On the Ground in Israel A personal view of our efforts in Israel from Amir Shacham, UJC MetroWest Director of Israel Operations August 12, 2008

Win-Win

Sheatufim is a Hebrew word that can be translated into “cooperation”, “collaboration”, “joint ventures”, “partnerships”, and “sharing”. It is not by accident that the English language is much richer than Hebrew when it comes to describing such a basic act of working together. Our Israeli culture, which has developed here over the years, is based many times on the lack of trusting one another. While it is understandable when dealing with our security and foreign affairs, it needs to be changed here internally. We need to start thinking collaboratively and trust our fellow Israelis to do the same.

The Sheatufim Center, which was established recently by major Israeli and Diaspora philanthropists with the support of United Jewish Communities, is going to try to change it. The goal is to create productive collaboration between the Israeli Government, businesses, the philanthropic community and civic society. It sounds obvious, but it reflects a real need in our life here. Only recently, for the first time in our nation’s history, the Knesset legislatures signed a covenant in which they commit to promote the third sector and the culture of philanthropy. At the same time, a first-ever national “round table” of these three sectors, headed by PM Olmert was convened. Some say it was only a political public relations act, but we want to believe that this is indeed an opening of a new era of thinking. An Israeli version of “win-win”.

In the opening seminar of Sheatufim, there was a panel discussion about this concept. One of the panelists used an illustration from family life. I am quoting from memory: “In modern countries these three sectors are seen as siblings and they have to work together by definition. The government is the strong big brother, the business community is the rich sophisticated brother and the third sector is the more idealistic one”. “Unfortunately”, he said, “in some countries (he meant Israel) the third sector is perceived as the weak and less influential brother, the loser in the family. This needs to be changed”.

Sheatufim and other similar initiatives are now trying to change this culture in Israel. United Jewish Communities (UJC) MetroWest NJ is taking an active role in making such a change in its microcosm. Our own “educational round table” in Ofakim is only one example.

And one more thing: The panelist whom I freely quoted had a heavy British accent. He is now the special European Union envoy to the Middle East and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Anthony Charles Lynton (Tony) Blair. Blair was recently scheduled to conduct some meetings in the Gaza strip, but his visit was canceled because of security threats on his life. I guess he now better understands the values of trust, cooperation and democracy.

The New Paradigm is the way Prime Minister Olmert chose to describe his vision during the recent JAFI Board of Governors meetings. This paradigm is directly related to the concept of Sheatufim (see above), but it involves Diaspora Jewry in this equation as well. It states something like this: “For the last 60 years the state and society of Israel were subject to philanthropic support by Diaspora Jewry. For the next 60 years, let’s talk about how Diaspora Jewry, the society of Israel and the government can work together to answer each others needs”.

If this statement sounds familiar or “not new” to you, it is only because UJC adopted it a while ago and has been trying to implement it for quite sometime in our own Israel operations and partnerships. The most recent examples are:

• The “business professionals” missions to Israel and the innovative ideas to connect business and philanthropy. Jeffrey Cohen, one of the leaders of this concept (B2P), is going to take an active role in the prestigious Globes Conference that is going to take place in Tel Aviv later this year, discussing this very subject with hundreds of business people and philanthropists from around the world.
  
  
• Our activities in the Druze village of Hurfeish, where we, UJC, were able to pool resources from governmental, Diaspora and Israeli philanthropists to help the community, upgrade its services and connect it more to the Israeli society.
  
  
• The Partnership 2000 “Renewal Process” which involves 20 leaders from New Jersey and Ofakim-Merchavim. We are going to meet again for a second retreat in November, but it is already clear that our vision and mission statements are also taken from the family arena and are emphasizing the “win-win” concept: “We are siblings in one big family and together we need to work equally hard in order to help each other”. We don’t need former PM Blair and PM Olmert to teach us this vision; we wrote it ourselves.
  

Drishat Shalom,

Amir

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