{"id":32996,"date":"2019-07-19T03:48:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T10:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32996"},"modified":"2019-07-18T23:25:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T06:25:14","slug":"good-abroad-promoting-pluralism-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/07\/19\/good-abroad-promoting-pluralism-in-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Abroad: Promoting pluralism in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Then-mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat and Nomi Levin Yeshua at the Jerusalem Foundation of Canada gala in Toronto in 2014. (photo from Nomi Levin Yeshua)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is the first in an occasional series about people with British Columbian roots having positive impacts in Israel and elsewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Nomi Levin Yeshua went to Israel in 1990, she wasn\u2019t committed to staying there. Almost three decades later, the Vancouver-born and -raised woman can look back on a career that has impacted the face of Jerusalem and Israel.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a chance meeting over Shabbat lunch with her grandmother\u2019s former neighbour\u2019s sister \u2013 \u201cYou know Israel,\u201d she said, laughing \u2013 Yeshua had barely arrived in Israel when she got a job as assistant to the assistant to Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem\u2019s mayor \u2013 but the job was more than that.<\/p>\n

Shula Eisner, Yeshua\u2019s new boss, had been working for Kollek since 1965, just before he began his 28-year run as mayor. Kollek was chairman of the Israel Museum and, before that, had served 11 years as director general of the prime minister\u2019s office under David Ben-Gurion. In that role, Kollek effectively created almost all of the government agencies in the new state.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things he believed was that there had to be a national museum,\u201d Yeshua told the Independent <\/em>recently while in Vancouver for a milestone birthday of her mother, Shanie Levin. \u201cHe went around raising money to start the Israel Museum. He had an office there and [Eisner] was originally hired there to work with him with all the foreign donors. Then he was elected mayor and he kept to the Israel Museum office.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1966, Kollek founded the Jerusalem Foundation, where Yeshua now works.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was his way of creating a forum for supporters of Jerusalem around the world, to be part of creating a new vision for Jerusalem. Then, a year after that, with the Six Day War and the reunification of the city, suddenly everything was just multiplied,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Yeshua acknowledged that Kollek\u2019s multiple roles as mayor, head of the national museum and leader of a major foundation would probably not be sustainable today, but that was a different time.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor him, it was all fluid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

To accommodate his different hats in the era before email or even fax machines, there was a driver who shuffled between offices, taking papers back and forth.<\/p>\n

When Eisner moved over to another foundation, she handed her baton to Yeshua, who worked with Kollek through his last years as mayor and continued until a few months before he passed away, in 2007. She continues to run all donor relations for the Jerusalem Foundation and she personally handles Canadian fundraising for the organization.<\/p>\n

The Jerusalem Foundation was started by Kollek because he saw that Jerusalem was a very poor city.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of religious institutions that don\u2019t pay taxes at all are in Jerusalem, so he knew that it was always going to be a challenge for the city to have a balanced budget, to expand the city, to develop the city, to provide for the citizens of the city, so he knew that he was going to need to raise money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kollek pioneered a fundraising model that is now almost universal across Israeli and Jewish philanthropy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe connected every donor to a specific project and they knew that their money went to that project and they could come \u2013 and now their grandchildren come \u2013 and see those projects. To this day, they can still track the money. The Jerusalem Foundation was really at the forefront of that movement of changing the way people were giving to Israel. Now, it\u2019s taken for granted, but it wasn\u2019t back in the late \u201960s and early \u201970s at all. That was Teddy,\u201d she said. \u201cHe wanted people to feel personally connected to the city, to the project, to the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foundation emphasizes \u201cshared living\u201d and is now focused on a vision for 2030.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a city that is completely about how to exist together in this space that we share. It\u2019s not just Arabs and Jews. It\u2019s also secular and religious, it\u2019s poor and rich, it\u2019s all kinds of divisions that exist in the city,\u201d she said. \u201cBut how do we share and how do we understand each other better?\u201d<\/p>\n

One major project is Hand-in-Hand School for Bilingual Education.<\/p>\n

\u201cBilingual education is something that Canadians completely understand but Israelis less so. This is a school that teaches in Arabic and in Hebrew, in mixed classrooms. The rest of the Israeli education system is \u2013 we don\u2019t like to use this word but it\u2019s the truth \u2013 segregated,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are Jewish schools, there are Arab schools and then, even within the Jewish schools, there are religious and nonreligious. This school brings together all of the different population groups and at all times there is an Arabic-speaking and a Hebrew-speaking teacher in the classroom.\u201d There are now six such schools around the country.<\/p>\n

Another area of the foundation\u2019s work is helping the most vulnerable populations in the city, through projects such as Springboard, which develops programs primarily through the education system to push gifted kids into opportunities their financial situation might not otherwise permit.<\/p>\n

The Jerusalem Foundation is also the city\u2019s second-largest funder to the arts, after the municipality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really believe that a modern and thriving city should have a good cultural scene. Culture is not just for one population group. All members of the community should be cultural consumers. But you have to create culture that is appropriate for those people,\u201d she said. \u201cFor example, there is a dance troupe for ultra-Orthodox women. They only perform for women, of course, because otherwise that wouldn\u2019t work for them. But they\u2019re really doing amazing stuff and giving these ultra-Orthodox women who want to dance an opportunity to have a really high-level, professional dance troupe within the system that works for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foundation is also building a new Hassadna Conservatory of Music.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey help kids ages six all the way through high school with classical music education and they also provide a special program for children of Ethiopian descent who don\u2019t necessarily have the financial means to get musical training and they have a special program for special needs kids that\u2019s integrated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Yeshua credits her Vancouver upbringing as foundational to her worldview and accomplishments. She grew up in the Habonim Dror Zionist youth movement and was a camper, counselor and camp director at Camp Miriam. At home, her Jewishness was nurtured in a pluralistic way.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of how my mother brought us up, Jewish identity wasn\u2019t limited to our religious identity,\u201d she recalled. \u201cNational identity was something that was acceptable, cultural identity was very much encouraged. I think growing up in the very open community of Vancouver \u2013 to me it always seems that way, at least \u2013 it allowed me to be Jewish in a way that I felt good with and it wasn\u2019t only one way to be Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeshua acknowledged that \u201cmany people feel somewhat alienated from Israel today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want people to understand that there is a way to engage with Israel, to support Israel, and not contradict your own value system or what you think is acceptable,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat we do with the Jerusalem Foundation is something that people can respond to, relate to, understand \u2013 to protect Jerusalem as a city that is for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Then-mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat and Nomi Levin Yeshua at the Jerusalem Foundation of Canada gala in Toronto in 2014. (photo from Nomi Levin Yeshua) This article is the first in an occasional series about people with British Columbian roots having positive impacts in Israel and elsewhere. When Nomi Levin Yeshua went to Israel in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[5914,4330,216,9185,1959,1742],"class_list":["post-32996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-identity","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-nomi-levin-yeshua","tag-tikkun-olam","tag-vancouver"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}