back — and then having two days to explore my second reason for
going besides solidarity: to determine for myself that Israeli shared society — between the Jews of Israel and the Arabs of Israel — was alive and well and meeting the challenges of riots in mixed cities all over Israel. Hamas had said: “Shared society and coexistence in Israel has been destroyed.” I went to prove them wrong. We are blessed in Detroit to have the perfect Partnership Region for exploring coexistence — the Central Galilee: the largest Arab city in Israel, Nazareth, nestled in the Galilean hills right next to Nof HaGalil, Migdal HaEmek and a host of other small Jewish and Arab towns, villages and kibbutzim in the Jezreel valley. We are also blessed to have the most amazing leadership in the Israel and Oversees office of the Jewish Federation: Jennifer Levine leading the department from Detroit, and our folks on the
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JUNE 24 • 2021
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