Community-to-Community initiatives pair organizations or institutions in Israel with cohorts in different parts of the world. The initiatives help to foster dialogue, mutual learning, and ongoing contacts between Jews in diverse and remote communities. They promote closer ties between twinned communities and strengthen Israel-Diaspora relations in a meaningful way.
The following are some of our current and past programs:
Havaya: The Fellowship for Global Jewish Leaders
High school students from Boston, Haifa, and Dnepropetrovsk who are young Jewish leaders participated in an educational planning program in their own community and then gathered together in Dnepropetrovsk to lead the Jewish winter camp held at the local Jewish elementary school.
Boston Haifa Connection Young Leadership Group: Jewish Identity and Peoplehood
Young leaders ages 22 to 35 from Haifa and Boston met throughout the year to explore Jewish pluralism and renewal and questions of responsibility and belonging to the Jewish people. Participants developed communal and inter-communal projects to promote dialogue on Jewish identity. Meetings combined learning, experiencing, and doing through lectures, workshops, dialogue, field trips, and shared Jewish celebrations. Participants studied together with their colleagues across the world and developed projects together with them.
Student Leadership for Jewish Peoplehood
This program brought together three cadres of Jewish student leaders from Germany (ZWST), Israel (Oranim College), and the US (Columbia/Barnard Hillel). As a result of academic and experiential learning, joint study, dialogue, interacting with each other, and experiencing Israel, Germany and the USA together, students created local and international initiatives designed to strengthen their own communities and to promote future connections between Israel and world Jewry.
Women’s Dialogue – Siach Nashim
Women’s Dialogue connects Jewish women who have different lifestyles. It promotes understanding through study and discussion. Two women’s groups meet in two remote locations. The women convene on their own, and then share thoughts and ideas when the groups dialogue with one another in a videoconference session. Themes include: Being a Jewish Woman; A Room of One’s Own – Women’s Writing; Culture and Gender, and other topics.
International Book Club: Creative Thinking
This initiative links Jewish authors with Jewish readers from Israel, North America, and Europe, who read and reflect on their own original writings and other literary works. Participants engage in discussions on questions of Jewish identity, practice, and modern life.