Grapevine December 6, 2024: A mark of appreciation

Supreme Court judges, army top brass, heads of foreign diplomatic missions, and others come to the President’s residence when concluding their terms of office or retiring from their careers. But it’s not just those who are permanently or temporarily resident in Israel who come to bid farewell. It’s also people who are in the upper echelons of major Jewish or pro-Israel organizations and institutions. This week, it was Howard Kohr, the outgoing CEO of AIPAC, who is retiring at the end of the year.

President Isaac Herzog thanked Kohr on behalf of the people of Israel, for his lifetime of service to the State of Israel and the Jewish people, and presented him with a certificate of appreciation and a unique pen with a nano-chip that contains the whole of the Hebrew Bible. “Thank you for all you have done to deepen the bond between the US and Israel, to strengthen the Jewish people, and to elevate the State of Israel,” Herzog told Kohr.

Jewish life in Muslim-majority countries

SOME PEOPLE are surprised to learn that Jewish life can flourish in Muslim-majority countries. Turkey is one such country and on Sunday and Monday, December 8-9, the Dahan Center at Bar Ilan University (BIU) and the Yad Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem will host an international academic conference on “Jewish Life in Republican Turkey.” Chaired by Prof. Efrat Aviv, the conference will open on Sunday at Yad Ben Zvi and continue on Monday at BIU. The conference will explore the complex reality of the Jewish community in modern Turkey, while focusing on key current issues, including the impact of the Erdogan government’s Islamic conservative policy, immigration and integration processes, collective identity in processes of change, and Israel-Turkey relations and their implications for the Jewish community, as well as the changing dynamics of ethnic and religious identity in contemporary Turkish society. 

At the same time, the conference will emphasize the community’s contribution to cultural and spiritual life in Turkey, as well as to artistic disciplines such as music, architecture, and literature. The conference will also discuss Ladino as a cultural language, as well as the Sabbatians and immigration from Turkey to Israel.

The conference will include an opening lecture by Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Istanbul and chair of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States.

A graduate returns to design 

ALUMNI OF educational institutions sometimes return as teachers, while some others donate funds to support the work of such centers. Far less common is a graduate who comes back to design the renovation of a building. That’s what happened in the case of Jerusalem’s Schechter Rabbinical Seminary graduate Rabbi Gustavo Gryncwajg, the architect of the Institute’s newly revamped administration building and library, which were inaugurated last month. 

“When I received this project, the major item I wanted to change was bringing light into the building,” Gryncwajg explained.” As a student, I suffered from too much darkness. Now we have lights in the hallways, lights from the floor to the ceiling, and wide open spaces. I am thrilled to be a part of this project.”

The renovation project, funded by Chicago philanthropist Harvey L. Miller, was dedicated in the presence of Schechter’s 40th anniversary mission whose members also visited all of Schechter’s Israeli arms: TALI, the Center Educating for Jewish Pluralism, The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, and Neve Schechter in Tel Aviv.

Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin, president of Schechter Institutes, Inc. stated in his address: “Schechter’s new campus, which we are completing today, represents the fact that Schechter now teaches over 125,000 Israeli children and adults every year. May we continue to develop and influence Israeli society and Diaspora Jewry for future generations.”

A frequent visitor to Israel, Miller said that on one of his trips, he was fortunate to be given a grand tour of the campus by Golinkin. “I was very impressed by the depth of purpose but very disappointed in the lack of physical structure,” he said. “So when Rabbi Dr. Golinkin offered me the opportunity to help rebuild the library and administration building, I quickly agreed. This was my opportunity to be more involved in Jewish education.”

Over 600 students currently study at Schechter in various MA, adult education, and certificate programs. TALI reaches hundreds of thousands of Israeli and Diaspora Jewish students and thousands of Israeli educators with its educational programming. The Neve Schechter Center for Contemporary Jewish Arts and Culture in Tel Aviv’s Neve Tzedek neighborhood attracts over 50,000 people annually to its art gallery, concerts, adult education events, and over 100 bnei mitzvah ceremonies.

Embassy of Uruguay hosts unique exhibit 

RELOCATION FROM one country to another is seldom easy, especially for those who were well-known and successful in their careers in their native countries and have to start more or less from scratch in their new countries – having to learn a new language and new customs and having to find work in their own professions. In some cases, it’s a sharp drop from celebrity status to anonymity. That’s more or less what new immigrant independent graphic designer Amijai Benderski from Uruguay is currently experiencing. It might have been easier if he had chosen to live in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but he lives in Afula. However, he was in Jerusalem this week with an exhibition of some of his prestige projects at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

The exhibition was hosted by the Embassy of Uruguay whose ambassador, Manuel Etchevarren, said that he would like to bring more of his country’s culture to Israel. He was also happy to see diplomats and immigrants from Latin American countries including Peruvian Ambassador Javier Martin Sanchez Checa and his wife. There is great solidarity among the Latin American community in Israel. One of the non-Latinos present was Alan Schneider, the executive director of the B’nai B’rith World Center Jerusalem, which works very closely with Latin America.

An articulate speaker, in addition to being a highly creative graphic artist who believes in minimalism, color, and the power of the letters of the alphabet, Benderski, born in Montevideo, has given talks, workshops, and poster exhibitions in six cities in Uruguay, in Lodz and Warsaw in Poland, in Ottawa and Toronto in Canada, and in New York in the United States. The exhibition at Bezalel was titled Nestos (We), because all the posters symbolized something to do with humanity. In addition to the posters on the wall, there was a riot of color on the buffet table with delicacies in a variety of colors and hues artistically arranged on platters, and several of the offerings were quite different from the usual fare on an Israeli buffet table. Nothing less could be expected in the design department of Bezalel.

Paraguayan President to arrive in Israel, reopen embassy in Jerusalem 

THE HEBREW calendar month of Kislev and the Christian liturgical month of December, each have days in which miracles occurred and continue to be commemorated. But there will be yet another cause for celebration next week when Paraguayan President Santiago Pena arrives in Israel to fulfill a campaign promise to reopen his country’s embassy in Jerusalem. Pena is due to address the Knesset on Wednesday morning, after which there will be a special ceremony attended by President Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Happily, the event does not coincide with his day in court. The official opening of the embassy in the capital’s Har Hotzvim hi-tech industrial zone, in the northwest of the city, is scheduled for Thursday.

Highlighting the Druze and Bedouin communities 

IN MOST societies, the minorities know a lot about the majority, but the majority knows little or nothing about the minorities. Stop people at random on the streets in Israel and ask them what they know about Arab or Druze customs, traditions, and lifestyle; or for that matter how many Arabs and Druze they know and how many they can count as friends. Of course, there will be some who do have friends or acquaintances in one or both sectors but overwhelmingly, contact is minimal and may be confined to an Arab nurse or doctor or to a fruit and vegetable vendor, or perhaps the proprietor of a good humus restaurant.

Yet, just as talented Israeli Jews are achieving great things in science, technology, medicine, and other fields, so are Israeli Arabs and Druze. We hear about Druze and Bedouin achievements in the IDF and of losses by both communities in the current conflict – but not much else.

One of the surprising and heart-warming stories that came to light this week during a conference on the International Day for People with Disabilities, was of a group of 10th-grade Druze youngsters from the village of Julis who are part of the Unistream Julis program for young entrepreneurs. Inspired by the story of one of their classmates who has a brother on the autism spectrum who has difficulty communicating, they developed a technological solution, the Spechtech app, which enables children on the spectrum to use emojis in order to communicate, with the help of AI. The representative group of young hi-tech entrepreneurs spoke excellent English.

The conference at the Foreign Ministry was initiated by Dan Oryan, the ministry’s director of the Civic Diplomacy Department. 

In response to the global prevalence of autism and the attention now being paid worldwide to mental health, there were 30 foreign diplomats among the many people who attended. There were also some amazing transformative developments revealed in therapies for treating autism and helping children, in particular, to lead meaningful lives and be socially and culturally integrated into the rest of society. A video of a special school for children on the autism spectrum was loudly applauded.

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