Jeff Kaye, vice-president for public affairs and resource development at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was in Vancouver earlier this month. (photo from BGU)
A couple of years ago, many Israelis were beginning to think the country’s legendary solidarity was fraying, that people were less caring, that a split between Israelis and diaspora Jews was growing and that young Israelis had lost some of the fervour of earlier generations. Oct. 7 changed everything. The chasm between Israelis and diaspora Jews evaporated, according to one Israeli who visited Vancouver recently.
“We really are in this together and we are a much stronger Jewish people, both in Israel and outside of Israel,” said Jeff Kaye, a vice-president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, who spoke with the Independent Aug. 7.
Older Israelis who thought younger people took the country for granted have had their assumptions upended, he said.
“They were the TikTok generation,” Kaye characterized the stereotypes about young Israelis. “All they wanted to do was earn some money, take care of themselves. And what Oct. 7 taught us is, underneath this, we had raised a generation of young people who have purpose, who care deeply about the country, who care deeply about values and, without being told, they took responsibility.”
Kaye saw this attitude in action at the university. Administrators were struggling to come to terms with the changed reality and students themselves instantly set up a babysitting initiative, food collections and volunteer teams.
Kaye, BGU’s vice-president for public affairs and resource development, made aliyah from Scotland in 1981, then spent a decade in special needs education before joining the philanthropic sector. He spent four years as emissary to the Jewish Federation of Detroit and then more than a decade in a senior leadership position at the Jewish Agency for Israel, during which time he helped create the Fund for Victims of Terror. Before joining BGU, he served for five years as executive vice-president and director-general of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Kaye was in Vancouver at the invitation of BGU Canada, one of about a dozen national and regional affiliates of BGU, that include chapters in Argentina, Belgium, France, South Africa, Switzerland and a global chapter for Russian speakers.
“My role is to find people throughout the world and say, this is what we do. This is who we are. This is why we do what we do,” he explained.
With a team of about 35, Kaye helps connect people with projects that meet their objectives and those of the university, whether recruiting people to serve on the board, run activities, sponsor projects, build a building or provide a scholarship.
Oct. 7 and the months since have affected the university profoundly, as they have every aspect of Israeli life. About 118 BGU students, faculty and staff were killed that day or in the war. Of BGU’s approximately 20,000 students, about one-third of them were called up for military service just as the academic year would have been starting in 2023.
“Obviously, universities couldn’t open and we were still under attack,” Kaye said. The first semester after Oct. 7 was delayed to Dec. 31.
Kaye credits the university’s president, Daniel Chamovitz, with ensuring a flexibility that allowed students to access as much education as possible around their military and other responsibilities.
In addition to the semester that began Dec. 31, another semester began a month later for soldiers who had returned in the interim. The university had multiple semesters running concurrently and, like many organizations that adopted new technologies, also offered recorded classes so students did not need to be on campus.
Because Israelis routinely start university after military service, many BGU students are not living at their parents’ homes, and may even have kids of their own. That created economic challenges for many who had lost not only class time but part-time or full-time income and saw spouses away on military duty. The university had to provide laptop computers for people whose homes were destroyed and psychological assistance for students who had witnessed or experienced horrific things.
On June 19 this year, during the war with Iran, a ballistic missile hit the university-affiliated Soroka Medical Centre, destroying a major part of the facility.
“Our labs – teaching labs, research labs, pathology labs – were all entirely destroyed,” Kaye said.
Miraculously, there were no fatalities. In an act of prescience, administrators had moved surgeries into a basement, fearing just such an attack. Kaye said the move – a day before the bombing – may have saved scores or hundreds of lives.
Another blast damaged a university gym. After the formal ceasefire, but when Iran continued sending missiles, an off-campus residence was struck, leaving 50 or more students and faculty homeless.
In Israel, a portion of property taxes are allocated to a fund to restore private property damaged or destroyed by terrorism or war. If your seven-year-old car is hit by a rocket, the fund will reimburse you the value of a seven-year-old car, Kaye said. “But if it’s a microscope that costs $800,000 and it’s 12 years old, you get money for a 12-year-old microscope,” he said. “But there’s no secondhand microscopes out there. So, you have to find the money to buy a new microscope.”
This is one of an incalculable number of examples of expenses incurred as a result of the war in this one university alone.
Kaye is grateful for donors worldwide who have stepped up to assist BGU in its time of challenge, but he noted that almost every organization in Israel faces variations on the same challenge – and diaspora communities have been called upon over the past two years to support umbrella emergency campaigns.
Amid all this, Kaye finds both optimism and hope.
What’s the difference?
“Hope is, you sit by and pray, wonder, hope that something’s good is going to happen,” he said. “Optimism is when you make it happen. I’m an optimist who is actively involved in bringing hope – and that’s incredibly easy to do in our university because we get up every day and we say, how can we make it happen?”