She is a trained architect who was educated in Mexico and served in Gaza during her years in the Israeli infantry. She speaks Spanish to her children, and they answer her in Hebrew. She was raised Orthodox, but raises her children in traditions she considers neither secular nor religious.
 

Such disparate dimensions have now led Orli Dudaie in an entirely new direction: For the next two years, she will be the executive shliha, or emissary from Israel, to United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey.

Dudaie arrived at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany on Aug. 15 to begin what she called a job in “bridge-building” between her homeland and the community of MetroWest. The key, she said in an interview, is building emotional bonds.

“It is not just words in a newspaper but a feeling — to feel together with some person in Israel or an organization,” she said. “These living bridges can make the difference.”

Her route to New Jersey began in 2002, when she linked up with the Israel Forum, an organization dedicated to tightening bonds between Israelis and Diaspora Jews, and joined its young leadership training program. The experience led her to seek a job as an Israeli emissary in the Diaspora. When Guy Benshachar’s three-year term as shaliah in MetroWest was drawing to a close, she applied.

When she met Benshachar on an earlier visit to MetroWest, he passed on advice she called “an SOS. Suddenly they tell you just two days in advance that some person is coming here, and you ask, ‘What can we do?’ One thing is to be, as much as possible, organized, to know that I will have last-minute issues.”

Since she came aboard Aug. 15, Dudaie has been meeting with community leaders, developing Israeli education projects with local synagogues, and learning how to schedule visits by Israelis. Among the projects is a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Nov. 5. “We want to put together a kit of all the materials” on Rabin’s life and death for wide use, she said.

As she adjusts to the rhythms and requirements of MetroWest, Dudaie is learning to cope with life in the town of Roseland and to find her family’s own place in the Jewish community.

‘Their own opinion’

Dudaie was born in the northern city of Netanya and educated in an Orthodox school. But in 1987, when she was sent into Gaza as a soldier during the first Intifada, she found that the experience “changes a lot your point of view.” Away from the Orthodox environment, she said IDF personnel “could build their own opinion.”

While she is no longer Orthodox, Dudaie said, “there are some beliefs no one can take from me. I keep a kosher house, but [not] from the religious point of view. I see it as part of my history. I don’t see that part of my tradition as secular or religious. You are educated like that. It can’t just disappear.”

As a result, she said, she is fascinated by the religious pluralism projects in Israel funded by UJC MetroWest, as well as the model of American Judaism, with its different denominations and wide range of practice.

“In Israel it is much more divided between secular and religious,” she said. “Religious pluralism tries to educate for the future — to show not just black and white. There is a gray line. And all the tolerance I see in the States — to see that everyone is respected even if they do things differently” — suggests to her that “in Israel we still have a lot of work to do.”

Dudaie’s work took her from the army to Mexico City, where she spent seven years and gave birth to two of her three sons.

She returned to her native land in 1997, settling with her family in Modi’in, a planned city of 70,000 built nine years ago between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It is a place she calls “gorgeous” because “the majority of people are young couples with a lot of kids.”

As an architect, she has designed numerous projects, ranging from private homes to military structures.

Her husband, Ronen, a physician, hopes to practice internal medicine during the family’s stay.

Her two oldest boys, nine-year-old Shay and eight-year-old Yaniv, who learned English by attending Camp Ramah in Palmer, Mass., for three years, are also fluent in Spanish and, of course, Hebrew.

Their eight-month-old brother, Amir, is developing more basic language skills.

Dudaie spent three summers at Camp Ramah, where she ran Hebrew language programs. “It was amazing what my kids received there from the Judaism point of view. They were not so [eager] to go to a synagogue, but once they went, they felt at home. They knew everything by heart.” At the Conservative-movement camp, the children met campers who are not Orthodox, “but they do keep a lot of traditions, and they felt good with that.”

Dudaie is joining Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell, a Conservative synagogue that encourages members to ascend the “ladder of Jewish commitment,” she said. Her two older sons are enrolled at Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange, another Conservative-movement institution.

Meanwhile, Dudaie is also coping with necessary adjustments to secular life in Roseland, where her family will live for the next two years — learning, for example, that the municipality has scheduled times for collecting garbage and recycling cans and bottles. “It was very weird because in Israel you have no schedule for garbage.”

Apart from the minutiae of municipal services, Dudaie believes there is much that Israelis have in common with Jews in America — and elsewhere.

“I think everyone here can find in Israel the point, the place, the person they can identify with,” she said. “If we see Israel as part of our history, it is common to every Jew. If you speak with a Jew in Hong Kong and you say ‘amen,’ he will understand you. The goal is one, but the ways of reaching it are diverse.

“We are here to help, to reach, to talk. We serve the community, and I would like the people of MetroWest to look at us like that. The best thing is to see us as a resource. If someone has an idea, let’s talk.”

 

Robert Wiener can be reached at .
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