Sister communities discuss new models for mutual assistance

By Robert Wiener, NJJN Staff Writer , United Jewish Communities

Nine local volunteers and 10 Israelis vowed to intensify the relationship they formed 10 years ago when their home communities formed a partnership under a Jewish Agency for Israel program.

  
  David Lentz, chair of the MetroWest P2K steering committee, left, brainstorms over a laptop computer with Ran Juhl, manager of Ofakim's community center. Photos by Robert Wiener
 
   
And doing so, they agreed, will mean reimagining the partnership between United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey and Ofakim and Merchavim as a two-way street, not a Diaspora relief effort for their Israeli cousins.

The two groups gathered at a West Orange hotel Feb. 24-26 for three days of intensive brainstorming, aided by two facilitators and a team of UJC MetroWest professionals.

"Both communities are engaged in getting to know one another better and being involved in one another's lives," said facilitator Emily Levy-Shochat, a Liberty, NY, native who moved to Israel in 1979.

"This meeting is part of a one-year process to help them look at the partnership and say, 'Where are we and where do we want to go?' Over the next five months they will continue to work on recommendations to the powers that be in their respective communities," she explained.

Ofakim and Merchavim are two of the 550 Israeli communities linked with American-Jewish organizations in the Partnership 2000, or P2K, program set up in 1994 by JAFI.

The city of Ofakim and the surrounding Negev region of Merchavim are labeled "development areas." Akin to the American enterprise zones, businesses and government have targeted them for assistance with economic growth.

"When we started the P2K program we thought we could affect the area economically, but we found out that was much too large a program," said Sandy Hollander of Newton, a former MetroWest federation president who has been involved with the partnership program from the beginning.

"Ofakim is a town of 25,000 with severe economic problems," he said. "When we started they had the largest unemployment rate in Israel, but we don't have the resources to change that."...