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“Anti-Zionist” Jews Disgrace Themselves
By HENRY SREBRNIK Is so-called “anti-Zionism” antisemitic? It was not always so. Prior to the Holocaust and the creation of a Jewish state, many Jews did consider Zionism – a return to the Land of Israel — unworkable, unnecessary, even wrong-headed. In the United States, prior to the Holocaust, Reform Jews in the American Council for Judaism were committed to the proposition that Jews are not a national but a religious group. Jewish socialists and others on the political left, including the influential Jewish Labour Bund, were opposed to what they thought was an ideological “bourgeois” error.
But these were internal debates in the Diaspora, and in any case most non-Jewish people had little say about them — if they even bothered to pay any attention to these internal arguments within Jewish circles. Nor, obviously, did those politically against the Zionist movement ally with pogromists who slaughtered Jews.
All of that is history, really part of a vanished Jewish world. Yes, there are remnants of that past, in sectors of the haredi world. The Satmar Hasidim are the most visible. They are theologically committed to a reading of Jewish history that considers that the recreation of a Jewish nation must await the Messiah. They are “anti-Zionists” in the legitimate sense of the word, but no one thinks they want to kill the Jews in Israel or elsewhere.
That’s a different matter than today’s Jewish anti-Zionists, who are largely uninformed about Judaism, Jewish history and culture. They are a fringe group, allied with states and ideologies that want to eliminate the existing Jewish state of Israel and perhaps even murder most of its Jewish population and expel the remainder. Today’s version has more to do with pre-war German Nazi eliminationism than with long-forgotten intra-Jewish disputes.
Assimilated into left-wing movements and doctrines, these Jews are in most cases little more than Jews through genealogy, “Jews in name only,” making political use of that on behalf of those wishing to destroy Israel. Their “anti-Zionism” is part of the larger antisemitic movements arrayed against us, and they serve, to use a well-known term, “useful idiots.” They make use of general slogans, identity politics and symbolic statements like wearing a keffiyeh, with minimal complexity and knowledge.
They are producing vast amounts of simplistic one-sided literature and media. One example is the film “Israelism,” the story of two young American Jews “raised to defend the state of Israel at all costs” who “join the movement battling the old guard over Israel’s centrality in American Judaism, and demanding freedom for the Palestinian people.” Call them “Jewish shields” for the pro-Palestinian left that is glorifying the post-October 7 pogrom by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
“Antisemitism in Canada and abroad is primarily presenting itself through the prism of anti-Zionism, which, in my opinion, is the most pervasive form of antisemitism, and the most perverse in a number of ways,” remarked Casey Babb, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the Institute for National Security Studies. I guess our Jewish “anti-Zionists,” wilfully blinded by the company they keep, refuse to see what’s in front of our eyes.
Fortunately, here in Canada, despite the noise they make, such anti-Zionist Jews are a tiny and marginalized group. Professor Robert Brym of the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto and probably Canada’s most eminent Jewish academic, on May 30 released an addition to his lengthy “Jews and Israel Survey 2024” published in the spring 2024 issue of the journal Canadian Jewish Studies.
To his question “Do you believe Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state?” 91 per cent of his Canadian Jewish respondents answered in the affirmative, six per cent said they don’t know, and only three percent said no.
We know the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The belief that the Jews, alone among the people of the world, do not have a right to self-determination, or that the Jewish people’s religious and historical connection to Israel is invalid, is inherently bigoted. When Jews are verbally or physically harassed or Jewish institutions and houses of worship are vandalized in response to actions of the State of Israel, it is antisemitism.
Expressions of anti-Zionism include downplaying or negating the historic and spiritual Jewish connection to the land of Israel, and the insistence on holding Israel to unreasonable standards when viewing its response to threats in comparison to the actions of other members of the international community.
Now many of these Jewish anti-Zionists don’t necessarily agree with everything listed above. But by associating and collaborating with those who do, they are at the very least, to use an old-fashioned phrase, “fellow travellers” allied to these antisemitic movements. And they can be paraded before the media as Jews who have seen the evil that Israel causes. What better evidence?
Some of Canada’s most disruptive actions and blockades have been coordinated by groups with U.S. funding and organizational links. For example, the Tides Foundation, a San Francisco-based “social justice” non-profit has supported Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow, among others, in the United States. Both have been perennial organizers of anti-Israel rallies and blockades.
The Canadian affiliate of JVP, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, calls itself a “grassroots organization in Canada grounded in Jewish tradition that opposes all forms of racism & advocates for justice and peace for all in Palestine-Israel.” It calls Zionism “the political ideology that has provided the basis for Israel’s settler-colonial project and unfolding genocide in Palestine.”
They are indeed “useful,” and antisemites know it. On May 27, for instance, a representative was on Parliament Hill holding a press conference insisting that the country’s network of pro-intifada campus encampments was not antisemitic.
On June 10 the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), one of Canada’s largest public sector unions, which is actively engaged in Pro-Palestinian activities, held a discussion “Addressing Islamophobia and antisemitism in the Workplace.” Of course no Jew supporting Israel was invited, not even Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, and a former ambassador to Israel.
The panelists were Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia, and, on the Jewish side, Avi Lewis, a former Al Jazeera correspondent and now an associate professor of “social and political change” at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
However, Lewis, scion of a prominent family that has been for decades active in the New Democratic Party – grandfather David led the federal NDP and father Stephen was head of the Ontario party — is an active “anti-Zionist,” a member of the anti-Zionist Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and a co-founder of the UBC chapter of the Jewish Faculty Network.
Richard Marceau, vice president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said the union’s efforts at doing something about antisemitism were disappointing.
“Inviting someone like Avi Lewis — who is not an expert on antisemitism, who is a marginal figure in the Jewish community and who is viciously opposed to Israel — to train union members on antisemitism shows how unserious PSAC is about combatting Jew-hatred,” he stated.
Yes, Jews can be Jew-haters too. (The term “self-hating Jew” is silly; they hate other Jews, not themselves.) Such Jews now face anti-Israel sentiment of unprecedented ferocity, often couched in the language of social justice, critical race theory, and so-called intersectionality. It is sustained by the hegemonic hold of a theory of “settler colonialism,” now ubiquitous in Canada’s universities, and one which deems Israel an illegitimate colonial settler state.
And Palestinian academics known how to use this terminology to make their case. Typical is an article by Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. In a May 30 oped, “Instead of Recognizing ‘Palestine,’ Countries Should Withdraw Recognition of Israel,” published on the website Middle East Eye, he uses all the correct buzzwords, referring to “Israel’s illegality as an institutionally Jewish supremacist racist state.” He considers the very establishment of this “settler-colonialist” state “an illegal act and in violation of the very UN resolutions that proposed its establishment.”
Massad therefore advocates the “dismantlement of Israel’s racist structures and laws” in favour of “one decolonised state, from the river to the sea, in which everyone living within it is equal before the law and does not benefit from any racial, ethnic, or religious privileges.” Only the end of the Israeli “settler-colonial state” will lead to a “decolonised anti-racist and democratic outcome.”
Massad’s analysis and prescription is the true bedrock Palestinian position, as presented for western ears. (Hamas’ creed is a different matter.) The theoretical construct behind it is one that fits completely within today’s liberal-progressive ideology espoused by the intellectual elites in western countries now. The “anti-Zionist” Jews reading them usually know far less about what the Jewish people have gone through historically. This makes them easy prey for our enemies.
Natan Sharansky, currently Chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), and McGill University history professor Gil Troy, in a June 16, 2021 Tablet article entitled “The Un-Jews,” asserted that these people “are trying to disentangle Judaism from Jewish nationalism, the sense of Jewish peoplehood.” And the voices of these “inflamed Jewish opponents of Israel and Zionism are in turn amplified by a militant progressive superstructure that now has an ideological lock on the discourse in American academia, publishing, media, and the professions.”
We hear it from progressives like the author Naomi Klein, who is professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia (and married to Avi Lewis). Klein’s Passover message in the April 24 British Guardian newspaper was headlined “We Need an Exodus from Zionism.” She told readers that “we don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name.”
For Klein, Zionism “takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery– the story of Passover itself — and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide.” The creation of the State of Israel, and the entire Zionist movement, was a ghastly mistake and Jewish life is best led in exile.
“Arguing for the purity of exile and powerlessness, and demanding abandonment of the now-impure Jewish State,” Elliott Abrams, currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, observes sadly that “we have indeed been watching the young American Jews who helped build those campus tent cities and joined the denunciations of the Jewish State.”
In “American Jewish Anti-Zionist Diasporism: A Critique,” in the May 2024 issue of the British periodical Fathom, he sees them following the lead of “the hundreds of Jewish professors who wish to proclaim their virtue by lining up against the Jewish State.”
Finally, there are the many Jews like Rabbi Elchanan Poupko, the president of EITAN–the American Israeli Jewish Network, whose anger at anti-Zionists is palpable. In “Anti-Zionist Jews, Have You Seen the Mirror?” a blog published on the Times of Israel website, May 28, 2024, he points out their hypocrisy.
“The people who were angry at Birthright for taking them on a free, all-expenses paid trip to Israel without taking them to Gaza, Ramallah, and Sheikh Jarrah were somehow unable to utter the words Kibbutz Be’eri, Sderot, Metula, Kiryat Shmona, or the massacre at Nova music festival. Those who were angry at their teachers for celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut with no mention of the Nakba were suddenly unable to speak about the Hamas charter calling for the killing of Jews worldwide.
“Yet perhaps worst of all, was not what anti-Zionist Jews said — or did not say — but rather the company anti-Zionist Jews have chosen to keep. Over the past few months, anti-Zionist Jews have stood shoulder to shoulder with masked and uniformed individuals in public places, physically blocking off ‘Zionists.’”
They exclude their fellow Jews from public spaces in universities, side with terrorist organizations that call for the annihilation of all Jews in the world and make partnerships “with what is objectively the most antisemitic movement since the Holocaust,” he writes.
Rabbi Poupko lives in New Haven, Connecticut. The region is home to Yale University, Quinnipiac University, Albertus Magnus College, the University of New Haven, and Southern Connecticut State University, making it a hub of higher education – and, of course, pro-Palestinian protests. “I got to see firsthand what anti-Zionism in Jewish spaces meant. A group of anti-Zionist Jews shared to their social media videos with cheers like ‘there is only one solution – intifada revolution,’ which is a call for deadly violence.”
As Iran began shooting ballistic missiles and drones carrying hundreds of tons of explosives at Israel’s civilian population, “many anti-Zionist Jews were there to explain why Iran was justified in its attacks on Israel. Jewish Voices for Peace posted a photo of Houthis in Yemen praising the pro-terror mobs on campus.”
He concludes by noting the irony of anti-Zionist Jews siding with the mobs behind the greatest push for Diasporic Jews to move to Israel. “Those who want you to believe Jewish safety should not depend on the State of Israel have helped make much of the diaspora unsafe for Jews and Jewish life.” When the people you march with “are the reason countless synagogues, JCCs, and day schools are hiring more security, you probably don’t get credit for making Jewish life in the Diaspora more appealing.”
Such Jews are betting their present and future will be outside the confines of the Jewish people, and they will do anything to gain the acceptance of the antisemitic circles in which they traffic. “When anti-Zionist Jews hold signs that say: ‘this Jew is against genocide,’ besides for defaming other Jews as being for genocide, they also often forget the truly genocidal company they keep, company that would like to eradicate the State of Israel. It is time for anti-Zionist Jews to take a look in the mirror.”
Bottom line: Whatever we call it, and however they can be distinguished, both terms, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, are in today’s context simply manifestations of Jew- hatred.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.
Local News
Who is Rabbi Ephraim Bryks and how did his time in Winnipeg prove so convulsive?
By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted December 30) Thirty-five years after Rabbi Ephraim Bryks left this city his name is now back in the news as the result of a new lawsuit that names Rabbi Bryks, the Adas Yeshurun Herzlia Congregation – for which Bryks served as rabbi for 12 years, and two rabbinical organizations as defendants. You can read more about that lawsuit and what it alleges elsewhere on this website at “lawsuit filed.“
But, aside from questions about why this lawsuit was filed now – some 38 years after the acts for which Bryks is accused of having committed against the plaintiff, there are still so many unanswered questions about Rabbi Bryks’ time in Winnipeg.
In his seminal history of the Jewish people of Manitoba, Allan Levine wrote: “The biggest controversy in the Herzlia’s history – in fact, arguably the most controversial matter in the annals of the Winnipeg Jewish community – involved Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, the synagogue’s rabbi from 1978 to 1990. Bryks arrived in Winnipeg in 1978 at the age of twenty-four, with his wife Yochevaed…”
Levine noted that “Under Bryks’ leadership, the synagogue’s membership increased. He established new programs for youth and immersed himself in the Jewish community. He also initiated Torah Academy, an Orthodox elementary school that operated out of Herzlia and soon had a sizable (sic.) enrollment (sic.).” (Gee Allan, didn’t anyone check your book for spelling mistakes?)
Levine’s story about Bryks goes on to note that controversy first began to circulate openly around Bryks in 1985 in the pages of what our paper was then called, which was the Jewish Post. (We didn’t become The Jewish Post & News until 1987, which was when we took over what had been The Western Jewish News.)
Bryks had been writing a weekly Torah commentary in our paper until three rabbis – Rabbis Rappaport, Weizman, and Neil Rose, sent a letter to the editor (who was my late brother, Matt, at the time) accusing Bryks of having plagiarized several of his columns from a book by Rabbi Reuven Bulka. Matt investigated and discovered that Bryks had indeed plagiarized at least two columns from Bulka’s book. When Matt reported what he had found, Bryks stopped writing his column for us.
“Far worse was yet to come,” Levine’s section about Bryks continues. “In 1987, several parents of young (male and female) children attending Torah Academy alleged that Bryks had sexually abused their children. The Herzlia board properly investigated the matter and heard evidence. According to a CBC-TV documentary on the case, the parents and their children were accused of being liars.”
Levine goes on to note that Winnipeg South Child and Family Services were asked to investigate the matter by the synagogue board, but the agency concluded that “Bryks’ behaviour of having children sit on his lap while he tickled them was ‘neither appropriate nor professional’, but not illegal. That might have been the end of it, but another allegation was made, this time to the Winnipeg Police by parents of an eight-year-old boy who claimed Bryks had fondled him. The police consulted a Crown lawyer, who decided not to pursue it since it came down to the child’s word against that of a rabbi.
“The case tore the Herzlia congregation apart, and some members left the synagogue,” Levine writes.
In 1990, Bryks left Winnipeg for Montreal, where he had been hired to head a Jewish school until parents there learned of the allegations against him in Winnipeg and the offer of employment was rescinded.
Subsequently, Bryks moved to New York, where he founded another private religious school in Queens – this time for children of Russian immigrants.
In 2003, however, Bryks resigned his membership in the Rabbinical Council of America. According to a report on “Newsday,” Bryks had “been dogged by allegations of sexual abuse against at least one Winnipeg child for more than 15 years.” He had headed two different yeshivas in New York, but no longer did so.
That Winnipeg child’s name was Daniel Levin. He was the son of Martin and Sarah Levin. (Martin Levin had been editor of the Jewish Post until 1983. He later became the books editor of the Toronto Globe & Mail.)
In Allan Levine’s account of what happened, “Daniel Levin had attended Torah Academy from kindergarten to Grade 2. …A troubled teenager, Daniel alleged that Bryks had molested him. According to Sarah Levin, Bryks had given Daniel candy to keep him quiet and told him that God would punish him if he ever told anyone what had transpired. The threat of retribution was echoed by other children who came forward. Daniel (who, by 1993, was living in Toronto) gave a taped statement to the Toronto Police, who inexplicably botched the taping and requested he repeat his statement. He never did. On Yom Kippur, 1993, Daniel, seventeen years old, committed suicide.”
In 1994, the CBC aired a documentary about the Bryks controversy titled “Unorthodox Conduct.” Myron Love wrote a detailed report about the airing of that documentary and the subsequent reaction to it from members of the Herzlia. You can read Myron’s full article on our website simply by entering the name “Rabbi Bryks” in our Search Archive portal. The first two articles to appear will be the first and second pages of Myron’s comprehensive report.
According to information online Rabbi Bryks now works as a mortgage broker in New York. For a time, he was also a self-styled marriage counsellor, providing services to women seeking religious divorces.
In 2018, we spoke with a woman in New York who told us that, 18 or 19 years prior, she had contacted Rabbi Bryks to try to help her get a “get” (religious divorce) from an uncooperative husband. That woman claimed that Rabbi Bryks showed up at her apartment and tried to take advantage of her under the guise of offering to help her obtain a “get” from her husband. As the woman continued her story, she said Rabbi Bryks had forced himself upon her to the point where he pushed her on to her bed and lay on top of her. She was eventually able to break free and demanded he leave her apartment.
There are many other references to Bryks on the internet. The recently filed lawsuit only adds to what is already one of the most controversial stories about a rabbi you’re ever likely to read.
Local News
Former Winnipegger files lawsuit against Adas Yeshurun Herzlia Congregation, former Herzlia Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, and two other defendants over allegations of sexual abuse and assault by Rabbi Bryks in 1987
By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted December 29, 2025) A former Winnipegger by the name of Ruth Krevsky (née Pinsky) has filed a lawsuit in Court of King’s Bench in Winnipeg on December 9, 2025 naming “Ephraim Boruk Bryks, Adas Yeshurun Herzlia Congregtion Inc., Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, and Rabbinical Council of America” as defendants.
The lawsuit seeks damages in the total amount of $4,200,000.
In the 30-page statement of claim Krevsky alleges that “In or around 1984, when the Plaintiff was approximately 19 years of age, Bryks sexually abused and assaulted the Plaintiff. The particulars of same include, but not (sic.) are not limited to the following:
” (a) initiated and engaged in physical contact of a sexual nature with the Plaintiff in his bedroom;
” (b) strapped the buttocks of the Plaintiff;
” (c) engaged in other sexual activities with the Plaintiff; and
” (d) in order to facilitate the abuse Bryks engaged in a pattern of behaviour which was intended to make the Plaintiff feel that she was special in the eyes of Bryks and Judaism.
“The abuse occurred in Bryks’ house located in Winnipeg, Manitoba.”
The lawsuit goes on to allege that “After the aforementioned abuse occurred, Bryks exploited his position of seniority and the trust he had cultivated with the Plaintiff to manipulate and control He used this dependency to discourage the Plaintiff from disclosing his actions, including by threatening her and by withholding reference letters essential for her academic and professional advancement.”
The lawsuit further alleges that “In or around 1987, while employed by the Congregation, Bryks was accused by (sic.) of several sexual offences involving young girls and women, including students at the School. (Ed. note, the reference is to Torah Academy, which Bryks started.) Although no criminal charges were filed at the time, the allegations were brought to the attention of the Congregation, the Union (of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America) and/or the Council (Rabbinical Council of America). Since then. additional individuals have come forward with similar allegations of sexual abuse by Bryks.”
The lawsuit also names the Adas Yeshurun Herzlia Congregtion Inc., as defendant, citing ten different rules that “the Congregation taught the Plaintiff as well as other members of the Synagogue, including
“that it was forbidden to report a Jewish religious figure such as a rabbi to secular authorities and that any such reporting would constitute a serious violation of religious duty and loyalty to Judaism.”
Further, “The Plaintiff pleads that the aforementioned rules, principles and ideologies of the Congregation created an opportunity for Bryks to exert power and authority over the Plaintiff. The power and authority allowed Bryks to engage in the aforementioned behaviour and to continue to engage in same without resistance or question of the Plaintiff, without risk of getting caught, and thereby put the Plaintiff at risk of being abused by Bryks…
“As a result, the Congregation is vicariously responsible and liable for the actions of Bryks.”
The lawsuit goes on to list a series of behaviours in which it alleges Bryks was engaging and alleges the Congregation ignored many aspects of Bryks’ behaviour, including, among others: “Bryks’ difficulties with alcohol” and “Bryks’ difficulties with his sexuality.”
The lawsuit lists a long series of damages the Plaintiff alleges she has suffered as a result of Bryks’ behaviour and the refusal of the other defendants, including the Herzlia Congregation, to take any action against Bryks.
It should be made clear that, at this point, the allegations are unproven and are yet to be defended against and yet to be tested in the courts of Manitoba.
We have reached out to Ruth Krevsky, her counsel, counsel for the Adas Yeshurun Herzlia Congregation, and the president of the congregation for comment. To date, we have not heard from either Ms. Krevsky or her counsel. We did hear from the president of the congregation, who asked us to refer any questions to counsel for the congregation. We did speak with counsel for the congregation, but at this point he indicated that he had just been recently hired to represent the congregation and was just beginning to acquaint himself with the file.
The Rabbi Bryks story was one that tore the Winnipeg Jewish community asunder. The Jewish Post had a number of stories about the allegations that were levelled against Rabbi Bryks. (You can find those stories by going to our “Search Archive” link and entering the name “Rabbi Bryks.”)
We will have much more about Rabbi Bryks in the days to come. Keep referring to this website as we add to the story.
Local News
Newly announced Vivian Silver Centre for Shared Society to further former Winnipegger’s lifelong efforts to foster Jewish-Arab co-operation in Israel
By MYRON LOVE Vivian Silver (oleh Hashalom) devoted her life to working toward dialogue and collaboration between Arabs and Jews in Israel. The culmination of her efforts was the Arab-Jewish Center for Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation – Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Economic Development (AJEEC-NISPED), which she co-founded 25 year ago with her sister peace activist, Dr. Amal Elsana Ahl’jooj.
Tragically, Vivian was of the 1,200 Israeli Jews, Bedouin and foreign farm workers who were slaughtered during the Hamas-led pogrom of October 7, 2023.
Last month, AJEEC-NISPED announced plans to create the Vivian Silver Center for Shared Society in her memory – a new national hub for Jewish-Israeli Arab collaboration and social innovation in Be’er Sheva – backed by an initial $1 million donation from UJA-Federation of New York, along with support from the Meyerhoff Foundation, the Gilbert Foundation, and other philanthropic partners committed to strengthening shared society in Israel.
“It’s a great honor and a beautiful gesture,” comments Vivian’s son, Yonatan Zeigen, “and I hope it will be a central building for civil society, both in the physical sense, that it will become a substantial home for the organization and for other initiatives that will use the spaced and also symbolically, as a beacon for this kind of work in the specific location in the Negev.”
As this writer noted n an article earlier this year in relation to the announcement of the launch of the Vivian Silver Impact Award by the New Israel Fund (NIF) – of which she was a long time board member, and which was developed in conjunction with her sons, Yonatan and Chen), Vivian made aliyah in 1974. She first went to Israel in 1968 – to spend her second year at university abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studying psychology and English literature.
In an article she wrote in 2018 in a publication called ”Women Wage Peace,” she related that during her final year at the University of Manitoba, she was among the founders of the Student Zionist Alliance on campus and was invited to its national conference in Montreal. There she met activists in the Habonim youth movement who planned on making aliyah and re-establishing Kibbutz Gezer. The day she wrote her last university exam, she boarded a flight to New York to join the group.
She spent three years in New York, where she became involved in Jewish and Zionist causes, including the launch of the Jewish feminist movement in America.
“It was a life-changing period,” she recalled. “I came to understood that in addition to being a kibbutz member, I was destined to be a social change and peace activist.”
Vivian and her group made aliyah in 1974 and settled on Kibbutz Gezer. In 1981, she established the Department Promoting Gender Equality in the Kibbutz Movement. She moved to Kibbutz Be’eri near the Gaza border in 1990, along with her late husband, Lewis, and their two sons
In 1998, Vivian became the executive director of the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace and Development in Beer Sheva, an NGO promoting human sustainable development, shared society between Jews and Arabs, and peace in the Middle East. Soon after, she was joined by Amal Elsana Alh’jooj as co-directors of AJEEC-NISPED, winning the 2011 Victor J. Goldberg Peace Prize of the Institute for International Education.
In the article she wrote for “Women Waging Peace,” she noted that “while we later focused on empowerment projects in the Bedouin community in the Negev, initially we worked with Palestinian organizations on joint people-to-people projects. I spent much time in Gaza until the outbreak of the second intifada. We continued working with organizations in the West Bank. I personally know so many Palestinians who yearn for peace no less than we do.”
According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Arutz Sheva, in the November 24th edition, the Vivian Silver Centre – which is expected to open in the spring – will be located within AJEEC-NISPED’s soon-to-open AJEEC House, and will provide a permanent home for programs that promote equality, leadership, and cooperation among Israel’s diverse communities.
“The Vivian Silver Center for Shared Society, within AJEEC’s headquarters, “the Arutz Sheva report noted, “will serve as a regional platform for dozens of Israeli Arab and Jewish social organizations. Through AJEEC’s educational, vocational, and leadership programs, the center will support thousands of young adults each year – offering mentorship, professional training, and opportunities for cross-cultural collaboration.
“These programs,” the report continued, “already reach more than 15,000 participants nationwide, helping young people integrate into higher education and meaningful employment while narrowing social and economic gaps.”
AJEEC House is located in Be’er Sheva’s Science Park, near Ben-Gurion University. The three-storey AJEEC House has been designed to foster cooperation and dialogue. It will host community partnerships, provide shared workspaces for social entrepreneurs, and serve as a hub for initiatives addressing social and economic development across the Negev and beyond.
Readers who may be interested considering a donation can dial into NISPED’s website – – for further information.