by Pamela Deutsch

Eli Bareket was born inTel Aviv-Jaffa and raised in Bat Yam.  He attended elementary school in Bat Yam, and then continued his education at Boyer in Jerusalem as a boarding student.  He served in the IDF in the Golani Brigade later becoming an officer.

After his military service Eli worked, and eventually began studying Islam and Near Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University.  As a student, he was active in a number of social justice frameworks.  As a member of Students for Social Justice, Eli was involved in efforts to raise awareness develop consciousness to social justice issues.  As a member of the International (Sephardic) Educational Front, he was involved in the creation of a national program called Bridge to College, which worked to assist students not enrolled in academic tracks to improve their matriculation scores and increase their awareness to higher education and the opportunities it could give them. Bridge to College also tried to assist the students in understanding why they were not in academic tracks; exploring issues such as the students’ expectations of themselves and the expectations of those surrounding them. One of the issues that arose from their work is that children are unaware that they are not in academic tracks; they are part of a big push to take and pass matriculation exams but the exams they are taking are not necessarily at the levels that will later allow them to attend university.

Having attained his BA, Eli then continued studying for a Masters, in an individually designed program on Muslim minorities – e.g. Muslims in the Philippine sand Ethiopia.  In parallel, he worked at Beit Hillel at theHebrewUniversity.  During his ten-year tenure at Beit Hillel, he was involved in the evolvement of the organization from an organization that worked almost exclusively with foreign students, to one whose main goal and strategies was to work with mainly Israeli students.  Eli created a working model and was promoted to program director.  Today, Hillel has expanded to 10 campuses in Israel.

At the same time,  Eli was active in Mayan Hachinuch Hademocrati.  This organization, founded in response to the Shas initiative to bring religious education to Jerusalem’s weaker neighborhoods, provided informal education and tutoring in weak neighborhoods in Jerusalemfor both Arab and Jewish populations.  In addition, Mayan Hachinuch Hademocrati, worked to empower children, youth, and their parents.

In 2005 Eli became the director of Memizrach Shemesh.  Founded in 2000, by the Avi Chai Foundation andAlliance“Kol Yisrael Chaverim,  Memizrach Shemesh, is a Beit Midrash (House of Study) and a Center for Jewish Social Activism and Leadership inIsrael. Dedicated to the values of communal responsibility and social action rooted in all Jewish traditions including those of the Sephardi and Mizrachi heritage, the organization cultivates and trains leadership in Israel’s geographic and social periphery, with hundreds of participants every year working towards improvement and change in their communities. Before directing the organization, Eli was part of a group that met to discuss what the Sephardic tradition has to give to Israeli society and its issues and was in that sense one of the founders of the organization.  He participated in one of the first learning groups run by the newly founded organization.

During his tenure, Memizrach Shemesh has grown from working annually with 170 participants to more than600 ayear.  The organization runs programs from Kiryat Shmona toArad, for different age groups from post high school students to parents.  In addition, Memizrach Shemesh works with the Border Patrol.  In this program, officers participate regularly in a Beit Midrash.  Their participation assists the officers in being able to see themselves as educators, aids their ability to deal with issues such as social responsibility within their units, and helps them understand that as officers they can empower their soldiers to dream of greater things when they finish their service such as an academic education.

In addition, Memizrach Shemesh is working with Keren Rashi to open Darka, a new network of junior high and high schools in the periphery, designed to educate for excellence – both academic and social, as currently there is no network whose goal is academic achievement. Finally, the organization has expanded its international reach working with communities in bothNew York City and Budapest.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Eli, continues to be active beyond his role as CEO.  He served, as a member of the Kedma committee for the “poel tedek behinuch” (an education prize), is a member of the international council of the New Israel Fund, and served for two years as the chair of the Association for Batei Midrash inIsrael.   Today, Eli chairs the board of Panim, which is now a federated organization, with each member organization having a vote on the board.

In his spare time, Eli has begun to write poetry.  He recently wrote a poem for his son to help him understand when you were a kipa and when you do not; something which is clear for someone who is either religious or not, but less clear when you are traditional.

Eli is divorced and the father of 3 children and lives in Jerusalem.

by Pamela Deutsch

Ido was born in 1968 inTel-Aviv-Jaffa and grew up in Bat Yam.  It was only at the age of two and a half, that it was discovered that he was hard of hearing.  As he was a premature baby, the doctors and nurses kept telling his parents, who already had twin girls, that he wasn’t talking because his development was delayed.   Ido was close to three when he received his first hearing aids.  He was sent to a nursery program run by Micha where the first goal was to teach him how to read.  By the age of three and a half he was reading fluently and soon after learned to speak.  Ido was mainstreamed into theBat Yam school system from the beginning.  However, hearing aids then were not what they are today.  The hearing aids themselves, which were large and drew attention were connected to a box that rested on his chest in a special undershirt.  He was the only hard of hearing child in his elementary and high school and he was not acquainted with others who were hard of hearing.

As a teenager, Shema invited him to activities, however most of the kids were deaf and spoke sign language which Ido did not.  His high school years were particularly isolating, as he was not one of the hearing and not one of the deaf.  Having attained a full matriculation certificate, Ido volunteered for the army, because as someone with a disability he was not drafted, and served in the intelligence corp.  The army opened up new worlds for Ido and was a wonderful place to meet new people.  Having grown up in a very homogenous atmosphere, this was Ido’s first opportunity to meet a greater variety of people; people from different places, backgrounds, levels of religious observance, etc.

After he finished his service, Ido began to explore what to study.  Ido’s father, after having met Prof Jerry Reichstein, who was then the head of the program for special education for hearing impaired children at TelAvivUniversity, suggested that Ido meet with him.  It was Prof. Reichstein who sent Ido to talk with an organization called Keshev, an Israeli organization for the hard of hearing which existed for 10 years between 1982 and 1992. It was at Keshev, where Ido met for the first time, other people who were like him.  But not right away of course.  Ido, having remembered what it was like to go to Shema activities was reluctant to attend social activities at Keshev.   However, one day he received an invitation for folk dancing which was something he really liked and for the first time he met people like himself… people who are hard of hearing, who use hearing aids, and speak orally.  Ido was sure he was going to meet and marry someone who was hard of hearing.

At Keshev, Ido learned that he was eligible for all kinds of services from the National Insurance Institute.  The NII’s first suggestion was that he undergo vocational testing. The testing agency made two suggestions, accounting or warehouse logistics, both of which require very little interpersonal communication.  Ido’s stab at learning bookkeeping lasted for all of three months and his study of architecture, met a similar fate.  However, private career counseling was more successful and through that process he decided to study cinema and television atTelHaiCollege.  It was at Tel Hai when Ido asked the head of the department about whether as someone who was hard of hearing he could study cinema – he was told that this was not the air force and his medical condition was not a basis for acceptance or rejection.  In fact, the head of the department used to send students to Ido saying that he could be there sound man – he did not relate to Ido as being disabled at all.

Ido completed his degree program and began working for the Israel Association of Community Centers as a coordinator for community television in Kohav Yair and Ramat Eliyahu. It was during this period that the Beit Berl College opened a Bachelors in Education program in Informal Education particularly for community center workers.  Ido attended the program and attained his BEd.

During this time Ido was busy not only with work and school.  When he returned from Tel Hai, Keshev had folded and Ido decided there was a need to provide information for the hard of hearing.  Ido began producing a newspaper the “Faxiton” which was distributed by a number of organizations for the deaf and hard of hearing.  This was in the years before the internet became popular and the paper was often passed from hand to hand.  Ido would receive feedback and responses to the articles from all over the country.

In 1997, Ido joined Prof. Reichstein, Avi Blau, Dr. Becky Shocken and Ahiya Kamara in the founding of Bekol – a membership organization for the hard of hearing.  Ido was active as a volunteer in promoting accessibility, and in 2002 began to work for the organization. Three years ago he became the CEO.  Being CEO has been a learning experience and Ido is always learning how to better fulfill this role.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ido is married to a women who is fully hearing whom he met through a mutual friend.  Today they live in Tel Aviv with their daughter and son.

Over the years,Israel has developed a wide variety of trauma related interventions at all levels.  Due to a lack in coordination, this plethora of responses had resulted in duplication of services, inefficient use of resources, and at times even gaps in appropriate responses.  The Israel Trauma Coalition created in 2002 addresses these very issues and ensures not only a comprehensive view of needs but the delivery of services in a timely fashion.  It brings together the Israeli experts in this field all of whom have many years of experience and broad knowledge.  The ITC is involved in direct care, training and supervision, and creating responses and preparedness at the municipal and national levels. ITC leverages diverse resources to optimize service; no organization can do this alone.

by Pamela Deutsch

Talia was born in Switzerland and made aliyah with her family at the age of five.  At the age of seven, the family moved to Nigeria, where her father worked for the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva.  At the time, there were quite a few Israeli families living in the area, and there was even an Israeli school with two grades per class.  Later Talia attended a boarding school in Nigeria; however when the Nigera-Biafra war broke out, in 1967, Talia and her family realized that she would not be able to go back to school in Nigeria and so she attended the Kfar Yarok boarding school in Israel.  When her parents moved back to Israel, Talia still had two more years of school and she then finished her high school education in Ramat Gan, graduating from Ohel Shem.

As an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Talia served in the Intelligence Corp, and during the 1973 war as a casualty officer in her unit.  Upon finishing her service, she began to study English and French at Hebrew University, but her studies were interrupted by the needs of her growing family.

While raising her family, Talia held a wide variety of positions including serving as an officer in the Israeli Police Force, a teacher for natural childbirth and breast feeding counselor, directing the track for front desk personnel at a hotel school, and working as a tour guide at Hadassah Hospital.   When Talia was pregnant with her third child, she began studying social work at Hebrew University.

Having completed her BSW Talia began working at the National Insurance Institute with widows, widowers and terror victims. Over the next few years, Talia attained a MSW from Bar Ilan University in clinical social work, studied psychotherapy and bibliotherapy, and attained the credentials necessary to become a qualified social work supervisor.

In 1994, she left NII and opened her own private practice specializing in bereavement and family counseling.  During those years, she volunteered as an ambulance driver. In 2001 in response to the Versaille disaster, when an events hall collapsed during a wedding, Talia voluntarily created a support group for the bereaved families under the umbrella of the Jerusalem municipality.  Other professionals in the field recognized the work Talia did, and she was invited to join a new initiative – the Israel Trauma Coalition.

Initiated at the height of the second  intifada, the Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC), started with the support and through the auspices of the UJA Federation of New York, in partnership Dr, Danny Brom from the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psycho Trauma,  had the express goal of bringing together service providers in order to improve services for terror victims.

What began as a small initiative of seven organizations and two projects has turned into a partnership between 40 organizations that together aim to create a continuum of care for victims of trauma and their families.  The Coalition concentrates it efforts in three areas – direct care, team training and support, and emergency preparedness for local councils and teams.

To mention just a few important milestones for the ITC – commitment to those living in the Gaza region including the development and implementation of 5 resilience centers;  involvement before, during, and after the Gush Katif evacuation; creation in the last two years of regional training centers in order to provide more effective training and services to local councils, as well as the establishment of a regional network of care givers.  Overseas, the ITC has been involved in providing solutions, for example, after 9/11 involvement in the bi – national project on early childhood, provision of training for local trainers in Sri Lanka, Beslan and Checnia at the request of UNICEF, post Katrina in Louisiana, and partnering with the JDC in Haiti, Mumbai and Japan.

Talia was invited to the UN to participate in a small group of professionals who are experts in treating victims of terror.   The professionals focused on the need to acknowledge the experience of those exposed and the need for long-term treatment.

Today the ITC works with 12 government ministries in Israel and the Home Front Command.

Talia has served as Director of the Israel Trauma Coalition since 2006. “Given the Israeli reality, creating and maintaining such a partnership should not be taken for granted, it is very unique but the results are worth it!” says Talia.

The ITC supports itself through providing services to the government and from donations mainly from federations.

Talia lives with her husband in Jerusalem and is the proud parent of four daughters and the grandparent of two.

“How long are we going to stay?” asked Sari.  “Till we win,” replied her father.

by Pamela Deutsch

Sari was born and raised in Brooklyn, attending an all girls yeshiva through 8^th grade, followed by attending the first Solomon Schecter High School ever established.  Her father was a lithograph operator, who was very active in the union and her mother taught in NYC public schools.  Sari’s father was an activist; active in the protest movement and in the civil rights movement.  Once of Sari’s earliest memories is attending regular Friday protests at a local ballpark where they would not allow Afro- American ball players to participate in the game.  Sari would always ask, “How long are we going to stay?”  To which her father would reply, “Till we win.”

It is this kind of devotion to a cause that has driven Sari for the rest of her life.  After 10^th grade, Sari attended camp Ramah in the Berkshires and while there volunteered at a hospital for the mentally ill – it was after that experience she decided to study social work.   The elementary school Sari had attended was very Zionist; it felt that it was the role of the school to instill the Zionist dream in each of its students. As a young child, Sari often dreamed that there was bridge leading right from Brooklyn to Jerusalem.  As a graduation present from 8^th grade in 1968, her parents’ gift was a trip to Israel. This was a very big deal for her family and Sari and her parents (her two older brothers did not accompany them) saw Israel in its most glorified moments. All Sari wanted to do was comeback to Israel.  After 11^th grade, she spent summer on kibbutz and did not want to come home.  Her parents promised her that if she came home and finished high school, they would send her back to Israel for college.  However, Sari’s college experience in Israel did not turn out as expected.  At the time, there was a rule that you had to be 22 in order to study social work, so after a year studying English, Sari returned to the states.  In 1976, she came back to volunteer on a kibbutz , and ended up  practicing her novice skills in psychology  with a kibbutz member suffering  from PTS from the Yom Kippur war.  The intensity of that visit made her believe she had had enough of Israel.

Sari chose to study social work and psychology at UMBC Baltimore County.  Her field placement was in a community mental health clinic in south Baltimore where she worked as a clinical social worker, providing psychotherapy for anxiety and depression.  Through her work, it became clear to her that underlying these conditions was the urban removal/renewal that was going on in south Baltimore in order to build the new Orioles stadium.  These were not personal issues, but rather community issues, and their impact had Sari turning her career towards community organizing and attaining a masters from the University of Maryland at Baltimore.  This time her field placement was at the Baltimore Welfare Rights Organization, where she was mentored by Bob Cheeks, a seasoned civil rights leader in the Baltimore/DC area, and whose picture Sari still has on her office wall.  Sari continued to work at this organization for a number of years after graduation, organizing the first rent strike in public housing and training welfare mothers to represent themselves in appeals  processes

It was during graduate school that Sari met her ex-husband, who, from the beginning was very clear that after graduate school he really wanted to move to Israel.   When they decided to marry, they made a deal; they would spend – 2-5 years in the US, followed by 2-5 years in Israel, and then would decide where to live.

They moved to Israel in 1983; first to kibbutz, and a year later to Jerusalem.  At that point, having only been in the country for a year, but with tremendous experience in grass roots organization, Sari was hired by the New Israel Fund to begin Shatil – Capacity Building for Social Change organizations.  Sari was the CEO of Shatil for fourteen years.  During that time, the organization was able to seed a strong nonprofit sector, ensuring that activists understood that there are professional needs in running nonprofit organizations, and that skills need to be acquired in order to run these organizations. Shatil offered opportunities for those who needed to acquire these skills working both by skill and by sector.

By 1997, Sari was ready to take her experience and skills to a new level.  Most of the Jewish Israeli organizations Shatil was working with were from major cities, and Sari felt that those living in the periphery were lacked the ability to take their life into their own hands.  Yedid was founded in order to empower people living in the periphery and to help low income people understand what is in their  interest and have the ability to apply that interest when they vote or when they put their support  by behind a particular group or particular people – to get people civically involved.

Today, fourteen year later, Yedid’s mandate is threefold:

One, to this day people do not understand how to access their rights vis a vis, the government, municipality and as consumers.   Often, people give up because of the difficulties in pursuing their rights and this is where Yedid is there to assist them.  Two, there is a growing phenomena of increasing individual /family debt in Israel; debt that begins at a young age.  Cell phone bills that run up while young people serve in the army, easy access to lines of credit through credit cards , increasing number of young people taking upon themselves their parents debt – co-signing on loans, parents putting liabilities in their children name, etc.  Many of these people lack economic literacy, have few budget management skills, and are either unemployed or underemployed.  Yedid often sees young people who because of economic distress lose their ability and motivation to cope.  Along these same lines are women who drop out of the workforce when they raise children, and then not only have to deal with the loss of income, but find it difficult to re-enter the work force.  For these populations, Yedid provides assistance in terms of both empowerment and skills for re-entering the job force, in budget management and much more.  The third area were Yedid is active is in Housing.  Yedid focuses on  economic empowerment for those in public housing and those who want public housing.  For those who are unable to pay their mortgages due to sickness or other catastrophe, Yedid provides budgeting skills and negotiates with the bank and for those with no other choice, assists them to come to the realization that if they need to sell they should do it rather than let the bank repossess their property.  Furthermore, on a policy level, Yedid addresses the lack of available affordable housing and works towards instituting reforms that address issues such as what the banks and financial institutions can demand from those whose homes they repossess.

Yedid, which began with one branch in Haifa, today has 16 branches spread throughout the country from Safed/Hatzor in the north to Rahat in the south.  Two of these branches are located in Arab communities – Rahat and Nazareth.  Each center is staffed by volunteers and a paid director who supervises and trains the volunteers.  Volunteers are a mix of ex-clients, professionals – lawyers, accountants, hi tech professionals, social workers, social work and law students, and students on scholarship that require community service. The centers work on three levels – individual assistance,   policy change, a unique response to issues raised by the client base, which includes developing legislation, lobbying and empowering activists, and community based projects – economic empowerment, financial literacy for high school students and adults, helping women rejoin the work force and more.

Yedid’s Legal department is directly involved in cases that determine people’s fate.  For example, the employment practices of temporary employment agencies and their  affects on workers’ pension and severance pay, and a class action for home health care workers, mostly women who are afraid to come forth because they fear losing their jobs.  In the latter, Yedid is the plaintiff being represented by a private lawyer against the nonprofits and for profits which employ the health care workers.  These workers are not compensated for their travel time between clients, yet are expected to travel between multiple clients each day.  Ultimately,  Bituach Leumi (the National Insurance Institute) is responsible for this lack of pay.

Needless to say, Sari’s life is kept very busy, supervising the operation of this organization and ensuring continued funding.  Sari lives in Jerusalem and has two sons.  The oldest, 24 is finishing a degree in Business Management, and the younger is in 12^th grade at the Jerusalem Democratic School.

Every day, Israelis living in the economic and geographic periphery- immigrants, minorities, women and the homeless- face a myriad of problems.  Often, the bureaucratic process is daunting; for a holocaust survivor seeking benefits from the National Insurance Institute or for a newly discharged soldier facing unexpected debt incurred while in the army.  Women — particularly those looking to rejoin the workforce after raising a family, face unexpected issues; discrimination in addition to the need for new training.  Moreover, the lack of affordable housing in Israel is a national issue that effects not only the unemployed and needy, but the working poor as well due to insufficient affordable housing. In fact, over 2,500 hard working families unable to meet their mortgage payments lose their home to bank foreclosures each year.

YEDID empowers Israelis to become self-sufficient and civically engaged members of society by promoting social and economic justice. YEDID is perfectly positioned for maximum impact on both the grassroots and national levels. By working through its 16 centers- from Hatzor in the north to Rahat in the south, staffed by a dedicated team of top professionals and expertly trained volunteers, YEDID’s unique model helps people help themselves by providing social, economic and legal assistance.  YEDID works to educate students and adults so that they can have more control over their lives and be empowered to create change .On a national level, YEDID partners with policy makers to influence and enact legislation to assist its clients overcome their difficulties and break through the bonds of poverty.

YEDID has earned a reputation as the place to go when something needs to be done. YEDID prides itself on its resourcefulness; finding practical solutions to pressing problems. Moreover, YEDID empowers its clients to understand and use the law to their benefit and most importantly, to succeed.

“For me, receiving the 2011 award for Contribution to the Community at the Sderot Conference for Community service was completing the circle.”

By Pamela Deutsch

Born in 1975, Daniel lived in Jerusalem through 8^th grade, and then moved with his family to Shdemot Meholah in the Jordan Valley.  Daniel attended high school at Hispin on the Golan Heights.

Following graduation, Daniel participated in the inaugural class of the Integrated Army Program sponsored by the Kibbutz Hadatai Movement.  Daniel spent 8 months at Yeshivat Ma’ale Hagilboa followed by a year in half  in army intelligence, a second 8 months at the Yeshiva and then served as a tutor at the Or Etzion Military Academy located at Mercaz Shapira for another year and a half.

Having completed his army service, Daniel spent a year traveling in the Far East, Europe, and Egypt.

In 2000, Daniel began studying film at Sapir College in Sderot.  He completed his BA with high grades and even gave the student address at graduation.   During his college years, Daniel won a competition in still photography,  and volunteered for Ma’apach – a Jewish Arab student organization  which works towards reducing the economic, educational and social gaps of underprivileged populations.

Daniel lived in Sderot itself, and made many friends in the community.  During his last year of studies, Daniel began working in the Sderot community computer center, with at risk youth.  The program he developed and initiated built upon skills that the youth already had and involved the youth teaching computers to a range of population groups; children who needed help with their homework, adults who needed to be able to use computers for their work, and even the elderly.  The highlight of this project was that the youth taught computer skills to their teachers, to Alon Schuster who was then head of the Sha’ar Hangeev Regional Council and to the local director of Project Renewal – who quickly realized that the youth were excellent at building him the PowerPoint presentations he needed for his work.

In 2003, Daniel began to study for a Masters Degree in Culture at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and began working as a research assistant for Dan Porat, an education professor, on the topic of creating national memory.  It was during this time that Daniel met Astorre Modena, a Jewish Italian venture capitalist, who lives in Israel.

Astorre was very interested in finding a way to contribute to the community.  Astorre who was living in the Arnona neighborhood, was very well aware that those living across from him in Talpiot, were far less well off.  Upon hearing about the work Daniel had been doing in Sderot, Astorre was immediately enthusiastic about founding a similar program in Jerusalem.

Machsava Tova was founded in 2004 in the Talpiot neighborhood in Jerusalem.  It began as one center, and ran mostly programs for youth at risk.  The demand for activities by children of other ages grew quickly; they were literally banging on the door.  Beginning with small groups of children Machshav Tova  worked to find appropriate content for younger children and the youth who were already involved became tutors for these children.  The demand continued to grow with parents also wanting to learn more about computer use, in order to improve their ability to find work or advance in their current positions.

Today Machshava Tova has five centers in west Jerusalem, three centers in East Jerusalem, one in Lod, and are in the process of developing two new centers one in the north in Afula and one in the south, most likely in Beersheva.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 2007, Machshava Tova initiated the first MCU – a mobile computer unit, which brings equipment and teachers to kindergartens, community centers, schools and other facilities and provides computer training to populations that would otherwise not have this opportunity.    For example, the three MCUs work in Charedi communities, reach out to the disabled and provide opportunities for job seekers at job fairs to prepare and submit resumes on the spot.

In addition, Machshava Tova runs an exciting recycling project.  Initiated by Daniel and Astorre, the program takes used computers and computing components and recycles them, and then donates them to underprivileged populations; individuals, organizations or students.  All of the work on the computers is performed by youth at risk and IT volunteers, who rebuild the computers and load them with software.  Machshava Tova is the only Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher in the country.

Daniel has grown the organization for one person to 60 and now has both managerial and administrative assistance.  Furthermore, he has put together a range of partners who include municipalities, government agencies, businesses, foundation, private donors and fee for service clients.

Daniel is a permanent member of the Knesset Committee for Science and participated in the Ministry of Finance Committee for Reducing the Digital Divide.

Daniel loves to hike, is still a photographer, and spends much of his free time with his family and in his carpentry workshop.  He built a deck and pergola for his new home, a composter, and is now in the middle of planning bookshelves and media center for his living room.  His newest interest is in being a mentor for new social entrepreneurs; already he has worked on a project for social entrepreneurs at the Ein Gedi Pre-Army Mechina, and participated in ROI.

Machashava Tova was recently awarded the 2011 award for Contribution to the Community at the Sderot Conference for Community Service.  For Daniel, accepting the award in Sderot was the completion of a circle started 9 years ago.

Daniel is married and the father of two children and lives in the Dead Sea area.

Too many Jewish people are not affiliated or don’t feel like contributing members of their Jewish communities. Many people, particularly young people, aren’t involved in community service because the only way to have a “say” is either to give gazillions of dollars or spend gazillions of hours at endless board or committee meetings, which we don’t have. Communal service is often donor-sponsored and rarely has a business model or recurring revenue stream, so when donations drop, programs suffer. And finally, there are all sorts of Jewish values and programs that appeal and apply to everyone, regardless of their affiliation. If you agree with these points, read on.

Tenpartners is a grass-roots, nonprofit effort created by businesspeople and lay leaders who care about Jewish values and continuity, to address all of the issues I described above with a unique, simple, and engaging innovation. TEN partnerships are nondenominational, local nonprofit partnerships, made up of ten people from a local Jewish community, preferably of various affiliations or not even affiliated at all, who organize and run programs for their local Jewish communities that promote positive Jewish values and experiences. These ten partners fund the local TEN partnership with relatively small, equal, one-time “investments.” These funds are used to run the programs selected by the partners. And the programs are designed not to bleed cash, but instead to actually recoup their costs; not so that anyone profits, because the partnership is not-for-profit, but simply to make sure that the TEN partnership can keep running programs without having to raise more money.

Being a tenpartner doesn’t require the type of investment of time you’d expect from a Jewish communal service venture. We’ve solved that by building our own, streamlined collaboration website where partners evaluate, discuss, vote on and take operational responsibility for potential programs – no meetings required, ever. An individual tenpartner could spend an entire year just checking email and clicking or voting on potential programs on the collaboration site, and maybe taking responsibility to manage one or two of those programs he or she really likes or feels connected to. We believe you can be a lay leader and have dinner with your kids too.

What’s in it for us? As of now, nothing more than seeing what we think is a good idea through to fruition, and doing what we can to promote positive Jewish experiences, new Jewish lay leadership, and cross-denominational interaction and experiences. TEN Partners International, which runs tenpartners, is a grass-roots non-profit with no full-time staff at this time. Most importantly, the funding put up by the local partners stays in that TEN partnership’s local bank account, to be used and re-used for local programs; it’s not handed over to us.

We’re looking for diverse, special, creative people to set up and join local TEN partnerships all over the world. Apply to start or join a TEN partnership today, and if you have any questions, drop us a line. To paraphrase Hillel, If not now, ten other people might beat you to it.

“I want to be able to give back to the community the way my parents do.”

Ben is no stranger to starting new ventures.  In fact, if you look at his Linked In profile Ben bills himself as someone who “helps to create new companies, business ventures and transactions that are “win-win” and generate value.”

But I think that what makes Ben even more proud are the projects that he has started that help others, such as Tees at Risk which markets t-shirts featuring innovative and thought-provoking designs by current and former teens at risk and Ten Partners.

Ten Partners is an innovative, community-driven, sustainable non-profit partnership that creates new and unique programs to enrich local Jewish life and community.

A TEN partnership is a local, non-profit venture managed and funded by ten members of a Jewish community who create, run or co-sponsor great programs for their local Jewish community. The goal is to make Jewish community service more grass-roots, “by the people for the people”, collaborative and accessible to a new generation of young lay leaders. TEN partnership’s programs should be financially sustainable by somehow returning their cost to the local TEN partnership, so that the partnership continues to operate and run programs without needing further funding after inception.

Since Ten Partners launched a few weeks ago, partnerships already are forming in six communities.  Ben is now in the process of creating the infrastructure needed to support the initiative, including raising the funds necessary to create the procedures and materials which will guide the partnerships around the world.

Ben was recently named one of the two winners of the 2011 Jewish Futures Competition, sponsored by the Jewish Education Project and JESNA’s Lippman Kanfer Institute.  As part of the competition, his winning video was shown at the Jewish Futures Conference held at the GA in Denver last month and his remarks at the GA were published by eJewish Philanthropy.

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Raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Ben comes from a family where giving back to the community has always been important.  Both of his parents have been very involved in Jewish education, both locally and nationally.  Ben attended Yeshiva University and Columbia Law School. Upon completion of his law degree, Ben clerked for Justice Yitzchak Zamir on the Israel Supreme Court, but decided he was headed for a business rather that a law career.

After making aliyah in 1998 Ben worked briefly as a corporate lawyer before starting a number of software companies. He was then an executive at IDT Corp., mainly managing international business development and corporate acquisition projects, and then in 2006 formed his own private equity and venture management firm, Portofino Equity Advisors, which he runs today.

Ben and his wife Shafrira live in Jerusalem with their seven children.

Machanaim, was established in the Soviet Union in the 1970’s as an underground educational center.  With the move to Israel in the late 1980’s, after years of refusal, the leadership of the organization recognized that their experience in Jewish education and that their open minded attitude would be crucial in creating a vital link between the hundreds of thousands of Russian immigrants pouring into Israel and Israeli society.  Over the years, Machanaim has created a variety of programs that address issues of Jewish and Israeli identity in Israel, as well as a series of programs and materials aimed at assisting Russian speaking Jewish immigrants around the world to connect with their Jewish identity.  Our aspiration is that these immigrants will be connected to their Jewish heritage, and the Jewish community wherever they are and to the State of Israel.