Partnership Regional Meetings

Rena Neiger

Director, Jewish Community Relations Council

The Partnership With Israel Program, which began as Partnership 2000 (P2K), is entering its second decade of unprecedented success as the flagship platform for partnerships and relationships between Israelis and world Jewish communities.

Established in 1996, Partnership With Israel is a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel, United Jewish Communities and Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal.

Its mission is to advance the common goal of assuring a thriving and united Jewish people with a strong Israel at its center.

The year 2000 is history, yet the Partnership With Israel — renamed to reflect its continuity beyond 2000 — is thriving, mounting projects in the areas of community development, art and culture, medicine and education.

Nearly 100 Jewish communities throughout the world are linked with 25 regions in Israel.

Dayton, along with 13 other U.S. cities, belongs to the U.S. Central Consortium, partnered with Israel’s Western Galilee.

The other American communities in this consortium include Akron, Canton, Dallas, Des Moines, Ft. Worth, Indianapolis, Louisville, Northwest Indiana, South Bend, Omaha, San Antonio, Toledo and Youngstown.

Dayton’s Partnership Committee, chaired by Irv Moscowitz, consists of 20 active volunteers from the Jewish community. It is my honor to staff our Partnership efforts.

We work on myriad projects, including student and staff exchanges, performances, volunteer opportunities in Israel, and the annual Emergency Response Group seminar for doctors and nurses at the Western Galilee Hospital.

Physicians from Dayton and the Western Galilee have been instrumental in developing the medical exchanges between the United States and Israel.

This year, Dayton will host the Partnership’s annual Regional Steering Committee meetings Dec. 3-5. Representatives from Israel will attend, as well as professional and lay leaders from the 14 participating U.S. cities.

Meetings will be held at the Boonshoft Center for Jewish Education and Culture, with evening social activities designed to highlight Dayton’s attractions.

Community dinner to celebrate Partnership

On Monday evening, Dec. 4, the Jewish community is invited to join consortium participants at one of Dayton’s jewels, The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, for a dinner catered by Sarah Moore Leventhal in the Modern Flight Gallery.

The keynote speaker for the event will be Simcha Stein, director of the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum in the Western Galilee, the world’s first Holocaust museum.

We’ll also hear Israeli and American accounts of survival and stamina during Hezbollah’s summer bombings of northern Israel.

Docents will lead tours of Prejudice and Memory: A Holocaust Exhibit, on permanent display at the museum, which is visited by hundreds of students each year.

For more information, e-mail Information@jfgd.net.