Updates from our grantees in Israel
The Jewish Agency for Israel - updated 11.28
We resume regular updates post-Thanksgiving. We hope you were able to enjoy time with your families and friends. During Thanksgiving we were relieved to see hostages released, including the family of our own Chairman of the Executive, Doron Almog. Today on a zoom call with the BOG, Doron shared pictures of the emotional reunion with Chen and the children. We pray for the safe return of all the hostages.
Below is a summary of our impact areas during the war:
Direct Relief for Victims of Terror:
Supporting Vulnerable Populations:
providing bureaucratic and emotional support to the families of the 11 fallen lone soldiers.
Safety and Security:
Looking Ahead Rehabilitation:
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) updated 11.16
Most students at the Kfar Silver Youth Village were home for the holiday and were not in the region. ORT was able to evacuate the village’s remaining Na’ale students and shinshinim and staff to the country’s north. A small number of staff remain in the village to care for the animals.
World ORT - Update 10.18
Amos Gofer, CEO of World ORT’s Kfar Silver Youth Village – just a few miles from the Gaza border – recent told his story to audiences on Zoom, of what transpired on October 7.
Amos explained how the day unfolded:
“There was an emergency alarm – but it is something we are used to. We woke up and we were calling the people in the boarding school, telling them to take all the students to the safe rooms. A lot of those students are from Russia and Ukraine, children aged 14, 15 – it was very upsetting for them. We understood within a few minutes that this was different because of the magnitude of the bombs and the noise.”
The students were quickly moved to a building which the village uses to keep safe for longer-term operations – with significant provision of food, activities and other essentials. But with many of Kfar Silver’s High School students living in the kibbutzim close to the Gaza border, calls and messages soon flooded in making clear the extent of the situation.
As Amos called police and other security services it became clear that no immediate assistance would be available as forces dealt with the emergency across the south of the country. “We were willing to die for the students,” he explained. “After a few hours I said I’m evacuating all the students and everyone from the village because no one was coming to help us.”
Thanks to the heroic actions of two bus drivers who were prepared to travel to the village despite the rocket attacks, it was possible to evacuate more than 60 students to safer areas in the north of the country. Thankfully, the vast majority of Kfar Silver’s 1,000-plus students were already off-site for the festival of Simchat Torah.
After the evacuation, only a small number of staff members now remain, ensuring that animals on the village’s farm are looked after and that the security of the village is not compromised.
Although thankfully the students and teachers are now in safer areas, tragically many of them have lost family members and friends in the attacks. It is thought that more than 30 people with ORT links have been killed or kidnapped by terrorists. Of those, a number of Kfar Silver graduates have been killed serving in the IDF.
Core Partnerships:
Targeted Grant Partners:
New Grantees:
So far in 2023 we've given food insecurity grants locally, The Joel E Perlmutter Memorial Food Pantry and Fulfill, and globally to Leket and JDC.
We've given out over $14,000 in Ukraine aid.
We've given out grants to help Israel's Youth-at-risk to Shutaf, Crossroads, and Kfar Silver run by World ORT.
2022 Grant recipients: Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), ORT, and Hillel
Hillel Russia seeks to fill a gap in Jewish life by rebuilding a talent pipeline to support and advance opportunities for engagement, education, and capacity building for young Jews in Russia. Over the last 12 months Hillel Russia’s most experienced local directors and program staff have left Russia due to the war. As a result Hillel Russia had to fully replace teams in Ekaterinburg, St Petersburg, Khabarovsk and partly in Moscow and Novosibirsk so that they can continue to serve young Jewish adults in the region.
In many communities there is now a lack of experienced Jewish educators and engagement professionals. Hillel Saratov was closed in June 2022 due to the majority of the student community having left along with the rabbi. Still, Jewish students remain in the communities where Hillel serves them and demand has grown over the past months.
Over the coming months, Hillel Russia will focus on strengthening existing Hillel communities who have experienced an exodus of Jewish professionals, so that local communities with new staff hired can be reinforced with both access to online Hillel knowledge base and training, but also to in-person practical help and interventions by selected Russia Headquarter staff and Jewish educators along with interns from Moscow and St Petersburg.
ORT
JDC
Jewish youth discover the shared roots of Jewish history and potential for a brighter Jewish future.
Read an 1.13.23 update from Szvaras
Jewish Agency For Israel
Just one story! Felegu and her husband, Abay, are both 35 years old and have two children, ages six and two. About 25 years ago, together with her father, her brothers and sisters, Felegu moved to Addis Ababa in order to immigrate to Israel. After about three years of waiting, Felegu’s father and one of her brothers immigrated to Israel while Felegu and her other three brothers were left behind. They made Aliyah on the September 14.
When the brothers received the exciting news that they would immigrate to Israel soon, the brothers called their father to share their joy with him and Gatnet said it was an emotional conversation, filled with tears of happiness, for which they had been waiting for many, many years. The brothers and Felegu finally got to see their father and hug their nephews and nieces whom they had never met. Felegu describes the moment of meeting and hugging her father as “the day I was born again.”
Felegu’s dream is to educate and raise her children to love Israel and its people, and to serve the country as well. She hopes to successfully integrate into society and engage in her field of expertise, accounting.
They are settled at The Jewish Agency’s absorption center in Ashkelon.
Thanks to our 2022 Israel Grants Committee: Cantor Jake Greenberg, Avi Kotler, Annabel Lindenbaum, Shelly Newman, and Fred Schragger we're proud to announce this year's recipients - Shutaf and Crossroads.
We're happy to continue to help youth-at-risk and will have videos to share from the programs we're funding soon.
Many participants discover the joy of acting and decide to pursue further stage work; other students attend just because Crossroads Theater Shed helps them build important skills that are used in whatever future endeavors they pursue
The creative drama curriculum and teaching methods are great fun and highly developmental. Participants learn experientially through imaginative learning experiences that include, among others, improvisational acting sessions, writing scene vignettes / monologues, participating in rehearsals for staging actual performances.
Crossroads Theater Shed has continued weekly online engagement and acting classes during the pandemic and staged a very innovative and successful online Play Festival.
The program is also fully integrated within their holistic therapeutic support system. Participants have ongoing access to and support from Social Workers through informal relationship building or formal therapeutic counseling.
keep checking for updates!
Shutaf provides camping and other experiences for special needs kids in Jerusalem and the center of Israel. This program not only provides an outlet for these kids, it is a great program for training other teens to work with special needs youth – and in providing parents some support and relief at key times during the year. This is a great way where our support can make a pivotal difference.
Derech Eretz takes teens from the periphery in Israel – often those who don’t have the same economic opportunities or chances that kids have elsewhere – and offers them enrichment programs, activities that develop leadership skills, and a pre-army preparatory program which is critical to giving these kids a leg up in Israeli society.
See the impact of our grants!
2020 Overseas Grants have been given to JDC (Joint Distribution Committee) and The Jewish Agency for Israel.
We hosted summer Lunch and Learns with our grantees to learn about some of the key challenges in this age of Corona affecting the Jewish community around the world.
Our final Lunch and Learn featured our own Managing Director, Keith Krivitzky. We took a look at troubling areas around the globe, anti-Semitism, and the Israel Diaspora relationship.
Our first virtual Summer Series program was a fun and engaging lunch and learn. The Jewish Agency for Israel, one of our 2020 grantees, connected us with the global Jewish people as we heard from those on the front lines of working with new immigrants and vulnerable populations in Israel. Plus we learned a bit about Ethiopian cooking.