Helping make a change in Israel’s south

Two years ago, Jonathan Merage arrived in Israel in search of a change of pace, looking for a warmer place to live – a place where his family has roots – with the goal of immersing himself in Israeli culture. Merage, 43, who was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Denver, had fond memories of visiting Israel as a child and spending time with his grandfather and cousins, and he wanted to return.

On Oct. 7, Merage’s casual Tel Aviv lifestyle was thrown into chaos by the events in Israel’s South. “That day,” he recalls, “I was looking at a standard day in my first apartment in Tel Aviv off Shenkin Street. I hadn’t realized what happened until I heard about it from some of the people living in our area. As the hours went by, it became more and more drastic. It was intense, and it became even more intense.” Merage realized that there was an urgent need to help his fellow Jews and decided to remain in Israel to help.

Merage and his family are uniquely qualified to assist those in need. He is the son of David and Laura Merage, founders of the Merage Foundation Israel, which, since 1998, has developed a wide range of transformational programs in Negev development, aliyah, and social resilience. Merage himself operates his own foundation, the eponymously named Jonathan Merage Foundation.

Soon after the events of Oct. 7, the two foundations, working in tandem, began to provide assistance and support emergency initiatives in Israel. The Jonathan Merage Foundation offered immediate assistance to affected kibbutzim and towns such as Sderot and initiated a project on rights assistance for the displaced residents of the western Negev, enabling them to understand and gain access to all the rights to which they were entitled. The rights initiative project is both a physical location and an online site and gathers information about available assistance packages from different government agencies.

 Merage continued brainstorming and developed the idea of providing weekly cleaning services to families of soldiers serving in IDF reserves during the war. “If I were serving on the front lines,” says Merage, “my mind would be full of all the tasks I would have to get done, and my spouse would be at home taking care of household issues of the family and children. It would seem to me to be too much to take care of household issues on top of all of that.”

The Merage Foundation Israel actualized and concretized Merage’s plan, identified families in the South that met the criteria for receiving assistance, and provided cleaning help to hundreds of families from Ashkelon, Yerucham, and Ofakim whose husbands are serving in the IDF reserves. Nicole Hod Stroh, executive director of the Merage Foundation Israel, says that offering free cleaning services for the households of reservists did far more than provide a clean house for the families. 

“One of the most emotional messages we received from the spouses,” she says, “was not ‘Thanks for helping me clean my house.’ It was mostly ‘Thanks for seeing me.’ I think that was very powerful.” Hod Stroh explains that many of Merage’s interventions and ideas leverage existing projects that the Merage Foundation Israel is currently developing but add his entrepreneurial creativity, ingenuity, and ideas. 

One of the most powerful projects conceived by Merage is a mental health initiative designed to help the survivors of the Supernova music festival massacre. “After the Nova crisis, the survivors found themselves in the inevitable difficult position of dealing with the mental and psychological trauma and the ordeal of not understanding how to process their thoughts and their emotions,” he explains.

Merage turned to Retorno, one of Israel’s top mental health centers, located near Beit Shemesh, which developed a program to treat the survivors who have experienced the emotional turmoil of that terrible morning. “We were happy to allocate funds for Retorno to create a program that allowed the survivors to sit with each other once or twice a week and go through their program,” he says. Due to Retorno’s extensive experience in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their understanding that undiagnosed and untreated trauma can lead to the disorder, they established an emergency mental health system for the survivors. 

The program provides alternative treatments for young people with trauma who are in a distressed mental state that reduces stress using animal-assisted therapy, therapeutic groups, and trauma-oriented workshops, accompanied by Retorno’s professional staff.

Hod Stroh adds that thanks to Merage’s initial seed funding of the project, additional funds were raised, and it has become a well-established venture. Funds were also directed to other locations in Israel that have been providing mental health services in Israel, including Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Geha Mental Health Center in Petah Tikvah, and the Kfar Silver Youth Village near Ashkelon. 

WHILE THESE funding initiatives have greatly helped alleviate some of the difficulties encountered by Negev residents and Supernova survivors, Merage – who has had an abiding interest in earth and atmospheric sciences, meteorology, and climatology since childhood – wanted to extend and leverage his passion for science and entrepreneurial skills in a positive way for the Negev. “Nicole and I discussed our desire to bring a more positive focus back to the Negev,” says Merage. 

Several years ago, the Merage Foundation Israel created a tech hub in Beersheba called Synergy7. The hub has been working with technology and knowledge-based labs in robotics, cybersecurity, and digital health. “Our long-term partnership with Synergy7 provides the most effective and obvious path to finding the most promising young start-ups within the technology, healthcare, cyber, and robotics fields,” he says.

To that end, the Merage Foundation Israel and the Jonathan Merage Foundation, in cooperation with Synergy7, are hosting a start-up competition to spotlight and advance early-stage technological start-ups in healthcare, cyber, and robotics located in and operating from the Negev. The S7-NSC: Synergy7 Negev Startups Competition Finals will be held on July 15 in Beersheba.

This event will serve not only as a platform for entrepreneurs to present their innovative solutions to a panel of judges, including relevant incubators and potential investors, but will also award a $50,000 grant to promote entrepreneurs and assist in their recruitment efforts. Participants represent a potential flow of entrepreneurs who could become customers utilizing Synergy7’s laboratory services in one of the three sectors. 

Merage says that the rewards go beyond the grant amount. “Ultimately, we want success moving into scalability for their product into the future. That’s a very big part of it. We don’t want to just hand over the cash and say, ‘Congratulations, you’ve got a good equation, and take it from here however you wish.’ As soon as we announce the winner, which will be toward the latter end of this month, we want to make sure there will be follow-through. We will stay involved to make sure that the company can succeed moving into the future.”

The Merage Center Israel is also working with Merage’s foundation to establish a physical center and integrated labs for its DeserTech Initiative, a hub that works in renewable energy, desert agriculture, water, and infrastructure.One of Merage’s most meaningful projects, says Hod Stroh, is the development, together with the Mirage Foundation Israel, the IDF, and the Defense Ministry, of a center for reserve soldiers, where they will be able to gather, volunteer, and meet with their families. 

Merage’s interest in earth and atmospheric sciences is most clearly expressed via his passion for studying powerful meteorological phenomena. “My true passion was studying severe storms and tornadoes in the great plains of North America. I’ve always been attracted to very powerful meteorological phenomena: tornadoes, lightning, storms, and hurricanes. They are some of the most powerful natural organizers of energy. I’ve made it my life’s mission to understand such storm systems as intimately and intricately as possible.”

Storms and tornadoes may be Merage’s passion, but at this juncture, he has chosen to dedicate his energies largely to Israel, adding that he will soon be officially making aliyah. 

“I think we’re in this journey of Jonathan Merage’s work in Israel,” says Hod Stroh. “We’ll find more and more interesting initiatives at this juncture to help Israel and the scientific drive of Israel. We have more cool projects in process, and there will be more to share soon.”