The JCC Association of North America’s Mit-habrim (connecting) initiative is dispensing over $1.5 million in grants across 115 Jewish community centers in the coming weeks to mark Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day across the continent, as part of a collaboration with Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry. 

Employing a 50-50 matching model with the ministry, Mit-habrim funds programming at JCCs across North America. The initiative, first devised in 2021 to incentivize and bolster programming surrounding the “Yamim” (Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAztmaut), was launched in mid-2023. In the aftermath of that year’s Oct. 7 terror attacks, the focus shifted. 

“Literally overnight, on the morning of Oct. 8, we pivoted, together with our partners at the ministry,” Leah Garber, JCC Association’s senior vice president of Israel engagement and director general of the Center for Israel Engagement in Jerusalem, told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

“We pivoted the initial platform from celebrating the beauty of Israel to now working with our JCCs and offering them opportunities to stand in solidarity with Israel, with the Jewish world, support them, bringing the stories of Israeli heroes, survivors and others to their communities,” she said. 

As the program crosses the 18-month line, the organization is seeing a significant return on its investment, Uria Roth, director of the Mit-habrim program, told eJP. Across the 80% of JCCs participating in the project, there have been 300,000 participants in the programming, according to Roth. And as the Israel-focused programming has seen a 71% increase in participation, 30% of those attendees are participating for the first time.

“We’re trying to go deeper into conversations about Israel. But also to go wider, more than just the usual people that are coming to the JCC. We’re trying to find new audiences in each community,” said Roth. 

Grappling with changing educational needs following the Oct. 7 attacks led Mit-habrim to create opportunities for a number of cross-cultural interactions — from hosting Solidarity Shabbatot, which brought in some 40,000 participants, to bringing dozens of Oct. 7 survivors to North America share their stories at JCCs, as well as organizing delegations to Israel from roughly 100 JCCs for solidarity and volunteer missions. 

Though the initiative was initially supposed to wrap up in August after two years of activity, Mit-habrim is in the process of extending its timeline and returning to its original goal. 

“We are hopeful that very soon we’ll be able to resume the original plan and to bring more of a celebratory perspective of Israel to our JCC members,” said Garber.