Like a reunion between a brother and two sisters who live 8,000 miles apart, the mayor of Ra’anana, Israel, immersed himself in the Jewish communities of Atlanta, then MetroWest, spreading a sense of family feeling before heading home on Oct. 23.

For Nahum Hofree, Ra’anana’s chief executive since September 2005, making contact with both areas is a vital way of spreading a message of urban optimism for a place he considers Israel’s model city.

Linked to MetroWest as “community to community,” Ra’anana is one of Israel’s most affluent cities.

Its 78,000 residents — nearly all Jewish — are a mixture of sabras and immigrants from Europe, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union. Some are resolutely secular. Others are strongly Orthodox. But with the growth of local high-tech industry and a hand from United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ in developing religious pluralism programs, Hofree said, his city is a place both peaceful and homogenous — with a design he would like to see copied in other parts of Israel.

“We are in the process of preparing our 2020 vision,” a blueprint for an already affluent city “that needs much money,” he said after meeting at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany with officials of the New Jersey-Israel Commission. They included its executive director, Andrea Yonah; commission member Roger Jacobs of West Orange; and Gordon Haas, executive director of the Greater Elizabeth Chamber of Commerce.

Their get-together came near the end of the mayor’s three-day tour of the MetroWest area, highlighted by visits to Congregation Beth El in South Orange and the campuses of Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange and Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston.

It was a respite, perhaps, from the pressures of governing an Israeli municipality.

“My job is a 24/7 job, exactly. I’m not a private person anymore. It was very challenging being a base commander in Israel, and it is very challenging being a mayor,” he said.

“You’re dealing with the garbage that was not collected. You’re dealing with the flower that doesn’t bloom. You’re dealing with the neighbor who makes noises. You’re dealing with the boy who doesn’t get into the kindergarten where his mother wants him to go. You’re dealing with everything.”

But in Ra’anana, “everything” is a small piece of what it might be in a less affluent city.

“Ra’anana is a very wealthy community,” said the mayor. “It attracts criminals from all over Israel. It is an easy target for burglary. But there is not much drugs or violent crime. The crime that we have is theft.”

In terms of terrorism, “I think we cope with it less than other places I know. I have my security guards who are in touch with the national police. They act accordingly and coordinate my events with the authorities,” he said.
During his nation’s 34-day war in Lebanon last summer, Ra’anana — with the aid of funds from UJA of MetroWest’s Israel Emergency Campaign — played a vital role in helping people under attack.

“We were hosting families from the North, soliciting volunteers who opened their homes to fellow Israelis fleeing from attack.”

As a former educator with what he called “good connections,” Hofree offered his city’s hand to Kiryat Sh’mona, a 22,000-person town in northern Israel that was targeted by Hizbullah rocket fire.

“It was very smooth,” Hofree said. “We had wonderful people in Ra’anana who wanted to help them, to host families, to donate food, books, everything.” The mayor even dispatched a city employee to Kiryat Sh’mona to coordinate relief efforts during the time of the conflict.

Even when other parts of Israel are embattled, Hofree boasted, his is a city with few tensions. He said Ra’anana has managed to avoid the conflicts between Orthodox and secular Jewish cultures that often crop up in other parts of Israel.

“I am afraid about that,” he said. “But Ra’anana seems to be a very pluralistic place to live in. We have developed a kind of way of living that respects everybody’s needs. Nobody bothers anybody. Nobody tries to push.”

One compromise his city’s government made was to close businesses in the center of the city on Shabbat, while allowing restaurants, shops, and cafes to remain open in surrounding areas.

A member of the left-of-center Meretz Party who runs a government that is officially nonpartisan, Hofree said, “I am not a socialist in the political way — but in the social way, I am a socialist. I am trying to lower the gap. It is very important for me not to have poor people, not to have people on welfare. I prefer to give them hooks than fishes. I am very supportive of education as a tool to narrow the gaps.”

Less coy than many American politicians about their future intentions, Hofree said he will “stand for reelection in about two years. I know I’m going to run again.”

Ruth Elram, a Ra’anana city council member who accompanied Hofree to America, is a member of the centrist Shinui Party.

She acknowledges that she and Hofree sometimes disagree.

“We don’t see everything eye-to-eye, but we are both in sync,” Elram explained. “We are concerned about the city. It doesn’t matter what your national political views are. We try not to create any conflict between the religious Jew and the secular Jew. One of the things we learned in the beginning was having peace between Jews and Jews. I wish what we do in Ra’anana could be duplicated in other parts of Israel. It’s a special community.”