John Doleva, CEO of the Basketball Hall of Fame with Menachem Yavor, acting Mayor of Afula, and Mayor Danny Atar, Mayor of the Gilboa Regional Council, displaying a basketball vest from the Israel team dating back to the 1950s. Photo courtesy Jewish Federation of Greater Springfield

Sheila Romanowitz, SNEC Executive Director, wrote about the Israeli Delegation’s visit to SNEC communities for the Steering Committee, May 17-20, 2004:

In four brief days, an enormous number of memorable visits took place, including two working meetings. One of them took place last Monday, with Ellie Elbaum, Program, Committee Chair and Sara Masri, Planning Director of Jewish Federation of Rhode Island, who were gracious enough to travel to New London for the meeting. Thank you to Jerry Fischer, for hosting the working meeting and for arranging a most enjoyable visit in New London.

The Partnership meeting was held in Hartford on Tuesday afternoon.

Many thanks to Jaime Seltzer and the Hartford Federation for so graciously hosting the meeting! Many thanks also to those who presented at the Partnership meeting: Ronda Parish on behalf of Sue Polansky, chair of the Governance Committee; Mark Rosen, chair of the Finance Committee; to Ellie Elbaum and Sara Masri for the Program Report they submitted. Kol HaKavod to Sydney Perry for a moving and meaningful D’var Torah.

It was great to hear from our Mayoral delegates, Danny Atar from Gilboa and Menachem Yavor, from Afula.

We are at the precipice of change, with their endorsement and encouragement.

Our sincerest thanks to Young Emissaries Mor Dekel, Shani Prechner and Henry Savin for the wonderful PowerPoint presentation about the Young Emissary program. We wish Henry Savin our best wishes as he moves on in his career. We will miss you! Thank you Donna Ron, Menasha Suissa and Henia Eytan for your presentations about the programs you run and to Eshel Fram for the update on our financial situation. We have spoken about moving forward and change. Eitan Shaul came to address that very issue at our meeting. Thank you, Eitan.

In addition to these working meetings, the delegation met with counterparts in the following communities: Hartford, Springfield, W-W-W-N, Central Mass; Stamford, New London, Western CT. They met with press, lay leaders, endowment staff and donors. We were delighted to have most of the remaining communities represented in Hartford at the Partnership meeting on Tuesday afternoon and at the Best of Israel Concert, on Thursday evening, in Norwalk. Our Delegation met many of the concert goers during an Ambassador's reception hosted by the 5 Federations in Fairfield County CT. The visit took enormous planning. We thank all of the aforementioned hosting communities. You did a great job! Our Mayors met their counterparts in West Hartford and in Worcester. And the electronic bulletin board ribbon at the top of the Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, grandly welcomed our mayors and delegation. Everything ran on time. Many thanks to Maya Shifrin and Bob Fishman from JFACT for organizing and staffing a visit to the Connecticut State Capitol. Thank you to those individuals who hosted events: Nancy Mimoun, Gail Sack; the Lefkowitzes and Mark Rosen.

Asaf Ron, who most of you know from his time as Shaliach in Hartford, had a separate and intensive itinerary planned. Many thanks, to Andy Hechtman, for making such good use of Asaf's brief visit. Not only did Asaf and Andy get to meet with all our Young Emissaries, they met with the Young Emissary coordinators as well as the Site Mentors who work at agencies and synagogues that employ our Emissaries. Donna Ron, no relation to Asaf, joined Andy and Asaf for the Site Mentor meeting, and served as a resource person. Asaf also represented the delegation at the graduation of Makom in New Haven. Seems like a good time to congratulate Saba, Arnold Carmel, who has a new grandson! Mazel Tov and all good wishes!

Plans for revitalizing the SNEC/Afula-Gilboa Partnership are in the works.

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Dear Nancy and Sheila,

We want to express to you our heartfelt appreciation for the wonderful visit our Israeli delegation had in the SNEC communities for this Steering Committee.

The visit was well planned and implemented. We feel that it was also fruitful in beginning a direction of open discussion for a process of renewal of the commitment to our Partnership relationship.

The inclusion of the special meetings with the Mayors of West Hartford and Worcester and visits of interest to the Nautilus Submarine, the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Connecticut State Capital Building answered the needs of the Israeli delegation participants to get to know more about the communities.

We realize that the SNEC Federation Executive Directors, Presidents, P2K Staff and many Lay Leaders contributed their time and effort to insuring that this visit and steering committee would be the success that it was. We wish to extent our enormous thanks to all of them.

It is the warmth and hospitality of visits such as this one that enables the initiation and deepening of the people-to-people connections so vital and essential to the Partnership 2000 program.

This special visit will become a cherished memory for all of us who participated in it. And we are sure it will become another one of the building blocks of the connection between the people of Afula-Gilboa and the SNEC Jewish Communities.

Thank you again for everything. Eshel, Donna and on behalf of all of the Israel Delegation Participants

  Av 5764 - July 2004