This has been a very busy week of social justice and exposure to complexity in Israel and different populations. On Sunday, I joined one day of a New Israel Fund Study Tour for donors (more info below). On Monday, I volunteered at the Blue Door – an interfaith clothing project at the YMCA coordinated by our shul Zion here. On Wednesday, I attended an interfaith beit midrash through Zion where one of my hevrutas was an Italian who came to Israel for his phd dissertation and ended up studying to become a Catholic priest and was ordained last year as the first priest to be ordained in Hebrew and runs a preschool for the children of asylum seekers and foreign workers. And today, I joined a T’ruah rabbinic fellowship with military court watch – see my next post for details on that.
First, a few words about my day with the New Israel Fund Study Tour (where I got to join two cbs members, and some colleagues). NIF is doing some amazing things in Israel and working with incredible NGOs to build civic society and thinking all the time how to create political shift. I attended five different sessions on totally different topics: civil rights activism, experience of Sefardi and Mizrachi Jews, public housing, the new Haredim and panel on feminism yesterday and today in Israel. One constant theme of the day was that legislative and sociological victories they felt had been won years ago, were in some ways, being undermined today and they were fighting for battles they already thought had been won (very similar to other countries we know).
The conversation that was totally new to me was the one called the New Haredim – a brand new area of NIF grant making, as part of their religious pluralism area. As part of this conversation, we got to meet Pnina Pfeifer, who is launching a new collaboration amongst a number of Haredim groups, all of whom have agreed to work with NIF (a remarkable shift). Among different things she is passionate about is enhancing the haredim education system (to have serious secular subjects), to protect the rights of haredi women in the workforce, having haredi women study Talmud (as she feels there is no power without Talmud scholarship in the Haredi world) and working with and on behalf of Palestinians, whom she believes don’t have proper representation among elected officials. She is also passionate about meeting people outside the Haredi bubble. All in all, she was incredibly inspiring and offered a very different haredi voice than one I have ever heard, nor knew existed.
Each of the presentations that day touched upon how they were deepening and enhancing their partnerships with Palestinians and learning new ways to partner and honor one another.
The full NIF study tour was over a week long, in several different cities, meeting many of their grantees. Really very impressive and I hope to join more this year and highly recommend connecting with any and all of their grantees and learning more their strategic decision making partnerships and models.