Eival Giladi, chair of Portland Trust and director of the Koret Foundation, and former Central federation president Eleanor Rubin chat about development in the Negev and Galilee at a lunch meeting during last week’s Federation mission to Israel.
Photos by Gordon Haas
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February 12, 2009
JERUSALEM — It is not every day that a Diaspora Jewish community succeeds in receiving an endorsement from the Israeli government for an innovative project helping the Jewish state.
It is even rarer when the Israeli government takes an extra step and actually matches the funding of that community’s project.
But that’s what happened recently when Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor endorsed the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey’s mentoring program for businesses in the Negev.
The seeds of this innovative program were planted a year ago when the federation met with representatives of the Israel Venture Network, a philanthropy coalition of high-tech entrepreneurs, business executives, venture capitalists, corporations, and philanthropists in the United States and Israel.
As a result of those meetings, the federation decided to fund the mentoring program that matches IVN business leaders with owners of businesses that receive loans from the Mack Ness Business Loan Fund for the Negev or that were identified as having a real potential to grow.
Since January 2008, the owners of as many as 30 businesses in the often hardscrabble towns of Israel’s South have received mentoring, thanks to the federation. Of them, some 85 percent receive monies from the Ness fund; 15 percent mentoring alone. Among the businesses being mentored are an electrical contracting business and a food production firm.
Seeing the program’s success, the Israeli government decided to match the Central federation’s $100,000 effort and fund the mentoring of another 25-30 businesses.
Federation executive vice president Stanley Stone said he was proud that the government had followed the federation’s lead.
“I was excited about the news because our entire thrust was to draw attention to the need to develop the Negev,” Stone said. “It proved that if we act strategically, we can leverage it and get the government to become more serious about developing the Negev.”
Stone was part of a mission to Israel last week of members of the Ness Grants Committee, which gives help to businesses in the Negev region through a multimillion-dollar bequest made to the federation by Watchung farmer Mack Ness in 2005.
Phyllis Bernstein, a member of the Central federation mission, talks with Mayor Amar Abu Ma’amar of Segev Shalom.
Central federation executive vice president Stanley Stone speaks at the dedication of the Arad Youth Center, which was financed with help from the federation’s Mack Ness Fund.
The dedication plaque at the Arad Youth Center, a facility funded with Central federation support
The group included former federation presidents Eleanor Rubin, who is a cochair of the Ness Grants Committee, and Gerald and Marilyn Flanzbaum; Jewish Community Relations Council cochair Gordon Haas; Leonard and Frieda Posnock; Norman Weinberg, also a Ness Grants Committee cochair; and Phyllis Bernstein. Tehila Nachalon, the Central federation’s representative in Israel, organized the mission.
Stone said the purpose of the trip was for the Ness committee to review the grants of the past year, study and reassess whether to make changes in the projects funded by the Ness estate, and determine whether they are going in the right direction.
The committee decided to terminate funding for Be’atzmi, a project that helps the chronically unemployed. Stone said the program ended because the town of Arad lacked a significant population of people who have never worked or have emotional problems that prevent them from working.
Some of Be’atzmi’s programs will be transferred to the newly renovated Arad Young Adult Center, which the mission dedicated on the trip. The office of the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 program that united the Central federation community with Arad is now located in the center.
“It was exciting to see the center dedicated, because we saw the enthusiasm of their staff last year when they received the building from the city,” Stone said. “They showed their passion for what they were going to do and how they envisioned the building. And now we saw how during the war with Hamas, the building served as a nerve center. This showed how quickly this program has embedded itself in Arad.”
From the grassroots up
Another project funded by the Ness estate involves cultural development programs to revitalize the Old City area of Beersheva, the Negev’s largest city, together with OR, a nonprofit organization of young people dedicated to the development and strengthening of the Negev. Stone said the project has made “phenomenal” progress.
The group met with Beersheva’s young new mayor, Rubik Danilovitz, who is sympathetic to the project’s aims. “Danilovitz said that what OR has done is critical for Beersheva in making it a business and cultural hub for the area,” Stone said. “When you walk through the Old City, you can see that there have been continuing renovations and that changes are really happening.”
The trip marked the one-year anniversary of the federation’s first meeting with the IVN.
“We are privileged to partner with the Jewish community of Central New Jersey through the Ness Fund and together to stimulate business growth in the Negev,” an IVN spokeswoman said. “The leaders of the Ness Fund as well as their representative in Israel have gone the extra mile in locating and partnering with the most suitable and relevant projects, the goal of which is a systemic improvement and upgraded economic infrastructure in the region.
“The personal touch of both lay leaders and professionals led to an extraordinary partnership, which we look forward to continuing and developing.”
Rubin said she was impressed by the progress of the mentoring program and the other efforts the group witnessed on the trip. “I am proud of this federation group that caused this to happen,” she said. “The best things in Israel seem to come from the grassroots up. We are very pleased that we came with a little idea, it took hold, and then the government took notice.”
Southern exposure
FAR FROM the tourist sites of central Israel, a delegation from the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey met this month with activists representing a cross-section of Israel’s multicultural society.
Highlights included visits with both Bedouins and fervently Orthodox Jews, through which participants learned about the challenges facing their communities.
They also met with the young founders of “urban kibbutzim,” who have established cooperative communities in poor neighborhoods in Beersheva and Sderot.
“What surprised me on this trip was that all over the Negev we met with really amazing people who had ideas and were achieving them with their heart and soul,” said Phyllis Bernstein of Westfield. “It was heartwarming to see Israeli philanthropists investing in the same things we do and having the same vision and goals. It showed that we were making the right decisions for the good of the country.”
Federation executive vice president Stanley Stone said he was impressed by the young people from posh Tel Aviv suburbs who have moved to the urban kibbutz in the rocket-stricken city of Sderot because of their Zionist ideals and their desire to be pioneers like their grandparents.
“This is like the next frontier for them,” Stone said. “There is a real social revolution going on with the young people in Israel…. They said they learned about the importance of tikun olam from Diaspora Jews. They said they would start in the Negev and then move on to the rest of the world.”
— GIL HOFFMAN
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