Good Friday morning!

When he arrived in New York City seven months ago, Israeli Consul General Asaf Zamir had a bumpy landing. He began the job solo, without his family. Then he and a dozen other consulate employees got COVID, all while he was enduring his first New York winter.

Now, Zamir has settled in — though he acknowledged that he still misses Tel Aviv’s fresh produce and his parents. Zamir, 41, spoke to eJewishPhilanthropy this week ahead of Sunday’s Celebrate Israel Parade, the first since 2019.

Zamir told eJP that he appreciates the American Jewish community’s lack of uniformity, especially when it comes to religious practice. “It comes in all shapes and sizes, and everything is equal, and everyone can define their way of being… That’s something I think Israel has a lot to learn from the Jewish community in America.”

Zamir became consul after serving in the Knesset for two years in now-Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party, including a stint as tourism minister. Zamir said he’s focused on making Israel’s case to young people, particularly young Jews.

“My major aim is the younger generation,” he said. “It could be the younger generation of other minorities, but it’s primarily the younger generation of all Americans and the younger generation of American Jewry which is somewhat disconnected from its Israeli identity and sometimes from its Jewish identity.”

Zamir said his goal isn’t to outright win or lose a PR war, but to move the needle in Israel’s direction. “The aim is to finish our term with more people understanding the importance of the relationship between Israel and the United States, and more people understanding the complexity of the Israeli story over in the Middle East.”

Part of that campaign, he said, is advancing an expansive definition of what it means to support Israel — one that includes Jews who criticize Israeli policy, as long as they still believe Israel should be a Jewish state. In that vein, this year’s parade will include a contingent of progressive marchers, reported the New York Jewish Week.

“I think that there is room to broaden the tent of activists Israel works with,” he said. “And it should include people who sometimes also have criticism toward Israel, as long as we agree on the basic lines of Zionism — meaning there is room for the Jewish state in our homeland of Israel.”

Zamir hopes the parade will serve as an opportunity for a similarly wide spectrum of New York Jews to unite around the common denominator of supporting Israel, whatever shape that takes.

“The Jewish community in the United States is a very strong and very passionate community but in some cases also a divided community,” he said, adding that the parade can show that “when it comes to Israel generally, in general support of it, we’re all behind that idea.”

Read the full story here.

TECH EDUCATION

A ’21st-century shop’ class teaches Jewish day school kids to 3D print

Courtesy of WTA

Kovi Ressler, an eighth grader at Westchester Torah Academy, has been to New York City’s Celebrate Israel parade before. But he’s especially excited to go on Sunday — and to bring a drum and maraca that his class designed and 3D-printed. The instruments come out of a program at Westchester Torah Academy (WTA) in New Rochelle, N.Y., in which students learn tech skills and graphic and computer-assisted design while building products ranging from toys to Jewish ritual objects, reports David I. Klein for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Practical knowledge: The project is the result of the first year of WTA’s “Practical STEAM” program, which aims to give students grounding in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math while teaching them the programming and computer science skills that will be essential for the jobs of the present and future.

From Wi-Fi to mezuzot: “In traditional STEAM programs, they really focus a lot on coding and robotics,” David Merel, WTA’s director of operations and technology, told eJP. Merel tries to take a more useful route than other schools — which he hopes is equally fun — teaching students everything from how to build their own PCs to plumbing and deploying a Wi-Fi network. Earlier this year, the students designed and printed their own mezuzot.

Read the full story here.

The right moment

Grief, love and loss: A year in Jewish stories

Moyo Studio

“As pandemic restrictions recede into the background, how do we make space to honor loss and recognize that many of us are still grieving?” asks Jory Hanselman Mayschak, co-founder & CEO of BaMidbar, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Loss of life: “We have grieved the loss of personal space, travel and water cooler small talk. We’ve missed major milestones like births, graduations and weddings. And more than 1 million people in the U.S. have now died from COVID-19. As in-person programs return, masks disappear and people talk of ‘returning to normal,’ some of these losses have started to feel like a thing of the past. Despite this, many of us still feel the gaping hole left by loss of life. I count myself in this collective.”

Sharing stories: “In May 2021, a dear friend tragically and unexpectedly passed away in a climbing accident at the age of 31. After his funeral, I asked his fiancee if there was anything I could do to help. She asked me if I would share Jewish stories that I thought might resonate, provide comfort or offer wisdom. In the days after, I decided I wanted to send a different story before Shabbat each week for the following year. The journey of grief is a long one, and while I knew my friend’s fiancee was surrounded by love and support at that moment, I also knew that support might be less present as shiva and shloshim passed and the weeks turned into months. Every Friday since, I’ve ended my workday early and spent an hour or two reading Jewish stories, reflecting on the topics of grief, love and loss and selecting a single story to share.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Closer Look: MacKenzie Scott’s generosity is to be commended, especially when she supports groups with undeniably worthy missions, such as New City Kids, a New Jersey-based foundation that combats child poverty and delinquency, writes Aron Ravin in National Review. Yet many of her donations — like those that support land reparations to Native Americans — are more political, less traditionally philanthropic and also unlikely to actually achieve real change, Ravin states. “Charity has stopped being something we volunteer for our communities or to people in desperate need. It’s just becoming yet another low-risk method for people to engage in politics.” [NR]

Jews in the Desert: The ICSC real estate conference in Las Vegas, which begins this weekend, is also host to a robust Jewish scene, reports Gabby Deutch for Jewish Insider. “Multiple hotels offer morning minyans for the Shacharit prayer service, and they don’t need to worry about hitting the 10-person prayer quorum; more than enough people show up… In 2018, many of ICSC’s biggest dealmakers skipped the conference when it coincided with Shavuot. Others who are not observant Jews reflected that their absence would be obvious: ‘If you know the popular kids are not going to the party, then you are not going to go,’ Jonathan Adelsberg, a partner at the New York law firm Herrick Feinstein, told real estate site The Real Deal at the time.” [JI]

Hand-ups, not Handouts: “Twitter philanthropy” offers immediate financial support to a small number of people reaching out for assistance over social media, and is illuminating the holes in the safety net, writes R.J. Rico in the Associated Press. “People send photos of their eviction notices, tearful videos of their empty refrigerators, screenshots of the paltry sums they have in their bank accounts. And, nearly every day, [multimillionaire Bill] Pulte responds. He gave $500 to a man who sent a video of his missing teeth. He gave $125 for a woman to pay for gas so she could make the long drive to her brother’s funeral. ‘I call them hand-ups, not handouts,’ said Pulte, who has grand visions of disrupting the traditional philanthropy model by using social media to help form an online army of donors to help people in crisis… His largest single donation so far is $50,000, according to his records of the more than $1.2 million he has spread among more than 2,200 followers over the past three years.” [APNews]

Have BDS Efforts Failed?: Although Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)  campaigns against Israel are present on college campuses, “the movement has mostly failed,” writes Steven A. Cook in Foreign Policy. “BDS activists have clearly failed to force global firms to unwind their operations in Israel. Israel and Israeli firms are too well integrated into global business for international companies to walk away from the country… Settlers can do without Ben & Jerry’s, and Israelis will survive not getting to see Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters or any number of other artists who support BDS perform live in the country, but Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the others all benefit from Israel and aren’t likely to leave anytime soon.” [ForeignPolicy]

Pic of the Day

Maggie Russo

Spring 2022 graduates from Spertus Institute’s master’s program in Jewish professional studies celebrate their graduation this week in Chicago.