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Making Jerusalem a city for the entire world to admire

By SIMONE COHEN SCOTT Nomi Yeshua occasionally passes through Canada representing the Jerusalem Foundation. Last summer she came through Winnipeg with Mayor Moshe Lion of Jerusalem. The delegation from Israel was thanking the Canadian donors who have helped to build and support projects geared to make Jerusalem the cultural and civilizational hub of the planet that she should be, and almost is.

Nomi Yeshua – Canadian Executive Director, Jerusaem Foundation/the late Teddy Kollek, former mayor of Jerusalem


Nomi was back in Canada again last month, planning a tour that would showcase an innovative project geared to help young women from all the diverse communities in Jerusalem to lift themselves up into independence – in other words, to train them to actualize their inherent entrepreneurial skills. 
She was spending a few days in Winnipeg, and so we were able to book a little visit together. I met Nomi several years ago when she spoke in Gimli at a JNF brunch, and I wanted to update myself about recent changes in her title, details of how she landed her job in the mayor’s office upon making aliyah, and how she transitioned herself through various roles until she does what she does now. Our conversation revealed another transformation: that the art of fundraising has come a long way since Golda Meyerson travelled the United States in a housedress with her hand out.

Nomi was born in Vancouver, but the seeds of Zionism were planted early. When only in middle school, she applied to a program offering grade 10 on Kibbutz Kfar Blum. She was accepted and spent that single year of high school in Israel, no doubt delighting her grandmother who had made aliyah in 1977. 
Finishing high school in Vancouver, looking for an education along the lines of liberal arts, she chose Political Science and obtained a B.A. from the University of British Columbia. In 1990, Nomi herself made aliyah, joining her grandmother and aunt, both Winnipeggers, Aunt Miriam having made aliyah in 1966. It was through them that Nomi, a brand new Israeli, found her dream job in Mayor Teddy Kolleck”s office. 
In Nomi’s own words: “I went for lunch with my grandmother at the home of my aunt’s neighbour. The neighbour, Frada Feigelson, had a sister, Shula Eisner Navon, who had worked for Mayor Teddy since 1965, and she hired me as her assistant. Shula left a couple of years later and then I took over her position.” 
Note that Shula began with Teddy (named Tadeuz after Theodore Herzl) the same year he became mayor, and worked for him for over 25 years, when she hired Nomi. Back in 1965. Jerusalem was still occupied by Jordan up to the Green Line (meaning the 1947 War of Independence ‘cease fire’ line which had been drawn with a green crayon). 
By 1966, Teddy had founded the Jerusalem Foundation, a fundraising device to allow people of the world to assist,whether by large or small amounts, in the cultural development of their ‘city on the hill’. Its first initiatives were public parks in the poorer neighbourhoods, funded by donors in New York.

Without the Foundation, moving money smoothly between countries, as now, would not have been possible. Teddy was nothing if not charismatic, his personality permeating every field he entered. Before long he also planted the beginnings of the Jerusalem Museum. He was chummy with every cultural icon of the era, bringing them all to Jerusalem, making the city the focus of high intellectual achievement. Isaac Stern, Arturo Rubinstein, Saul Bellow, Isaiah Berlin, Marc Chagall, Yitzchak Perelman -these were all his friends. 
Shula would have developed a high sense of aestheticism and beneficence. This was the aura of the workplace Nomi entered, the influence and legacy under which she was to walk her career path. Nomi told me she owes to Teddy her passion for classical music. I believe she has also internalized the values Teddy instilled into the Jerusalem Foundation.

During his life prior to his years as mayor, Teddy was a man of action. In 1942 he was appointed Deputy Head of Intelligence for the Jewish Agency. By 1945, he was in contact with the highly secretive MI5’s main representative of British Military Intelligence, (There is some mystery about his activities during this period.) Through 1947 and 1948 he represented the Haganah in Washington, during which time he managed, (working from within the Haganah), to clandestinely transport into Palestine used and leftover American military armaments, including ammunition, which formed the basis of what became the Mossad during the War of Independence. 
From 1952 he served as the director general of the prime minister’s office. Teddy Kollek and David Ben Gurion were cut from the same cloth: neither was religious; both were educated in Vienna. Just as Ben Gurion didn’t whine that the land being offered to the Jews was inadequate, so Teddy took it in stride when his city suddenly ballooned in size and population/ His attitude was: “Of course, come in, let me help you.” 
Immediately, he arranged for the provision of milk for Arab children. Then he placed City Hall smack on the seam line of the unification. Religious or not, if there were discontented naysayers, as in the day of the ten spies, these two men were able to withstand them.

It is fortuitous that the Jerusalem Foundation was already established by this time. From its beginnings it has been apolitical, embracing the Jewish mandate to be caretakers of Jerusalem for the benefit of all the people of the world. This mindset led Teddy to embrace his new communities with open arms, and strive to bring them the same enhancements he had begun in the rest of the city…. green spaces at first, then tentatively expanding to cultural and social centres.

Fast forward to the present, with 4,000 plus projects completed or in the works. Not that ‘completed’ is ever stamped across the page. And no longer is the meeting of open hand and deep pocket the way it’s done. In 1966 the Jerusalem Foundation was incorporated in New York City. In 1970 a Canadian Branch in Montreal was opened by the Bronfman family, a contact Teddy made when moving arms. 
Beginning in the early 20th century, more and more philanthropic efforts were being channelled into entities like these, (the Rockefeller Foundation being one of the earliest), as efficient ways to expedite the movement of large sums of money through government regulations, and to facilitate the management of funds over long periods of time. Teddy obviously was an excellent people person, arranging his friends into donors, his donors into friends, and then, eek!…..channelling them into boards of directors.

It takes a special gift, and there is no doubt in my mind that gift also resides in Nomi. From Teddy’s office she went on to various fundraising and marketing positions, managing also to obtain a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Tel Aviv. At one point she served as liaison to Mayor Nir Birkat. As she told me, fundraising and what it accomplishes cannot exist without the building of relationships. 
For Nomi to develop and direct this structure of board members and donors, as she does, bespeaks a temperament that loves and respects people. It’s a big job; it consists of many small jobs. Over the years Nomi has done everyone else’s job. I met her when she was Director of the Canada Desk; now she is Chief Development Officer as well as Executive Director in Canada. There have been others, each indicating an upgrade in skill and responsibility, but I get the feeling many of the duties are intermingled. 

Projects over the decades have gone beyond parks and cultural centres, although its safe to say those haven’t stopped. Nowadays, a not so frequently mentioned element of the Jerusalem Foundation, words to the effect of ‘…….integrating the day to day lives of the city’s inhabitants…..’ has moved a little more front and centre. ‘Shared living’ is the phrase being used. ‘Easier said than done’ as the saying goes. 
Nomi pointed out serious complications in accomplishing this, which originate in the city’s education system. She told me that there are four streams of public schools, all segregated, all paid for by taxes, with no way to loosen up and unravel them. The first time these kids have anything to do with each other is when they enter the IDF. Up till then, there is no interaction. They have not had any contact with other perspectives. Overcoming this alienation is going to take more than nice architecture. 
Not to mention Arab communities established during the Jordanian occupation, including an early refugee camp cheek by jowl against an Arab village. Nomi, you’ve got a big job ahead of you! Knowing Nomi better now, I am convinced she will tackle it one knot at a time. Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion was certainly wise to come and thank Canadian donors. I hope he’s also thanking the ones who “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem……” Psalm 122:6a

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Israel

Hamas murdered their friend. Now, they help Israeli soldiers to keep his memory alive

David Newman (right): David died helping to save the lives of others who were at the music festival on October 7 when Hamas massacred hundreds of attendees

By VIRGINIA ALLEN (The Daily Signal) David Newman sent a text to a friend the morning of Saturday, Oct. 7. Something terrible had happened. Word quickly spread among Newman’s group of friends, who had known each other since high school.
Newman, 25, had traveled the night before to the music festival in southern Israel, close to the border with the Gaza Strip. It was supposed to be a fun weekend with his girlfriend “celebrating life,” something Newman, who served with the Israel Defense Forces, was good at and loved to do, friend Gidon Hazony recalls.
When Hazony learned that Newman, his longtime friend, was in danger, he and another friend decided they were “going to go down and try and save him.” Trained as a medic and armed with a handgun and bulletproof vest, Hazony started driving south from Jerusalem.
Hazony and his friend ended up joining with other medical personnel and “treated probably around 50 soldiers and civilians in total that day,” Hazony recalls, but they kept trying to make it south to rescue Newman.

But the two “never made it down to the party, and that’s probably for the best,” Hazony says, “because that area was completely taken over by terrorists. And if we had gone down there, I think we would’ve been killed.”
Hazony later learned that Hamas terrorists had murdered Newman on Oct. 7, but not before Newman had saved nearly 300 lives, including the life of his girlfriend.
When the terrorists began their attack on the music festival, many attendees began running to their cars. But Newman and his girlfriend encountered a police officer who warned them to run the opposite direction because the terrorists were near the vehicles, says David Gani, another friend of Newman’s.
Newman “ran in the opposite direction with his girlfriend and whoever else he could kind of corral with him,” Gani explains during an interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
“They saw two industrial garbage cans, big containers, and so David told everyone, ‘Hide, hide in those containers,’” Gani says. “And so what he did over the course of the next few hours is, he would take people and … he was this big guy, and he would just chuck them in that container. And then he would go in, wait, wait till the coast is clear, and then he’d go back out, find more people, put them in there.”
Newman’s actions that day, and the atrocities Hazony and so many others in Israel witnessed Oct. 7, led Hazony, Gani, and several friends to quit their jobs and set up a nonprofit called Soldiers Save Lives. The organization is working to collect tactical and humanitarian aid for the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF.
According to the group’s website, Soldiers Save Lives has supplied over 20 IDF units and civilian response teams “with protective and self-defense gear.”
Gani, board chairman, chief financial officer, and chief technology officer of Soldiers Save Lives, and Hazony, president of the organization, recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to raise support and awareness for their mission to provide IDF troops with needed supplies.
If you would like to find out more about Soldiers Save Lives or donate to them, go to https://www.soldierssavelives.org/
Reprinted with permission.

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Israel

Our New Jewish Reality

Indigo bookstore in Toronto defaced

By HENRY SREBRNIK Since Oct. 7, we Jews have been witnessing an ongoing political and psychological pogrom. True, there have been no deaths (so far), but we’ve seen the very real threat of mobs advocating violence and extensive property damage of Jewish-owned businesses, and all this with little forceful reaction from the authorities.
The very day after the carnage, Canadians awoke to the news that the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust had inspired sustained celebrations in its major cities. And they have continued ever since. I’d go so far as to say the Trudeau government has, objectively, been more interested in preventing harm to Gazans than caring about the atrocities against Israelis and their state.
For diaspora Jews, the attacks of Oct. 7 were not distant overseas events and in this country since then they have inspired anti-Semitism, pure and simple, which any Jew can recognize. Even though it happened in Israel, it brought back the centuries-old memories of defenseless Jews being slaughtered in a vicious pogrom by wild anti-Semites.
I think this has shocked, deeply, most Jews, even those completely “secular” and not all that interested in Judaism, Israel or “Zionism.” Jewish parents, especially, now fear for their children in schools and universities. The statements universities are making to Jewish students across the country could not be clearer: We will not protect you, they all but scream. You’re on your own.
But all this has happened before, as we know from Jewish history. Long before Alfred Dreyfus and Theodor Herzl, the 1881 pogroms in tsarist Russia led to an awakening of proto-Zionist activity there, with an emphasis on the land of Israel. There were soon new Jewish settlements in Palestine.
The average Jew in Canada now knows that his or her friend at a university, his co-worker in an office, and the people he or she socializes with, may in fact approve, or at least not disapprove, of what happened that day in Israel. Acquaintances or even close friends may care far more about Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza. Such people may even believe what we may call “Hamas pogrom denial,” already being spread. Many people have now gone so far in accepting the demonization of Israel and Jews that they see no penalty attached to public expressions of Jew-hatred. Indeed, many academics scream their hatred of Israel and Jews as loud as possible.
One example: On Nov. 10, Toronto officers responded to a call at an Indigo bookstore located in the downtown. It had been defaced with red paint splashed on its windows and the sidewalk, and posters plastered to its windows.
The eleven suspects later arrested claimed that Indigo founder Heather Reisman (who is Jewish) was “funding genocide” because of her financial support of the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides scholarships to foreign nationals who study in Israel after serving in the Israeli armed forces. By this logic, then, most Jewish properties and organizations could be targeted, since the vast majority of Jews are solidly on Israel’s side.
Were these vandals right-wing thugs or people recently arrived from the Middle East? No, those charged were mostly white middle-class professionals. Among them are figures from academia, the legal community, and the public education sector. Four are academics connected to York University (one of them a former chair of the Sociology Department) and a fifth at the University of Toronto; two are elementary school teachers; another a paralegal at a law firm.
Were their students and colleagues dismayed by this behaviour? On the contrary. Some faculty members, staff and students at the university staged a rally in their support. These revelations have triggered discussions about the role and responsibilities of educators, given their influential positions in society.
You’ve heard the term “quiet quitting.” I think many Jews will withdraw from various clubs and organizations and we will begin to see, in a sense like in the 1930s, a reversal of assimilation, at least in the social sphere. (Of course none of this applies to Orthodox Jews, who already live this way.)
Women in various feminist organizations may form their own groups or join already existing Jewish women’s groups. There may be an increase in attendance in K-12 Jewish schools. In universities, “progressive” Jewish students will have to opt out of organizations whose members, including people they considered friends, have been marching to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and similar eliminationist rhetoric, while waving Palestinian flags.
This will mostly affect Jews on the left, who may be supporters of organizations which have become carriers of anti-Semitism, though ostensibly dealing with “human rights,” “social justice,” and even “climate change.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg took part in a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm on Oct. 22 in which she chanted “crush Zionism” along with hundreds of other anti-Israel protesters. Israel is now unthinkingly condemned as a genocidal apartheid settler-colonialist state, indeed, the single most malevolent country in the world and the root of all evil.
New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens expressed it well in his Nov. 7 article. “Knowing who our friends aren’t isn’t pleasant, particularly after so many Jews have sought to be personal friends and political allies to people and movements that, as we grieved, turned their backs on us. But it’s also clarifying.”
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.

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Israel

Former Winnipegger Vivian Silver, at first thought to have been taken hostage, has now been confirmed dead

Jewish Post & News file photo

Former Winnipegger and well-known Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver has now been confirmed as having been killed during the massacre of Israelis and foreign nationals perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Vivian, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri was originally thought to be among the more than 1200 individuals who were taken hostage by Hamas.

To read the full story on the CBC website, go to https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/israel-gaza-vivian-silver-1.7027333

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