At the Kiryat Moriah educational campus in Jerusalem, completing their shlihim training are, from left, top row, Natasha Gluzman and Yotam Zach, and, bottom row, Shahar Cohen, Inbal Horn, and Inbar Kazes.
Photos by Lori Silberman Brauner
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A sign at the Kiryat Moriah campus in Jerusalem says, “Zionism means ‘to do,’ yesterday, here, and tomorrow.”
The graduation ceremony for first-time shlihim; these 18-year-olds are all headed to serve communities in North America.
August 13, 2009
They are young, enthusiastic, good-looking, Jewish, Israeli — and they are coming to MetroWest.
Three young Israelis who are deferring their army service for a year, and two who have already finished the army, are preparing themselves for a year or two as shlihim (emissaries) for United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ.
The five shlihim are Israel Defense Forces veterans Natasha Gluzman, 24, and Yotam Zach, 23 — and three rishonim (“firsts”), 18-year-olds Shahar Cohen, Inbar Kazes, and Inbal Horn.
Having undergone extensive videoconference interviews with MetroWest leaders before their acceptance here, the five recently spent a week in Jerusalem attending seminars and training sessions sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel. They caught up with NJ Jewish News on a lunch break between sessions at JAFI’s Kiryat Moriah educational campus.
“It feels really good people know we are coming,” said Gluzman, a graduate of Be’er Sheva’s Ben-Gurion University. “I’m really excited.”
This is the seventh year that MetroWest has had rishonim in the community. Gluzman and Zach are the first post-army volunteer shlihim coming to MetroWest; they will arrive Aug. 16.
The basic goal of MetroWest’s Israel Program Center, said the community’s executive shliha, Orli Dudaie, “is to connect people to people, people to the land, and to build bridges any possible way.” The new shlihim will connect with their peers in New Jersey “just by who they are.”
Gluzman, who is from Kfar Yona, said she has been “dreaming” about serving as a shliha ever since her army service. “For me it’s a good opportunity to give what I got…to the Jewish community in the States,” said Gluzman, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Latvia.
“For me it’s more of a process,” said Zach, who lives in Azor, just outside of Tel Aviv, and who previously worked as a camp counselor in the United States when he was 17.
But it was during his IDF service — he served both in combat and later as an intelligence officer — that he made a deeper connection with American youth, he said. He was assigned to spend time with young Jews on their Taglit-Birthright Israel trip and educate them about life in Israel during last winter’s Gaza war.
He saw that, as he put it, the young Americans’ “flame was burning,” and things for him became “connected.” “When you are Jewish, you are part of something bigger,” he said.
‘Loving Israel’
While Gluzman and Zach will be assigned to specific projects in the MetroWest community, they both said they have additional creative ideas they hope to implement. Zach, for instance, knows of a cameraman for the IDF Spokesperson’s Office who was killed while filming an antiterror operation in Gaza in 2003. He hopes to bring to New Jersey the pictures that the young soldier, Lior Ziv, took the night he died.
Gluzman, for her part, would like to reach out to the Russian-speaking community here. And they both would like to write a regular column in New Jersey Jewish News offering their perspectives as Israelis.
They will be kept busy with their assignments: Gluzman will work as the IPC’s educational coordinator for the rishonim and run programs at Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield and Congregation Beth Hatikvah in Summit, while Zach will work with the MetroWest Diller Teen Fellows, Israel Scouts, and at Central Hebrew High School. Additionally, they will serve as guest speakers throughout the community, Dudaie said.
Joining them in the campus cafeteria were their three younger counterparts, Cohen of Rishon Letzion and Ra’anana residents Kazes and Horn, who will arrive in MetroWest Aug. 21. “We can’t wait to get there and start working,” said Horn, a graduate of Ra’anana’s MetroWest High School, which is supported by UJC funding.
Cohen said he is grateful that “we have a lot of support, here and there” — both from Dudaie and Michal Zur, the MetroWest Israel office’s program director — which he believes is the best way to get to know the “American way of life.” The rishonim will reside, on a rotating basis, with families who are members of the synagogues they will work in. The positions are unpaid, although all will get living expenses covered and a stipend.
“This program could not exist without the crucial support of the host families,” Dudaie said.
For part of their week, the rishonim will be assigned to run educational programs in the three area day schools; Cohen is headed to Bohrer-Kaufman Hebrew Academy of Morris County in Randolph and Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy/Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston; Horn will be posted to Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union’s lower school and Kazes to its upper school, both in West Orange. Their other assignments will involve work with area synagogues, including Morristown Jewish Center Beit Yisrael, Temple Beth Shalom in Livingston, Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell, Temple Sha’arey Shalom in Springfield, Pine Brook Jewish Center, Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Montclair, Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, and Temple B’nai Or in Morristown.
“The goal is for us to adapt as much as possible to the needs of the community,” said Dudaie.
For their part, the two “older” shlihim are brimming with enthusiasm about their upcoming roles. “This is what Yotam and I are bringing to New Jersey, to MetroWest,” Natasha said — “loving Israel, loving the Jewish people.”
She added: “If we succeed, I think it will be my best mission.”
Championing Israel on ‘both sides of the ocean’
The arrival of five young Israelis in the MetroWest community comes as the Legow Family Israel Program Center and United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ’s Israel office consolidate their operations under one umbrella, the Israel Center of MetroWest. Amir Shacham, director of MetroWest’s Israel office and a former community shaliah here, explained: “We see ourselves as one community.”
The restructuring of the center happened in “a way that allowed us to do more with less,” Shacham said, as “two wings on both sides of the ocean.”
The two post-army shlihim, Natasha Gluzman and Yotam Zach, working in a volunteer capacity, will replace the single youth shaliah, who had more of a supervisory role. “It costs us less, and we are more hands-on,” Shacham said.
Additionally, the Israel Center will actually generate income as the schools, synagogues, and youth groups that use the shlihim will pay for their educational programs — helping to defray the cost of their expenses — and “they get the best of the best,” Shacham said. (The shlihim are also available, free of charge, to speak to members of any community institution.) “Bottom line, they are here to serve the community,” MetroWest executive shliha Orli Dudaie said.
Additionally, the role of Michal Zur — a former youth shliha in MetroWest, part-time program director in the Israel office, and coordinator of Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union’s Neshama program in Israel — has been expanded to a full-time program director position. Outside funding sources have also enabled the hiring in at the center’s Aidekman campus office in Whippany of a part-time “Living Bridge” coordinator, Randi Brokman, and a full-time coordinator of teen programs, Arielle Anhalt.
— LORI SILBERMAN BRAUNER
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