Israel Now, Spring 2019

ISRAEL NOW A SPECIAL ISSUE OF NEW JERSEY JEWISH NEWS | SPRING 2019

BUILDING BRIDGES

Sharing a past, creating a future Garden State residents intertwined with students, history, and tastes of Israel

NJ Jewish News ■ ISRAEL N✡W ■ Spring, 2019

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YOUR IMPACT IN ISRAEL, BY THE NUMBERS Your support and your voice matter. Thanks to you, Israel has our commitment to help it flourish as a strong Jewish democratic state, to help its people live with dignity and independence, and to fight back against assaults on its legitimacy.

You’ve made all this happen — and more.

7,500 community members engaged in Israel Independence Day celebrations this past May across the Upper West Side and Brooklyn.

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Israeli kids are overcoming cycles of poverty and abuse through counseling and early intervention.

2,300 Ethiopian-Israeli children get essential support from the moment they’re born until they graduate from high school.

92,000 $26 million were invested in Israel last year alone to help keep it a thriving Jewish homeland.

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people in Israel and around the world are rebuilding lives shattered by acts of violence or natural disasters.

280,000 Israelis participate in programs that bring secular and religious Jews together.

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disenfranchised Israelis have received crucial training to help them find employment since 2005.

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Jews from six continents get the support they need to help them build new lives in Israel.

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3 NJ Jewish News ■ ISRAEL N✡W ■ Spring, 2019

Eyewitnesses to history

Profiles of residents in the Garden State who witnessed the formation of the Jewish state

I

he Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel are two events that changed the course of Jewish history, noted Aryeh Halivni. Yet, little had been done to collect eye witness testimony of the 1948 era. Halivni, an Ohio native who made aliyah in 2002, founded Toldot Yisrael, or Chronicles of Israel, about 12 years ago. Its purpose is to record stories — which he referred to as “inspiring and heroic” — of anyone involved or who was a witness to the founding of the state.

Included in Toldot Yisrael’s collection of more than 1,200 video testimonies, archived in Israel’s National Library in Jerusalem, are 150 interviews with U.S. citizens and their descendants who remember the weapons smuggling, fund-raising, volunteerism, and more. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, “The American-Jewish community was able to do things and it did things that no other community could have done,” he told NJJN in a phone interview from Israel, crediting the size, affluence, political ties, and connections of U.S. Jews.

“Americans were … a critical part in helping bring about the founding and the building of the state.”

These five profiles reflect the diverse swath of the 1948 generation living in the U.S. and pre-state Israel. Although now in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, the memories of that tumultuous time remain fresh for these individuals. Among them is a young weapons smuggler, several who volunteered for the Jewish underground, and one whose childhood was punctuated by bombs and weapons training. All five now live in New Jersey. Their initiatives and actions are part and parcel with the creation of a Jewish state, and their histories make the annals of the establishment of Israel an American story as well.

‘I learned how to fight back’

HIS SISTER’S BED was one of the places young Frederick Biermann hid a machine gun. The other was underneath a loose cement brick that was part of the 78 steps that led to the entrance of the Biermann home in Tel Amal, outside Haifa.

Joining the Haganah at age 15, he said, was the “first time I felt free.” To Biermann, freedom meant the end to a recurring nightmare from which he’d wake up in a sweat. In it he saw the Nazis march past his childhood home in Austria and a soldier would pick him and throw him off the veranda.

“I joined the underground and I learned how to fight back, and that’s when the dream stopped,” he said.

Originally from Vienna, Austria, the family sailed in 1939 to Palestine from France, a country they entered illegally after being denied admission into Switzerland. In British-Mandate Palestine the

Left, Fred Biermann of South Orange, a former member of the Haganah, also served in the IDF and the U.S. Army. Right, Fred Biermann in his IDF uniform circa 1951.

P H OTO B Y S H I R A V I C K A R - F O X / P H OTO C O U R T E S Y F R E D B I E R M A N N

family lived near the docks of Haifa, and the young Biermann would watch helplessly as ships with European refugees were turned away.

Recruited into the Haganah by a neighbor who later became his commander in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Biermann kept his weekend training and association with the underground fighting unit a secret from his parents. One time the British came to his apartment to ensure residents were obeying an evening curfew. As Biermann was in possession of a Haganah machine gun, he told his sister to hide it next to her in bed, assuming — correctly, as it turned out — that the British wouldn’t disturb a sleeping teenage girl.

“They came into the apartment, they looked around,” he said. “I got away with it.”

His parents learned of his involvement in the Haganah on Nov. 30, 1947, the day he defended Tal Amal, the first of many battles he would go on to fight in northern Israel. His mother heard from the woman who delivered milk that he was on Yarden Street defending the town.

“She slapped me pretty good,” he said of his mother’s reaction when he came home.

In 1947 the newly established IDF absorbed Haganah fighters, including Biermann, who fought in the Carmeli Brigade’s 22nd Battalion. Biermann’s army ID card, which he still has, lists him as soldier #408. He was discharged from active duty in November 1949.

On May 14, 1948, he was in a foxhole on Hill 230 in the Galilee listening on a two-way radio to the broadcast of the declaration of the State of Israel. “I felt proud,” he said. “I felt great.” But celebration for the new state was short-lived; he went on to fight many battles in northern Israel and sustained multiple bullet wounds in Mishmar Yarden. “You don’t know what tough is,” he said.

Biermann came to the U.S. for school in 1952 with $1.25 in his pocket. He parlayed his military experience in Israel into the U.S. Army, which he entered with the rank of captain. He served two years of active duty and 30 years in the reserves.

Now 88, Biermann is a retired dentist who had practices in Springfield and Newark. He lives in South Orange and is a member of Temple Har Shalom in Warren.

“I hope nothing stops me ever,” he said.

— SHIRA VICKAR-FOX

‘I’m a rural person’

MICHA LIVNE, 78 and a resident of East Windsor, has a fun memory of life in Mandatory Palestine before the State of Israel came into being in 1948.

Livne, who was born at Kibbutz Ein-HaShofet, about 30 miles from Haifa, liked sweets.

“The British soldiers used to give us halva,” he remembers. His wife, Joanna, a Brooklyn native, said the Levantine dessert remains a staple of their Shabbat meals. The two first met at Ein-HaShofet after the end of the Six-Day War in 1967.

Livne was a witness to the changes as Palestine became Israel.

“When I was a youngster, we always saw and played with the children in the [Wadi Ara] villages in the area,” he said. “After the War for Independence, we took a walk to some of the villages near our kibbutz. The houses were there, but no people.”

The population of Ein-HaShofet grew between 1948 and the Suez Crisis in 1956, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. Out of that conflict Israel was assured its ships could pass through the Straits of Tiran at the southern end of the Red Sea, which Nasser had prevented Israel from doing since 1950.

“There was no fighting near us,” said Livne, who was in high school at the time. “But I did develop an appreciation for the IDF, both then and in 1967.”

He also developed even more of a love for kibbutz life, which includes communal values of cooperation and mutual respect.

“I didn’t want to live in any of the cities,” said Livne. “I just didn’t like the crowding and the lifestyle there. I’m a rural person.”

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Eyewitnesses

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Livne reported for his required military service in the IDF in 1969, serving in the Israel Northern Command, located in Safed. It is responsible for securing the borders with Lebanon and Syria and the Golan Heights.

“I was in a unit that became the Golani Brigade,” said Livne. “We all had to serve, men and women. It was part of life. After high school, we all did what was required,” 36 months for men, 24 for women, he said.

In 1968-69 when he was 27 and prior to his IDF service, Livne traveled to the United States to visit Young Micha Livne at Kibbutz Ein-HaShofet and today in East Windsor.

Maurice Mahler, president of Confamily and to serve as shaliach, or P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y M I C H A A N D J O A N N A L I V N E gregation Beit Shalom in Monroe emissary, to the Hechalutz Farm near Hightstown. The farm was established as a training ground for youth wanting to work on a kibbutz in Is- pre-teen that a tallit bag could hold Mahler said the guns were put intoh rael. It closed in 1974. things other than religious objects. boxes used to store cheese and sente “The farm was in pretty bad shape The Monroe resident, 83 and presto the docks where they were loadedb by the time I got there,” said Livne, ident of Congregation Beit Shalom by members of the Teamsters Uniont who settled in East Windsor, just out- in Monroe, was 11 or 12 and living — who were fully aware of what wasw side Hightstown, because of his fa- in a housing project in Williamsburg, in the boxes — onto ships bound fora miliarity with the farm.

Brooklyn. His four uncles had served the Holy Land.

Livne moved to the United States in World War II, and like other returnMahler said the Teamsters’ iconic permanently in 1975. He and Joanna ing soldiers, came home with “souve— and volatile — leader, Jimmy made a life for themselves in East nirs” in the form of enemy weapons.

Hoffa, was “instrumental” in the “No one was checking what they Windsor and raised a family, with a smuggling of arms into pre-state Israel because the labor union felt a weekly taste of halva bringing back brought back in their duffle bag,” said HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Mahler. great affinity with the labor-Zionist memories of the early days of Israel.

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he met his future wife, Naomi. After the war, he ended up in Austria in a displaced persons camp before escaping over the mountains with his peers to Italy, settling in another DP camp, before they were greeted by Jewish soldiers from the British army and placed on a ship bound for Palestine.

as their vacation spot after having lived there for 13 years. “It is a beautiful country,” he said, and despite its many challenges, “I still love it.”

— LORI SILBERMAN BRAUNER

‘The part that was scary was at night when they were bombing close and you’re in bed’

BAT-AMI LIWSCHITZ, just 15 in 1948, was too young to fight in Israel’s War of Independence.

Instead, she went to school in Tel Aviv. But getting there on her bicycle was not always easy. One day her path was blocked by a bombing.

“So I waited,” she recalled. Another student waited with her, and they could see machine guns firing at the airplane on either side of the road ahead of them. “Both sides are trying to shoot at the plane.

The plane is throwing bombs, [and it] all happened within a half mile or less from us.” When the attack ended, “We had no choice, just to continue. That’s what I did,” she said, and added, “We had to live.”

Was she ever scared?

“The part that was scary was at night when they were bombing close and you’re in bed, and you have no control. So, you cover yourself with a blanket and you think you’re safe.”

Born in British Mandatory Palestine and raised in the Borochov quarter of what is now Givatayim, she sat in her living room in Union on a recent May morning, sharing memories from

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NJ Jewish News ■ ISRAEL N✡W ■ Spring, 2019

Asher Niederman on duty in the Israel Defense Forces. C O U R T E S Y A S H E R N I E D E R M A N

With British Mandate authorities clamping down on Jewish immigration, officers intercepted their ship in Haifa and sent the passengers to the Atlit detention camp on the northern coast. He then spent six months on a kibbutz, marrying Naomi in February 1946, before moving to Holon and then Tel Aviv, resuming his career working in bakeries.

But more drama was to come. In 1947, the Irgun, known for staging attacks against the Mandate authorities, dug a tunnel leading to Beit Hadar, the British headquarters in Tel Aviv, with the intention of blowing it up. The Haganah discovered the plan, but not before losing one of its own members, Zeev Werber, when the bomb exploded in the tunnel.

While Niederman, then 21, had nothing to do with the Irgun, in the aftermath the young man, wearing military-style shorts and a belt, was arrested by the British authorities and sent to jail in Jaffa.

“I looked like a soldier,” he said. He was eventually released after the officer, impressed with Niederman’s ease in speaking Hebrew, said he couldn’t believe he had only been in Israel for a year. Niederman joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1948 and spent two years in the army.

Asher, Naomi, and their two sons moved to the United States in 1959 for better economic opportunities, living initially in Newark’s Weequahic section and then in Springfield. He first worked as a baker before buying a taxi cab and later owning a taxi company.

The Niedermans now have four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, and prioritized Israel

NJ Jewish News ■ ISRAEL N✡W ■ Spring, 2019

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The cuisine that binds

Israeli food as the great connector, erasing borders and biases Miriam Groner Special to NJJN

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n a charged political climate, where ties between Israelis and American Jews are fraying, the multicultural Israeli table, it turns out, offers a recipe for something binding.

Adeena Sussman, a cookbook author and food consultant based in Tel Aviv, describes a menu that serves as a larger metaphor. On that melting pot of an Israeli table, she said, “There can be a dish that combines zaatar, which is something from the Levantine and Palestinian kitchen, and ras el hanout, which is Moroccan, with a Berbere spice, which is Ethiopian, as well as American influences.

“It’s also about harnessing [the food] in ways that reflect the ongoing story of Judaism and the way that Jewish culture melds many traditions.”

The Middle Eastern food that Sussman describes has exploded in popularity in recent years. Israeli chefs have opened upscale and casual dining spots in New York, Philadelphia, and here in New Jersey.

In New York, there’s Eyal Shani’s popular Miznon eatery in Chelsea Market that serves Israeli beer on tap and put whole-roasted cauliflower on the map.

A second Miznon location is set to open soon on the Upper West Side, and a New York location of his upscale Tel Aviv eatery, HaSalon, recently opened in Hell’s Kitchen.

In the Flatiron district, Meir Adoni’s acclaimed Nur restaurant has introduced dishes like kubaneh with Yemenite schug and smoked eggplant carpaccio to unsuspecting New Yorkers.

Montclair has its own rising star in Meny Vaknin’s MishMish Cafe, offering a twist on his grandmother’s Moroccan home cooking and his Israeli upbringing.

Shakshuka gets its own section on the menu. Look for small plates that include zaatar garlic French fries, organic beets and labneh, and charred shishito peppers, along with more classic Old City-style hummus.

Quintessential Israeli foods like hummus and falafel are also giving Mexican and Asian fare some serious competition. Consider the popularity of new restaurants such as Pita on Essex in Millburn and the kosher Bridge Turkish and Mediterranean Grill in Highland Park (which started in Long Branch in 2010 but closed after Superstorm Sandy).

So what has caused this sudden explosion?

Every cuisine gets its day in the sun, Sussman said, and while the 1980s was the era of California cuisine followed by Asian and Italian cuisine, now it’s Israel’s turn.

“Israeli food started becoming more popular at a time when Israeli chefs were travelling around the world learning classic techniques and at the same time learning to take pride in their local ingredients,” said Sussman, whose cookbook “Sababa: Fresh, Sunny

Adeena Sussman, second from right, leads a tour of A-list chefs — from left, Ido Nivron, Herb Karlitz, Nancy Silverton, Ruth Reichl, Mitchell Davis, Eden Grinshpan, and Sarah Carey — around the Tel Aviv shuk.

COURTESY OF HERB KARLITZ

A spread at Zahav, Michael Solomonov’s James Beard award-winning restaurant in Philadelphia.

CO U RT E SY O F Z A H AV / A L E X A N D R A H AW K I N S

Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen” hits bookstores in September.

Vaknin added, “It’s just the direction of chefs now being inspired globally with food; Israeli food is all over the place so it fits right in.” He pointed out that because Israeli foods come from so many places, it’s an experience where “there are no borders.”

And while debates continue to abound over how to define Israeli cuisine, everyone agrees it’s a synthesis of flavors and ingredients from across the diverse cultural makeup within Israel.

“It’s a huge melting pot of traditions and flavors coming together,” said Vaknin. “It’s diverse, fresh, vibrant, with mixed colors and flavors.”

Much of the inspiration for the menu at MishMish Café came from Vaknin’s mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens. “Food is so personal to each chef,” said the Chopped Champion, who also owns Marcel Bakery & Kitchen and the soon-to-open Luisa, a bakery with grab-and-go items, both in Montclair. “The idea is to take what you grew up with at home, and make something new out of it.” That means infusing home cooking with old-school and contemporary cooking techniques, and adding other influences picked up along the way. For Vaknin, that may include French, Arabic, or Italian flavors.

This growing obsession with Israeli cuisine

r couldn’t come at a better time.

As the Israeli government struggles to maintain good footing with diaspora Jews, particularly in left-d leaning circles, over issues like the Israeli-Palestinianp conflict and the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate’s politicalt grip on power, food is a way for people to engage withi Israeli culture without political or religious undertones.p “Food and cuisine, although sometimes highly politicized, is a safe place to start a conversation,” saidf Michael Solomonov, whose Philadelphia restauranta Zahav (the modern Israeli cuisine spot he opened 10t years ago with partner Steven Cook) just snagged thes coveted James Beard award for Outstanding Restau-R rant. “It can open the door to an open dialogue that canS t affect people politically.”

Vaknin views himself as “an ambassador for [Is-

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raeli] food.”

He believes food also has the power to erase borders and biases. “Food is glue, a language that brings people together,” he said. “It’s like music.” And hospitality is a key feature. “I treat everyone in MishMish as if they are in my home and they are my guests.” And politics, he said, has no place at the table.

In perhaps one of the most tangible displays of food’s unifying force, more than a dozen A-list chefs and foodies traveled to Israel on a Birthright-style trip in January to get a taste of the burgeoning food scene. The group included food writer and chef Ruth Reichl, cookbook author and “Top Chef” judge Gail Simmons, baker and restaurateur Nancy Silverton, and the Cooking Channel’s Eden Grinshpan.

The participants were completely blown away by Chef Meny Vaknin at his Marcel Bakery & Kitchen in Montclair.

P H OTO B Y J O H A N N A G I N S B E R G

participants.

“Everything is a party there. It’s a celebration of life,” said Karlitz. “For a country that’s constantly under attack and being oppressed, it was just amazing to me how it doesn’t faze people; it’s just the daily life.”

Aside from Israeli cuisine’s soaring reputation, Sussman said it’s this sense of fun that really defines the food culture. “It’s as much fun to hang out on the beach eating a slice of watermelon and the best local feta as it is to go to a fancy, nine-course tasting menu restaurant. You really get a sense of the terroir and the land and the food in every bite.”

Perhaps it’s food as the great equalizer doing a better job than any government-sanctioned hasbara.

After all, as Karlitz said, “everybody loves to eat.” ✡ MIRIAM GRONER is web director at The New York Jewish Week, NJJN’s sister publication.

NJJN Senior Writer JOHANNA GINSBERG contributed reporting.

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NJ Jewish News ■ ISRAEL N✡W ■ Spring, 2019

Israeli chef Nir Mesika says food has the ability to erase borders and biases by bringing everyone to the same table. C O U R T E S Y O F N I R M E S I K A

the food scene there, said Herb Karlitz, a food-industry marketing executive who organized the trip.

Karlitz had previously organized similar foodfocused trips to other destinations, but after a trip to Israel 20 years earlier from which he’d returned “all shnitzeled out,” Israel had never crossed his mind as a destination. Some friends convinced him to return and check out the new food and wine scene. He was impressed.

The chefs traveled the length and breadth of the country from Tel Aviv to Acco trying different cuisines within Israel.

“This is a group that never stopped eating,” Karlitz said. “We would have a nine-course dinner, then pass a pizza place and say, ‘Well, we’ve got to try it.’”

Naama Shefi, founder of the Jewish Food Society and one of the participants on the trip, said it was fun to witness the group try foods like Yemenite soup or sumac for the first time.

More than that, it was the general conviviality and hospitality that accompanied the food that really struck

CELEBRATING

Eyewitnesses

Senior Rabbi Eric Eisenkramer Rabbi Emeritus Eric Milgrim Cantor Andrew Edison Cantorial Soloist Robyn Streitman, The Board of Trustees, Congregation and Staff

old photos in an album: Here she is during training for the Haganah, there are friends who were killed in the war, and here is a glamorous photo of her in a swimsuit on the beach in Tel Aviv shortly after the war.

Because Shchunat Borochov was basically a Labor Party town, she and her friends took for granted participation in the Labor youth movement known as HaNoar HaOved, or working youth, that would feed them straight into the Haganah. She recalls the day they did “KaPaP” training in 1947. KaPaP stands for Krav Panim el Panim, face-to-face battle. “There were sticks about a meter long, and we learned how to protect ourselves with it, or hit the head of somebody in case we are being attacked,” she said. In a photo, she points out four people with bandages

ISRAEL @ 71!

Temple B’Nai Shalom

Continued from page 5

Bat-Ami Liwschitz in her Union apartment.

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to israel for 71 years of independence Temple Beth Shalom

tified by dental records. “They didn’t know what happened,” she said. “They were babies.”

That same day, she stayed home from school, sick. Looking out the window, with a view that swept across Tel Aviv, Liwschitz saw a small airplane chasing a larger one. “I was watching the plane coming. I watched the plane that was shot down over Tel Bat-Ami Liwschitz recalls “KaPaP” training for the Haganah Aviv. I saw it, I saw the — I heard with long sticks that could be used to defend or attack. Four of her the bullet. I heard the explosion, friends were injured that day. C O U R T E S Y B AT - A M I L I W S C H I T Z kind of a boom. Suddenly there on their heads, casualties of the day’s activities. is smoke coming through … And I saw the big She points to one girl in the photo, Ayala Gil- plane going down to the sand. This was a picture boa, and recalls her fate. Ayala and her boyfriend I’ll never forget.” (“such a love, a really nice boy”) were traveling When the war ended, she said, “It was quiet, no in a jeep with a third friend when they were about more fighting, and I could travel in Israel. So, we 16 or 17 years old. The jeep suffered a direct shot, traveled.”

In 1959, Liwschitz came to the United States Liwschitz said, and their remains had to be idenwith her husband. They settled in Berkeley Heights, The Jewish Community Center joining Congregation Ohr Shalom: The Summit Jewish Community Center, where she is still a of member, and raising two daughters.

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Getting to know you

For high school students near and far, ‘twinning’ programs help close the distance between American Jews and Israelis Michele Chabin Contributing Editor

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he Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) Global School Twinning Network matches New Jersey congregational schools, and day schools, with similar educational outlets in Israel. The result is the development of relationships between N.J. students and their peers in Israel.

Three Greater MetroWest congregations — Temple B’nai Abraham and Temple Beth Shalom, both in Livingston, and Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains — were matched with schools in Arad, Israel, through Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ shaliach (Israel emissary) Amit Stern. While Temple Emanu-El in Edison, affiliated with the Jewish Federation in the Heart of NJ, was matched with a high school in Midreshet Rupin, located in Emek Chefer near Netanya.

“When I came here, one of the things I was looking to do was set up a twinning program,” said Stern.

“I am really happy we were able to get such a strong program and strong relationships with the three schools in MetroWest as a part of the Global School Twinning Network.”

At Temple Emanu-El, JAFI’s Twinning Network contacted Rabbi David Z. Vaisberg directly, according to synagogue education director Jill Santoni. Her high school group was twinned with students in Kiryat Hinuch Ben Gurion High School.

All of the participating schools’ students have gotten to know each other through several projects, utilizing online tools such as Skype and social media channels.

“I honestly did not expect so much progress in our first year. It’s been ex-

Contra Costa Jewish Day School students present a national anthem project together with students from the Arnon School in Ramat Gan. C O U R T E S Y O F C O N T R A C O S TA J E W I S H D AY S C H O O L cellent,” said Stern. The quality of the education offered by their counterparts was impressive, he added, noting that “Arad schools just got an award from the Minister of Education as being the best in Israel.”

At a time when the rift between many diaspora and Israeli Jews appears to be deepening, “this program bridges the Israel-diaspora divide,” Isaac Herzog, JAFI’s chairman, told NJJN. “It’s all the more important because it impacts participants during their formative years and lays the needed foundation for mutual understanding and lasting bonds.”

During the 2018-19 school year, nearly 700 schools with some 55,000 students and 2,000-plus teachers participated in the twinning network.

Hundreds of additional schools are expected to join the network thanks to an Israeli government grant of $2.5 million, JAFI announced last summer.

The Global School Twinning Network, which operates on JAFI’s Partnership2Gether Platform, “changes the way students and teachers perceive their roles as members of an in-

ternational Jewish community, fosters dynamic dialogue on Israel and Jewish identity, brings Hebrew alive, and more,” the agency said.

Created more than two decades ago, the twinning program fosters deep ties and community building between partner municipalities all over the world, according to Merav Shany, director of the network for JAFI. Shany said this is the first time the ministries of education and diaspora affairs are collaborating with JAFI. “The reason they’re doing this is that they’re looking at Israeli students and want to enlarge their circles of Jewish identity. If you ask a classroom full of Israeli students about their identity, they would talk about their class, their family, perhaps their scout troop, or their city. Some will say they’re Israelis,” she said. “Most wouldn’t talk about being part of a larger world Jewish community, part of something bigger. For many Israelis, Jews abroad aren’t part of their consciousness. They have no experience with the diaspora and often have preconceived notions.”

Yet once they make any kind of connection to diaspora Jews, “something changes,” Shany said. “They want to be involved. They have a sparkle. I’m very proud that the ministries realize this and want to support our twinning program.”

As for some of the thornier issues that divide Israelis and American Jews — pluralism, for instance — Shany says, “It is the educators who decide what to focus on. Some choose history, others religious pluralism, some even choose STEM. But the fact that the Israeli kids are working together with kids abroad is itself pluralism. They get to know that there are other ways of living a Jewish life, and many ways to participate in the Jewish community.”

For diaspora students in congregational and day schools, the program is an opportunity to talk about — and to — Israelis as people, and not just as a country.

“It brings Israelis alive. Israel is no longer a poster hanging on the wall.

They’re talking to their peers,” Shany said.

Esti Dei, the Israeli twinning coor-

“First of all, it was a surprise for them to see other Jewish kids who are studying the same things they’re studying so far away from Israel. They found a lot of things in common.”

Cohan said he and the American teachers encouraged their students to stay connected after school hours, to share what their home life is like, and what they like to do when they’re not studying, via Skype, Zoom, or FaceTime. “They began to form friendships.”

The Americans spent two days with their Israeli peers in Ramat Gan, the first day just for fun, outside the classroom and the second day inside the classroom.

“We mixed them into small groups to complete their projects and to then present them to the class,” Cohan said. “It was very exciting for them.”

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Cohan believes the twinning program taught the students valuable life skills.

“When they worked together, we gave them independence. We told them the goals but not totally how to achieve them. They needed to think creatively.”

The program proved to be so educational and fun, the two schools will continue it with a new group of students.

“When I see kids having fun and learning at the same time, for me this is the best,” Cohan said. ✡ MICHELE CHABIN is a contributing editor to The New York Jewish Week, NJJN’s sister publication. NJJN Staff Writer JED WEISBERGER contributed reporting.

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NJ Jewish News ■ ISRAEL N✡W ■ Spring, 2019

dinator for five schools in Ashkelon, said the program has helped students in both countries realize they are more alike than they are dissimilar.

Dei, whose own school, Madaim in Ashkelon, is twinned with the Ohr Chadash school in Baltimore, said the Israeli and American participants jointly created a bencher containing the Grace After Meals.

“The kids designed it together and wrote about their own personal experiences on Shabbat and holidays. They got to know each other in the process.”

In another pairing, the Nof Yam school in Ashkelon and Beth Israel in Baltimore created a recipe book that includes family history stories written by every student.

While the program’s focus is first and foremost on the students, it has also fostered strong bonds between the educators.

“I work with American coordinators and we’re one big family. Nothing can come between us,” Dei said.

Joan Vander Walde, Dei’s U.S-based counterpart, said the students and teachers are getting to know each other personally, “and once their hearts are open their minds become more open. We want students to understand there is a Jewish people broader than what they find in their own neighborhoods, and to make connections with each other.”

Yoram Cohan, an educator at the Arnon School, said he decided to twin his seventh and eighth graders with their American peers in order to improve their English, but that the program’s impact was more far-reaching.

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