Janet and Larry (front row, from right) with some of the participants.

Janet Rosenberg and Larry Rosenman of Boca Raton, sister city of Kiryat Bialik within the Jewish Agency's Partnership 2000, recently spent some two months in Israel. The two had visited their partnered community before and hosted visitors from KB in their home in Boca. Now they offered their help in any possible way while they are in the country. Together with P2K staff at the Jewish Agency, the idea came up to hold a series of weekly sessions of English conversation.
 
Every Thursday night, for six weeks, Janet and Larry came from the house they rented in Ein Hod to Yad LaBanim center in KB. There, a group of residents from KB and the region was waiting for them. Participants were of various ages and occupations, sharing in common the desire to improve their conversational English and to meet Jewish people from the Diaspora. The sessions took place in a pleasant, informal atmosphere accompanied by refreshments, and the conversation moved easily from one topic to the next. Both moderators and participants took the opportunity to learn something about each other's lives, and so issues of Jewish education and the connection between Israel and the Diaspora came up, along with matters of daily life, such as health insurance in both countries. Naturally, politics was discussed as well, particularly with the election of Barack Obama and the upcoming election in Israel.

Larry and Janet, warm-hearted Jews, did not stop there; they also came to KB several times to help a local organization with food packing for needy families. As a final accord, they joined a KB Sing Along Club for its first session of the year. Larry and Janet saw in the Caf? English program an opportunity to both give and receive, as they were able to share their knowledge and skills while getting to know as many Israelis as they could. The two declared that they intend to come back for extended stays in the coming years and will be happy to renew the program. In answer to participants' inquiries, they said they were planning to share this initiative with their friends in Boca, hoping that other people might pick up where they had left off and maintain continuity in the conversations.

Partnership 2000 between South Palm Beach County and Kiryat Bialik was established over 6 years ago. Through various Living Bridge projects and numerous visits of missions and delegations, many in SPBC maintain direct contact with KB residents and see it as their home in Israel.