Building Bridges Between Israel and North American JCCs  |  


Gilad Shalit

By Leah Garber 6.25.09

For three years, Gilad Shalit has been in the dark. That's 1095 days without sunshine, without hope, without smiles.
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View From Jerusalem 10.15.09

By Leah Garber 10.15.09

"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind".Alfred Nobel's will, November 27, 1895, Paris.

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A View from Jerusalem (11.17.09)

By Leah Garber 11.17.09

Ten percent of Israelis have disabilities, and the percentage is increasing. War-disabled soldiers make up 50,000 of this number. Due to our experience with seven wars, many more military operations, and too many terror attacks, Israel is experienced with dealing with people with disabilities .

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View From Jerusalem (12.16.09)

By Leah Garber 12.16.09

Is Hanukkah, a holiday that commemorates the victory of the Israelites over the Greeks in a series of battles taking place around the year 165 BC, still relevant today, almost 2200 years later?
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View From Jerusalem(5.16.10)

By Leah Garber 5.16.10

The Talmud teaches, "Ten measures of beauty descended on the world, nine were taken by Jerusalem, one by the rest of the world." Years later, Mark Twain said, "There is no beauty like the beauty of Jerusalem."

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View From Jerusalem(7.15.10)

By Leah Garber 7.15.10

The period between the seventeenth of Tamuz and the ninth of Av (June 29 –July 20 this year) is a period traditionally set aside for mourning and reflection. The rabbis have calculated that it was during this period that we lost the first and second Temple and were exiled from the Promised Land for two thousand years. What could have caused such a harsh punishment?

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View From Jerusalem

By Leah Garber

"The Land of Israel [Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

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View From Jerusalem(6.23.10)

By Leah Garber 6.15.10

"What great, alas, what great bareness in the full open country, that everything it gives us, but one that it will not give - rest!" 
(Bialik)
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Past Articles
Date Posted:
Camp Edward Isaacs' New Israel "Partnership 2000" Summer Program
Just a year ago, Partnership 2000, UJA-Federation, JCC Association, the Israel Association of Community Centers, and the Jewish Agency brought together leaders of JCC's and Matnasim (Israeli community centers) in New York and Jerusalem, to learn about one another, our centers and communities. Sequestered together in the Judean hills, we probed our differences, found immense similarities, and established close personal and professional relationships.
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Date Posted:
ISRAEL IN THE JCC: THE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTRE OF GREATER VANCOUVER AS CASE STUDY
In response to recommendations of JCC Association's Israel Task Force Report, the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCCGV) took the following actions (numbers refer to numbered recommendations in the report):

1. It is part of the JCC mission statement (i.e., explicitly stated in our mission)

For years our JCC talked about Israel being an integral part of our mindset and operation but in reality we may not have been doing much more than most centres..." that is talked the talk but didn't walk the walk"..
Many feel the key is the executive director's leadership, and his passion, which he's passed along to the board and staff.

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Date Posted:
Task Force Delegation Studies JCC-Israel Connection
On the eve of the November 2003 General Assembly in Jerusalem, a delegation of JCC Association board members and professional staff embarked upon a study trip to engage strategic partners, thinkers, educators and practitioners in discussion about future horizons for the JCC-Israel connection. Their journey, the culmination of more than a year of deliberations, helped participants from across the United States and Canada fine-tune and prioritize Israel Task Force recommendations to JCC Association's board of directors.
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Date Posted:
"REFLECTIONS - Shared Storytelling and the Arts"
Reflections ("histhtakfuyot" in Hebrew) is the name of a project developed jointly by the JCC of Mid Westchester, JCC on the Hudson and the International Cultural Center for Youth, a mantas, or community center, in Jerusalem. In seeking to strengthen their three-way partnership under the auspices of Partnership 2000, each community looked to its members for stories about the Jewish experience.
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Date Posted:
JCC CAMP STAFF TRAINING IN ISRAEL THROUGH NEW YORK - JERUSALEM PARTNERSHIP 2000
On May 25, 10 teen and young adult camp staff members from the Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, New York, journeyed to Israel for a 10-day Israel experience and mifgash (encounter) with our partner community center in Kiryat Menachem, Jerusalem.
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Date Posted:
New Yorkers and Jerusalemites Collaborate at JCC - Matnas Seminar
Over 100 JCC and Matnas (Community Center) directors, project directors, and lay leaders from Jerusalem and New York attended a five day seminar in Jerusalem hosted by Partnership 2000 Jerusalem-New York.
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Date Posted:
"Kahal L'kahal" Seminar in Israel
"Kahal" can be translated from the Hebrew as "gathering" or "audience," but also as "community." The recent Kahal L'Kahal seminar, which brought New York area JCC professionals from the Marks JCH of Bensonhurst, Kings Bay YM-YWHA, and Central Queens YM-YWHA to Israel, was all about building a community of New York JCCs and Jerusalem Matnasim (Israeli community centers).
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Date Posted:
When Does Anti-Israel Rhetoric Become Anti-Semitism?
Many Jews who grew up in the latter 20th century Western world felt fortunate to come of age when anti-Semitism seemed largely relegated to the past - only to find the early 21st century bearing witness to words and actions reminiscent of less tolerant times. Some instances leap right from the textbooks of classical anti-Semitism. Elie Weisel notes that what was once mentioned in private is now unabashedly stated aloud.
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Date Posted:
An Israeli summer
By Leah Garber
An Israeli Summer
 
The official start to summer in Israel is June 21, just as it is in North America, but summer is in the atmosphere long before. Starting in May, temperatures reach the nineties and above, the air is humid, and summer clothes are out again, after a very short storage period.

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Date Posted:
A View from Jerusalem (8.17.09)
Recently, Israel has been preoccupied with issues that don’t get much coverage in the international press.

One of the main social issues Israel must deal with is the growing number of foreign workers in the country. About two hundred and twenty-five thousand workers from Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa live and work in Israel. Many of them arrived during the Intifada, when the government wanted to replace Palestinian workers. They married, started families, and plan to remain. While approximately half of them are legal, five to six hundred refugees infiltrate Israel each month. Some seventeen thousand African refugees have walked to Israel, crossing our southern border through Egypt.
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Date Posted:
A View from Jerusalem (9.16.09)
The days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are known in Hebrew as Yamim Noraim, which translates to the Awesome Days (in the classic sense, not the slang one!). These are the days when each of us as individuals, and all of us as a nation, as one people, is occupied with self-examination, or as we say in Hebrew, cheshbon nefesh. We engage in reflection and self-criticism. Where did we go wrong? What can we do better?
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Date Posted:
View From Jerusalem(1.16.10)
By Leah Garber

We celebrate Tu B'Shevat, the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar, on Shabbat, January 30, this year. Tu B'Shevat marks the beginning of a New Year for Trees.


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Date Posted:
View From Jerusalem (2.16.10)
By Leah Garber

 On February 28, the Jewish world will celebrate Purim. Purim is associated with happiness, festivity, and drinking.  


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Date Posted:
View From Jerusalem(3.16.10)
By Leah Garber
Hundreds of years of enslavement left its mark on the Israelites and on the Hebrew nation: We know what it feels like to be a slave, to be an outsider, to be a stranger, since we have been all of those during our history.

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Date Posted:
AF Israel Memo
APRIL 29, 2002

A Biennial always sends everyone home filled with excitement, ideas, challenges, and expressions of â??you really should have gone for friends and colleagues. There was something very different this time, and I want to share my thinking with you.


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Date Posted:
View From Jerusalem(4.15.10)
By Leah Garber
  "We stand here and ask for mercy upon the nation of Israel. I want to ask You for just one thing, my Lord in heaven: this is the third time that You are testing us as a family. The third time that we are burying a father, a brother, and another brother.
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Date Posted:
Israel Resolution

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Date Posted:
JAFI Israel Experience LTD
The Jewish Agency's Education Department and its Israel Experience Ltd. subsidiary, coordinated programs for thousands of teens and young adults this summer, skillfully managing their relocation as necessitated by events in Israel's north, working with organizational partners to ensure safe and successful completion of all Israel experience programs for most participants, even working with El Al to add special flights for groups that elected to leave ahead of schedule.  Excerpts from an update circulated by Alan Hoffmann, Director General of the Education Department:
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Date Posted:
What it Means to Support Israel Now
By Richard Juran, Director, JCC Association Israel Office
 Israel's meaning may vary according to context and worldview.  For some it represents continuity through millennia of Jewish history, or the central stage where land, people and sacred texts converged long ago.  Today, Israel as a Jewish state is an enterprise shared by the Jewish people, which begs the question:  What happens when the going gets rough? 
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Date Posted:
What You Can Do For ISRAEL

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@ 2010 Copyright - JCC Association of North America is the leadership network of, and central agency for over 275 Jewish Community Centers, YM-YWHAs and camps in the United States and Canada, which annually serve more than one million members. The association offers a wide range of services and resources to enable its affiliates to provide educational, cultural and recreational programs to enhance the lives of North American Jewry. JCC Association is also the US government-accredited agency for serving the religious and social needs of Jewish military personnel, their families and patients in VA hospitals through JWB Chaplains Council.