When Ido Shwartz, the director of philanthropy for Kibbutz Be’eri, appears at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly this week in Washington, D.C., his main purpose will be to express gratitude to all the donors who stepped up in a moment of need to support the Western Negev kibbutz, which was one of the hardest hit communities in last year’s Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.

Fundraising for the rehabilitation of the kibbutz will be secondary, he said.

“Coming to say thank you to the many Jewish Federations that financially supported the emergency campaign of Kibbutz Be’eri is the first thing,” Shwartz told eJewishPhilanthropy. “I think it’s really important to pay them respect, give them tribute, because they gave us money before we knew how to define the needs of the community, before we knew what is the role of the government in the rehabilitation process. So people just gave us money with no questions asked. We really want to say thank you to the many Jewish communities that stepped up regardless of the behaviors and actions of the elected Israeli officials in the last years. We think that is admirable.”

One hundred and one members of the kibbutz — about 10% of its population — were killed in the Oct. 7 attack, including Canadian-Israeli peace and women’s rights activist Vivian Silver, along with 31 security personnel. Another 30 members were taken hostage by Hamas, along with two people who had fled to the kibbutz from the massacre at the nearby Nova music festival.

Hamas still holds 10 kibbutz members captive in Gaza, and continuing to raise awareness of their plight and call for their release is another major purpose for the delegation visit, Shwartz said.

Though he is not a member of the kibbutz, Shwartz began volunteering with it shortly after the massacre, leaving his job as head of fundraising for the Re’ut Rehabilitation Hospital in Tel Aviv to spearhead Be’eri’s fundraising efforts. He will lead a delegation of three teams to the U.S. on this visit. His three-member team at the General Assembly will also be meeting with U.S. government officials and will then travel to the JNF Global Conference in Dallas, Texas. The other two two-member teams will meet with supporters in synagogues, churches and universities in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Kibbutz Be’eri’s philanthropy team consists of seven people — four kibbutz members and three external people, including a content writer and an accountant. Nine out of the 10 members of the kibbutz accounting office were murdered on Oct. 7. 

Before the attacks, there was no need for fundraising positions at the kibbutz, Shwartz said.

Though the community’s needs are dynamic and not entirely known, their fundraising efforts are currently focused on three pillars, said Shwartz.

This first pillar is maintaining community unity at a time rife with variability and change, with a group of approximately 700 people living in the temporary housing solution provided by the government at Kibbutz Hatzerim near Beersheva, another group of some 200 who have returned to Be’eri and a similar number living scattered across the country. Though they estimate that 85% of the members will decide to return, that is still a big unknown, he said.

Shwartz said members do not have to make a decision yet, but will likely need to decide by the end of 2026.

“There are a lot of variables about whether people will come back and how. But in order to have a decisive answer for it, we have to keep the community united. We have many strong partners helping us with keeping the community united,” he said. “UJA-Federation of New York gave us a grant in the framework of their Project Horizon for community resiliency. We have help from JFNA.”

The second pillar is the economic revitalization of the kibbutz industries with impact investment in the agriculture sector, the carpentry, the cheese and dairy factory, the industrial print shop, the winery, the vet and the bike shop so that once the war is over they can start back up from a position of strength, he said.

And the third most difficult pillar is the capital campaign for rebuilding kibbutz infrastructure, said Shwartz. One hundred and thirty-two structures on the kibbutz — including 121 private homes and 11 community buildings — were burned and destroyed. The governmental Tekuma administration has estimated their rebuilding will cost NIS 470 million ($126 million), the majority of which the government is expected to provide, though the numbers have not been finalized yet.

“But it is more complicated with that because we don’t want to go back to Oct. 7, 2023. We want to build back better, and in order to do so we will raise additional funds for the capital campaign,” said Shwartz. For example, he said, they want to renovate the elderly daycare building — a cost of about $2 million — which was not damaged in the attack, and so will not be a part of the government financial assistance package. “But we still want to renovate it. We want to improve it, so we need to raise funds to do it. In order to persuade people to come back to Be’eri first of all, the Israeli government has to provide security, but secondly, we want to create a quality of life for the people that are living there.”

Shwartz said he believes that by 2027 his position will become obsolete, with the hope that Be’eri can not only stop being a recipient of philanthropic funds but can again become a donor to charitable causes.

“Kibbutz Be’eri used to give grants to various good causes in the Western Negev area,” he said. “We want Kibbutz Be’eri to regain its position as a philanthropic entity. We are not going to be a charity.”

The only thing that will be relevant for the director of philanthropy, he said, will be the volunteer missions that want to be part of the kibbutz or people-to-people interaction to keep the relationships going with various Jewish communities that help the kibbutz.

“There are meaningful relationships that have emerged in the last few months,” said Shwartz. “I think for the sake of the unity of the Jewish people, we have a role to preserve it. So many people have personal connections to what happened there that day. Everybody wants to come and see and touch and cry and pray, and we want to allow it, but we need to put boundaries to it. There is a constant tension between approving requests to come and visit, and how we prioritize those visits because we don’t want to be like a Disneyland. It’s a daily challenge, but we are doing our best to manage it properly.”