It has been an excruciating week. Anyone following the goings-on in Israel knows that. A harrowing headline (Google translated screenshot) from YNet commented on a surreal reality unfolding these past few days in our part of town:
In the midst of the unspeakable grief, though, these families have often managed to reflect the very best of what Israel is. The widow of Rabbi Avi Greenberg, z’l, knew that politicians would want to make a condolence visit, but she set a condition for their coming. As the Times of Israel put it:
A statement from the Goldberg family on Monday said that it would welcome “politicians from any party or camp,” but only if they arrive in pairs — one from the coalition and one from the opposition. The family said this spirit matches what Goldberg tried to do during his lifetime: bridging gaps and building bonds.
The family accomplished what no politician or public figure could have. The MK’s actually listened.
To survive these unprecedented times, those of us here know that we need to remind ourselves, continually, what an extraordinary society this is, how this state is built of people (of all religions and political persuasions) who manage to soar to heights of generosity of spirit even in moments of war and agony.
In today’s podcast, we speak with Aviva Klompas, author of the recently published book, Stand-Up Nation: Israeli Resilience in the Wake of Disaster and Dyonna Ginsburg, who wrote the book’s Foreword. The book was largely finished before October 7, but was revised in light of the attack and the ensuing war. In our conversation, Aviva and Dyonna share some of the stories of the extraordinary people in the book (and a few who are not), and in so doing, remind us why, even in dark times, there is every reason to hope and even to believe that Israel’s greatest days still lie ahead of us.
Aviva Klompas has made a name for herself as a leading educator, skilled communicator, and innovative strategist. She is the co-founder of Boundless, a nonprofit reimagining Israel education across North America. Prior to that, Aviva served as the Director of Speechwriting for Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City, as Associate Vice President of Israel and Global Jewish Citizenship at Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Ontario Government supporting efforts to resettle Syrian refugees in Canada.
Aviva’s memoir, Speaking for Israel, reflects on her time as a speechwriter and offers readers an honest and entertaining insight into the world of Israeli diplomacy. Her articles have appeared in the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Jerusalem Post, and other international publications.
As we noted above, her latest book, Stand-Up Nation: Israeli Resilience in the Wake of Disaster, is the focus of our discussion today.
Dyonna Ginsburg is the CEO of OLAM, a network of Israeli and Jewish individuals and organizations committed to global service, international development and humanitarian aid. Prior to OLAM, Dyonna served as Director of Education and Service Learning at The Jewish Agency; Executive Director of Bema'aglei Tzedek, an Israeli social change NGO; and co-founder of Siach, a global network of Jewish social justice and environmental professionals.
A frequent lecturer, Dyonna was named "one of Israel's 50 most inspiring women" by Nashim magazine in 2015. Dyonna was awarded the Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Jewish Journalism by the American Jewish Press Association; the Schusterman Fellowship; and the World Council of Jewish Communal Service’s Ted Comet Exemplar Award for Outstanding Leadership in Strengthening the Jewish People.
Dyonna currently sits on the advisory boards of Yanshoof and the Global Jewry initiative.
The link at the top of this posting will take you to the full recording of our conversation; below you will find a transcript for those who prefer to read, available specially for paid subscribers to Israel from the Inside.
These are days in which it's very helpful for all of us, I think, to have an opportunity to be reminded of the extraordinary goodness that lies in lots of people. We have seen stories of incredible goodness of Israelis to other Israelis. We've seen extraordinary goodness of parents, for example, of hostages who have shown unbelievable character and religious depth as they work to try to free their children or their spouses or their parents or whatever. We've seen goodness of all sorts.
And today, I'm delighted to have two friends join me again for the conversation, one of whom has been on the podcast before, to talk about a different a goodness that I think is just, as I said, really very good for the soul. We're actually meeting today because of a recent book that came out just a couple of months ago called “Stand Up Nation”, not Start Up Nation, in case you're thinking, oh, I read that years ago. No, this is “Stand Up Nation: Israeli Resilience in the Wake of Disaster” by Aviva Klompas, who is now the CEO or co-CEO and co-founder of Boundless. And she'll tell us about Boundless in a second.
And Dyonna Ginsburg, who runs OLAM. Dyonna has been a guest on the podcast before, has spoken to us about her work. We'll hear a little bit more about OLAM. So, let's start first with Aviva and then Dyonna. Just tell us, remind our readers who don't know what these two organizations are, what they do. And then Aviva, you'll tell us a little bit about the genesis of this book and how, if at all, the minor events of the last year changed what you tried to do with the book. And then I wanted to just jump in. And you've already told me some amazing stories about human beings that you cover and organizations that you cover, and we'll go there. So, let's start with you, Aviva.
AK: Thank you, Danny. It's a great honor to be with you. My name is Aviva Klompas. I'm the co-founder and CEO of a US based nonprofit called Boundless. We are a think-action tank that is reimagining how we connect people with Israel and fight anti-Semitism.
DG: Thank you so much as well for being here. My name is Dyonna Ginsburg, and I am the CEO of OLAM, which is a network of Jewish and/or Israeli individuals and organizations that work in the fields of international development, humanitarian aid, and global volunteering, mostly in low-income countries around the world, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I've known Aviva for quite some time, and it was my honor to write the foreword to this book.
This is not your first book, Aviva?
AK: No. My first book is called “Speaking for Israel”, and it's a memoir about my time serving as the speechwriter for Israel's Delegation to the United Nations. Actually, the origins of “Standup Nation”, my new book, go back 10 years to when I was the speechwriter. Israel has just one speechwriter at the UN. There's an enormous amount of English language writing that goes on, and I didn't have a great deal of time to devote to many subjects, except when it came to international development. I found that I was reading about Israel's history and falling down a rabbit hole of all the things that I love. Israel's pioneering years, stories about audacity, stories about Golda Meir.
And what I discovered is what I believe is one of the great untold stories of Israel. Israel in its earliest years was a developing country. It was desperately poor. It's fighting wars of survival. It has no economic trade partners. It is a country of immigrants. The state has to provide for them because they are largely Holocaust refugees and refugees from Arab countries and Iran. And it is in this context, while Israel is a developing country, that it founds an international development agency. And I found that story to be astounding.
Israel has an international development agency before the USA, before England, before the UN has its development program. And I really dove in and started to learn about it. I was very interested in the history of how Israel was able to do it and the story that brings us to today, where it was less and less about the government's involvement and more and more about regular Israelis and how they came to be involved in this work. And that's really what's profiled in my book.
So, there's one anecdote, which we talked about right before we started recording. We don't have to go into all the details, but there's a great story about Golda Meir when she becomes Foreign Minister, and she grabs the upper echelons of the Foreign Ministry together, and she pulls out a book by Herzl, and she quotes him. And what does she tell them, in '56, right? I mean, I think it's in 1956. I mean, she says basically, we want to actually now reach out to Africa because Herzl always said that once we did whatever we needed to do to save ourselves, we were going to try to pay it forward, so to speak.
AK: That's right. So, 1956, Golda becomes Foreign Minister, and she looks around at the state of affairs, and it's not so dissimilar from where we see ourselves today. She's looking around at a country that's fighting wars that are existential, that is maligned and misunderstood on the global stage, that finds itself with fewer and fewer friends, and she's determined that she needs to do something about this. At the time, the UN is composed, about a quarter of the UN's composition are African countries. Israel had just sent an ambassador to the African continent, and that ambassador invites Golda to come and do a tour. She plans a tour in 1956 of five African countries, and she is a sensation. They love her, both the political leaders as well as the ordinary people. When she returns to Israel, she goes to David Ben-Gurion, who's the Prime Minister at the time, and she says, we need to do something. She says, we are in very similar positions with these newborn countries. We're about the same age. We both emerged from under the thumb of colonialism. We're both dealing with dry and arid farming conditions, and we're both dealing with persistent conflict. The difference is that we, Israel, are certainly going to overcome this. We're going to be able to raise ourselves up, and I want us to lift up these other countries in process. And so, in 1958, Israel founds an international development agency.
So, the story that we're going to hear today about organizations that are working now in 2024 is a very old story in a lot of ways. It really goes back to Israel's very early roots under Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion and so on and so forth. So, let's start talking about some of these stories. You wrote the book, or the vast majority of the book, you submitted it before October 7th. And like all of us, I wrote a book that I submitted about a month or two before the judicial reform stuff happened. So as an editor of mine said to me many years ago when it happened once before, he said, the problem with current events is that there's always events. So, history can be good to books, or history can be a challenge for a book.
You pivoted in the book, and you rewrote parts of it, and you rewrote the introduction. But I think in certain ways, the story that you told before October 7th is the same story, only more compelling after October 7th, in some ways, because it's cool and it's moving when it happens in normal times, but it continues to happen even in this time when Israel's so ostracized and so alienated from so many different countries. I mean, really, “am levadad yishkon”, a nation that dwells apart. I think the stories that you tell here are even more compelling. So, you mentioned one before we got started about a woman who is herself an evacuee, whose international aid experience equipped her to both help others and help her own community. Let's talk about that.
DG: Sure. So, there's this woman, Gili Navon, who is part of Olam’s network and is featured in this book. She is the founder of an organization called Amar Majuli that works in a rural area in India called Majuli.
What's the Amar part mean?
AK: Majuli is a region. It's an area. It's an island. And Amar Majuli is the native language. It means “Our Majuli” because it is a woman's cooperative. So, the sense of shared ownership is inherent in the name.
DG: And I was recently speaking to Gili. She lives in the north, 4 kilometers from the Lebanese border, or she lived in the north more accurately, and was forcibly displaced right after the war began. She's now living in the south in the Arava. And she said to me that even though she had always worked with vulnerable populations, including displaced populations in Majuli, this was her first time experiencing that herself. And it enabled her to be much more empathetic and understanding and vice versa. She explains, and I don't fully understand what the scenario was, but she said when they first moved to the south, early in October, there were actual tents behind her. So, she was on a Zoom call with her partners in this community in Majuli, and they saw her outside of her home with physical tents. I mean, that's mind-blowing that in the state of Israel there are people with physical tents behind them. But she said it really opened up a deep empathy and understanding of her towards this community that she worked with for years and vice versa of them towards her.
Right. They had to see her not as a kind of elitist, all flowing in one direction, but she understands where we are and what we're dealing with and so forth.
DG: Correct. Which I would say in her case, and in the case of a lot of Israelis going back to Golda Meir, Israelis have the reputation in the international development world of being grassroots and rolling up their sleeves and not coming in from an elitist position. So, I think that that was probably always the case, but even more so now because they have a shared experience, which is horrific, but it's a shared experience.
Now, these organizations come in all different forms. Some of them are huge, some of them are small, some of them are founded by other organizations, some of them are the brainchild of one single person or a couple of people. Approximately, how many such organizations in Israel are we talking about when we talk about these Israeli groups that work on the international community? I mean, roughly.
DG: Within Olam, we have 80 partner organizations, all of which self-identify as Jewish and/or Israeli and are working in developing countries around the world. Fifty of our partners are headquartered in Israel. That is not exhaustive, but it's pretty comprehensive. That ranges from organizations like United Hatzalah, which are not in this book, but who do the vast majority their work here. But the reason why they're part of Olam is because of work that they do abroad, to the organizations that are featured in this book that are Israeli headquartered, but the lion’s share, if not all of their work until October 7th, was abroad. And that's actually been an interesting evolution over the last year, where many organizations that were headquartered here but working exclusively abroad for the very first time responded to the needs of those in Israel who were most directly impacted by October 7th, whether it was Nova survivors or people who were evacuated from the north or south, using their expertise in psychosocial support, in working with displaced populations, in agriculture, which was very much needed in the Gaza envelope, using it for the first time at home.
Now, are there some organizations... I mean, given that we have humanitarian need in Israel, but we also tragically have humanitarian need right over the border of Israel, a complicated a political issue in Israel, but we're talking about human beings who need food. Are there organizations that were formerly working somewhere abroad, whether it's in Asia or in Africa or wherever the need was, who now also pivoted and are working in Israel, but are also working with the Palestinian populations right across our border?
DG: Yes. And here, too, you have a range. So, you have some organizations like the Arava Institute, which is featured here, that was always working locally and was involved with Palestinians, and in fact, had done work in Gaza before October 7th, and who have now launched a new initiative in that regard. Two organizations who had never been involved before, but are now playing a critical role, often behind the scenes without fanfare, in coordination with Israeli authorities at the invitation of Israeli authorities to help be that bridge because the logistical and other considerations related to humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza are so complex so that many of the Israelis who have that expertise globally are really needed to serve as that bridge here. I would say one of the things that has been really moving to me is some of those same organizations are working in Israel with populations that were affected by October 7th in the war, are also serving this advisory role vis-a-vis of Gaza and humanitarian aid delivery and alleviating suffering there and are continuing to do their work in Africa and around the world. And I would also say that there are some people that served in miluim, in reserves, in Gaza, who lost soldiers in their units and are also involved in this capacity in terms of humanitarian aid delivery in Gaza. And so, for me, knowing this field well, it's just been remarkable to see how the human heart can expand. And like any muscle, the more you use it, the bigger its capacity becomes. And it's just been amazing to see them do all that work simultaneously.
It's interesting that you say that. I've quoted a couple of times on the podcast with other guests what to me was a chilling comment made by somebody for whom I have an enormous amount of regard, a very well-known Reform rabbi here in Jerusalem who really has done extraordinary things over the course of his career. And he was interviewed by a New York Jewish journalist towards the beginning of the war. He was very much where I think a lot of us were. We were just heartbroken, and we were scared, and we were angry. She was a little astonished to hear him talk about that. You know, I'm angry. My kid's serving here. This, that, and the other thing. She said to him, well, what about... Where's your head and your heart about all this stuff that's happening just over the border, which when you're sitting in our neighborhood in Jerusalem, if you don't hit traffic, it's like 40 minutes or something like that. And he said something that really It struck me deeply when I read it, and I've repeated it many times. He said, I'm ashamed of how much my heart has shrunk. In other words, that many of our hearts did shrink, or maybe now they're loosening up a tiny bit, but certainly at the beginning. I mean, our hearts did shrink, but he also had a sense of shame about that. It wasn't that... They say in Hebrew, I sobered up. That's a big fancy word that everybody's used a million times since October 7th. But that's not what he meant. He didn't mean that I jettisoned my old silly views. He meant I've lost the capacity to be the human being that I was because I'm so wounded. I think these examples here that you're talking about, Dyonna, are just so compelling because they're examples of people not letting their hearts shrink. I don't mean this in any way critical of the person at all who said that. I just mean there are really special human beings out there who, even in the face of this, are just forcing themselves or allowing themselves or enabling themselves to be bigger than the circumstances might call for. I'm sure there's other examples that you could think of that you might want to talk about or give us examples.
AK: So, Dyonna mentioned the Arava Institute. So maybe I'll tell you the story of Tareq Abu Hamed, who is the head of the institute. He grew up in East Jerusalem in the First Intifada, and he recounts stories of trying to get to school and being stopped and frisked by soldiers. And he had an opportunity to go and work on a kibbutz when he was a teenager, and it was his first taste of life beyond the conflict and the opportunity to learn a bit of English and get to know Israelis. And for him, it was a catalyst for deciding he wanted a world beyond the conflict. So, he managed to get himself out of here and to study abroad in Turkey. He went on to do a number of different masters and doctorate degrees, and eventually had this opportunity to return to the Arava Institute, which is an institute in the south of Israel, where you have Israelis, Jordanian students as well as Palestinians from the West Bank and from Gaza that study together and work on environmental issues. And the idea is that the environment doesn't care about borders, and it's a collective issue that these students can work on together.
He describes how he arrives at the Arava Institute, which is in the heart of the Negev in the middle of August, and he steps out of the car, and it is blisteringly hot, and he thinks in his head, “there's no way. But I'm here. I'll be polite. I'll go and I'll have these meetings, and then I'm getting the heck out of here”. He says he walks into the room, and he sees this room filled with students. And to just look at them, Jordanians, Israelis, Palestinians, he can't tell the difference between them until they open their mouths. For him, it was a revelation of what was possible. He ultimately decided to take on the position and to stay there in his form of being able to fight the conflict in his own way of bringing people together.
Wow. Now, are there organizations that have shied away from working in Gaza, even as they have been working in Israel and elsewhere on the globe? Either to say we don't have the resources or because it's too controversial among some of their people. I mean I can think of a lot of reasons why someone might say, our leadership here, they have people captured in Gaza. They just can't bring themselves to do it or…
DG: There are definitely partners of ours who are not responding in one way or another to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Who you thought might have?
DG: I'm not sure I'd call it shied away. I think it's staying in their lane. Okay. I think it's staying in their lane, and it's out of a deep commitment to the communities that they're serving around the world. One of the things that we've seen that I think most Israelis and Jews around the world aren't aware of is the far-reaching knock-on effect of October 7th. So, in a lot of the communities where the organizations in this book work, their staff or volunteers came back to Israel to serve in reserves. They've lost funding, whether because Jewish philanthropy has shifted that funding to Israel and combating anti-Semitism, which is obviously important and needed, or because non-Jewish philanthropy has distanced itself from Israeli organizations.
And so, to quote one of the people in this book, Jacob Sztokman from Gabriel Project Mumbai, he said, “we somehow had to do more with less” because flights were canceled, they were saddled with cancellation fees, et cetera. And the commitment to continue serving those communities with budget cuts, with more difficult logistical challenges, that has been really inspiring. And I'll actually just share that some of those communities have really responded in turn. So, in that example of Jacob, I believe it's in this book here, he talks about the fact that the organization mostly has Indian staff. He is based here in Israel, but there are 70 Indian staff. And every Friday in their weekly Zoom call, they start off with a prayer for the hostages here in Israel, which they did of their own initiative.
And so, here's this, you both see the knock-on effect of communities who have been negatively impacted because the Jewish or Israeli organizations who are serving them don't have the means or resources they had before. But you also see some of these communities who are standing up and saying, we feel like our lives are intertwined with Israelis, and we want to show our support in the way that we can. And that has been a beautiful example of that as well.
AK: Even before October 7th, there were examples of Israelis that have decided to work in places where Israel has no political or diplomatic relations. So, in the book, I asked the question, why is Israel so involved outside its borders? And I answer in four ways, that it's idealism, pragmatism, adventurism, and chutzpaism. And the chutzpaism category are these most audacious of people, and that's saying a lot for Israelis who already have a high baseline of audacity. And they have chosen to do work in places where they are literally risking their lives. So, you have an organization called Israeli Flying Aid, founded by a woman named Gal Lusky, who grew up on a kibbutz in the north of Israel at a time when she lived in a children's home. She was the only girl with a room of boys until she was 18 years old, which she said made her tough like anything. She saw images of the Rwandan genocide on television, and she was compelled to do something. So, she bought a one-way ticket. She'd never stepped foot on the African continent, did not know a thing about disaster relief or humanitarian aid, and got sucked into this world and spent the next decade dotting around the planet, doing whatever she could to help.
And what she saw was that very often governments would use a disaster in order to punish their enemies. Meaning if there was a rebel group in a part of the country, they would declare it a closed humanitarian zone and not allow in food and medicine to starve them out. And Gal was disgusted by this, so she started to figure out how she could sneak the food and medicine in. And their motto is, nobody asks permission to kill, so we won't ask permission to save lives. And on that premise, she founded Israeli Flying Aid that goes and works in countries where if they were discovered, at best, arrested, and at worst, executed.
You have organizations like IsraAID, which is probably the best known of Israel's international development and disaster relief organizations. And after the US withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2021, Yotam, who's the CEO, was getting all sorts of calls from people desperate for help because you had judges imprisoned by the Taliban, and human rights workers, the women’s robotics team, the women’s cycling team [also imprisoned by the Taliban]. Yotam said, Israel doesn't work there. We have no network, no ability on the ground to help. But he was continuing to get phone calls. And slowly, as these calls were coming in, he was piecing together a network in mind, and he said, we’re going to try. And there's the most astounding story of how he gathered people together, moved them through checkpoints, and not once but twice was able to save the lives of numerous people and get them out of Afghanistan.
We I actually interviewed him about that story, and we interviewed one of the women who was involved, I think, in the cycling team story of getting the women Afghani cyclists out. I'm pretty sure that was the cyclists. It was an unbelievable story, and it was dangerous what they did. I mean, it was really dangerous. Her point, by the way, was I mean, this interview goes back many years. I don't recall exactly what year, but I was saying how unbelievable it is. And she said, it is. I just wish that we were more the Israeli government. And there were so much of this is Israelis, and I wish more of it was Israel. And that was her view. And I guess reasonable minds could argue about whether or not that's a meaningful distinction or whether as long as it's coming from Israel, it doesn't really matter. But yeah, the Yotam story and what he and his colleagues we're able to do is really incredible.
Dyonna, you mentioned a second ago, something about how we're continuing to do this work even in the face of decreased resources. So, talk to us a little bit about what are the changes in philanthropy that we've seen? In what ways has it moved more towards what you're doing? In what ways has it moved away because people feel like I got to do Israelis were displaced or rebuild Be’eri and in what ways, if it's happening, are there some people saying, I'm not doing the Israel thing right now?
DG: Across our network, in terms of our Israeli partners, we have seen [that] those of our partners who are now working in Israel have been successful in their fundraising for their Israel-based activities.
So, they’ve raised additional money for it.
DG: Correct. So, Yotam from IsraAID said to me recently, it’s never been easier to fundraise for Israel. It's never been harder to fundraise for our global work. Those of our partners who are working locally have gotten more funds and are trying to navigate how they still keep their global work alive and what the pipeline is for that. For those of our partners who are staying in their lane and are just doing their global work, there we've seen organizations report anywhere between 40 to 75% in budget cuts, which is huge.
I would say one thing that I'm very proud of is we recently partnered with a foundation in the US called The Livelihood Impact Funds, which is a Jewish family who stepped up and just gave out $1 million to 23 of our partner organizations that lost funding since October 7th. We do believe that there are Jewish donors out there who are giving to non-sectarian NGOs in the humanitarian sector, who may be shopping around now. We have yet to see a mass migration of those folks to the Israeli organizations. But I am holding out hope and working hard to identify who those people may be who care deeply about humanitarian concerns, but this can be a win-win for them. And they can both express their Jewish values and support for Israel, but while also doing humanitarian stuff at the same time, I'm hopeful that that can be a positive direction for this field.
I just want to follow up for one second. You said there's been, in a certain case, 40 to 70% drop in their fundraising and their resources. I don't understand if that's because people are redirecting it or because there are certain people who are saying, right now, Israel is not…
DG: It is both. It is Jewish philanthropy that is redirected to internal needs, which, as a proud Jew and a proud Zionist, I believe that that is important, but we shouldn't neglect other things that we care about as well. It's because we know of instances where non-Jewish philanthropists have said, I just don't want to touch Israeli organizations. I'd rather give to another organization doing similar work in global health in Ghana, as opposed to an Israeli organization doing that work. And so, we're sitting with an expert on anti-Semitism [Aviva], I'm not sure if that's anti-Semitism or wanting to stay out of the fray, but we have definitely seen non-Jewish, non-sectarian funding dropped to these Israeli organizations as well, who basically want to sit this out until it gets quieter.
I want to go back to one specific instance in a minute by way of wrapping up, but I want to talk a little bit about when you say until. So, we don't know what until. We don't know how long it is until happens. We don't know what the world looks like when until happens. But there's going to come a time. If it'll be six months or six years, I don't know. But there's going to come a time when what we call the October 7th War will no longer be raging. I really have no idea if it's closer to six months or six years. I really have no idea. But that time is going to come. I know that you guys aren't prophets. You're just unbelievably dedicated, smart, talented, successful communal workers and Israel advocates and so forth. But if you had to guess when the dust settles, when, as they say from the old days, the cannon stopped firing, what's going to have happened to the world of Israeli philanthropic, Israeli organizations that work across the globe to bring care and goodness and health and education and agricultural knowledge and so forth.
The world that you describe in the book, mostly, Aviva, where do you think this world is going to be at the end of this? Is it going to be weakened? Is it going to be strengthened? Is it going to be different? Is it just way too early to tell? But what are your thoughts about what this might look like when we look back in the rear-view mirror?
AK: Actually, looking back in the rear-view mirror helps me to know what we can expect in the future. And so, for me, I very much go back to that context in which Israel found itself in its earliest years because there are so many similarities. So much of those echoes of the past speak to what we're seeing and experiencing and feeling today. There's so much to say about what went wrong on October 7th. It's endless. But when I look back on the last almost a year, it's very clear that there's one thing that we got right, and that's the character of the Israeli people. We have shown ourselves time and time again, the Israeli and the Jewish people, we've shown ourselves time and time again to be absolutely magnificent.
In Israel's earliest years, its leaders had a choice to make. They could have been insular, and they could have turned inward and decided, we have enough on our plate. We just need to deal with ourselves. And that's not what they did. In that context of being desperately poor and fighting wars, they turned outward and extended their hand in friendship and support to the peoples of the world.
Through this war, through trauma and agony and heartbreak like we haven't seen in generations, Israelis have chosen to do the same for each other, and as Dyonna has described, also for other people in the world. And it seems to me that just speaks to the character of who we are, and it's not going anywhere.
No, that is actually really inspiring, and I absolutely hope that you're right. So, speaking of inspiring, just by way of wrapping up, and I know this is a story that you're going to tell somewhat obliquely just because there's certain details you don't want to put out there, which is fine. But there was a person who was a hostage who was very involved in one of these programs. There were some fascinating comments made by people who were trying to get this person out and who knew that they needed to do their work because when they got out, if the work hadn't been done, there was going to be hell to pay.
So, whatever you can tell us about this story, which is in the book. Tell us a little bit about it, because I think it just speaks to... when a person is in captivity, and then one of the first things they want to know when they get out is, did the project happen? It just speaks to a character and depth of commitment that I think most of us don't come across in our day-to-day lives.
AK: So, first, I'm going to just tell you a little bit about the organization because I want everyone to understand what a remarkable individual we are talking about. She founded an Israeli nonprofit called Fair Planet. She had worked in the global seed industry for very many years and discovered that there was this huge problem. About 9% of the world goes to bed hungry every single day. And the seed industry has really figured out how to grow food, better food and higher yields of food in the most difficult of conditions. But those seeds, those high-quality seeds, weren't getting to the poorest farmers, particularly on the African continent. And she made it her life's work in order to figure out how to do that, which is no simple task. And she started to do this work in Ethiopia and was able to find these farmers that were in truly remote locations, how to train them, and was really able to triple the amount of food that they could grow. And that extra revenue went largely to schooling for their children. So, it was having a profound impact on families and on communities.
The founder of this organization comes from a kibbutz that most people would not have heard of before October 7th, from Kibbutz Be’eri. She was abducted [with] members of her family. Her husband was murdered, her sister was murdered, and she and her family were held hostage for 50 days before she was released. Her son-in-law is still a hostage inside of Gaza. While she was a hostage, many, many people, including Dyonna, were fighting for her release, and her organization had to figure out what to do. And the head of operations, a man named Alon, sent a message to the team while she was still in Gaza that said, if she were here with us, she undoubtedly [would] encourage us not to be deterred from her life's mission, ensuring access to adequate nutrition for the world's hungry. Her resounding message would echo in our hearts. Keep your focus on the bigger picture. Keep supporting farmers in Africa.
And when she came out?
DG: So, the postscript on this is that Alon, the person who said that quote, he was among the first to visit her in the hospital along with her close family. And within five minutes of seeing her for the first time, she said, “what happened? Did you launch the project in Rwanda?” And I have been in close contact with her over the last six months in particular. And it is remarkable to see how she is both committed to the work that she was doing before but has also been involved in back-channel diplomacy for other hostage families, as well as for supporting survivors from the otef [Gaza envelope]. And for me personally, just being in her presence has been a sacred privilege.
I think that notion of privilege is actually a really important and powerful way in which to wrap up, because so many of us have met such extraordinary people. In our own community, and I interviewed them not long ago, Hersh's parents are part of our minyan. I really feel like it's a privilege to be davening in a room where they're davening because there's a profound faith and goodness that I kind of feel if I can aspire to some little piece of that, I'm going to be a better human being and I'm going to be a better Jew. I think all of us, whether it's acts of bravery or acts of selflessness or acts of optimism. I mean, even optimism and hope is an accomplishment. Somebody said to me recently, we were talking about Hatikvah, and he said, there's a reason. Who said this? I want to give credit where credit was due. Oh, it was David Ingber, a rabbi from New York City. He said, it’s “od lo avda tikvatanu”. Not “lo avda tikvatanu”, but it's not yet lost.
Because you can lose hope. If we just said “lo avda tikvatanu,” our hope is not lost because we don't lose hope. But “od lo” it's not yet lost, we could lose hope. And then part of the battle here is not to. So, whether it's people like this woman who is doing this incredible project in Rwanda when she's in the hospital, and the first thing she asks this guy, practically, is, did you do the important work that we do, or the bravery, or the selflessness, or the religiosity, or the optimism. There are privileges and blessings of meeting the kinds of people that many of us in this small little country are blessed to meet either on an ongoing basis or periodically. I think I wanted to take advantage of the fact that you're both in Israel at the moment. But you're both here now and you do so much work together and you were involved in this book because Dyonna wrote the intro and Aviva, you wrote the book. So, I wanted to take advantage of the fact that you're both in Jerusalem now to have this conversation. But I think it's really a gift to all of us to remind... These are dark days. These are really dark days. And one of you was saying before we got started, “modeh ani,” the prayer that we say in the morning when you wake up, thank God for waking up, is no trivial thing because when we went to bed just last night, we were told by the Israeli army that don’t go too far from anything, especially in the north, because we don't know what's going to happen overnight. Everything is so tenuous, and everything is scary at times. And these are people who have managed to get beyond the tenuousness and get beyond the fright, get beyond the anger, even the loneliness of being Israeli, and to do what has always made us a great society, which is that we look beyond our borders, and we try to do great things for people who desperately need us.
It's deeply Zionist, it's deeply Jewish, it's profoundly and you tell an amazing story about it in the book, and you both do an incredible job of bringing it to life in conversation. So, I hope that the next time we do a little thing together, we'll talk about when eventually, or whatever word we used, has happened. And we're looking at all of this in the rear view mirror, and we can talk about how a lot of stuff has been even built further. But for giving this reason to be proud and to be hopeful at a moment like this, really very, very, very grateful to you. Wish you and yours a Shana Tovah, and prayers for much better days ahead.
AK: Amen.
Music credits: Medieval poem by Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Gvirol. Melody and performance by Shaked Jehuda and Eyal Gesundheit. Production by Eyal Gesundheit. To view a video of their performance, see this YouTube:
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