Intensifying Jewish identity

Project Otzma quietly builds lasting community involvement

ERIC ROZENMAN
Jewish Renaissance Media

Lisa Levy, second row, far right, celebrates with her ulpan (intensive language training) class, during track one of her Otzma experience.

Photo courtesy of Lisa Levy

Thanks to credits earned in advanced placement courses in high school in Cincinnati, Michael Rabkin hurried through the University of Colorado in three years, graduating in 1996.

"I was ready to get a dot-com job in Silicon Valley, even before it was popular," he recalls.

But a desire to spend time in Israel led him first to Project Otzma. If it was a year in Israel he wanted - a year on, not off - Otzma would give it to him.

Rabkin found his 10 months in Israel to be "an eye-opener. You meet real people, off the beaten path. We were immersed in a culture ... and not (Jerusalem's) Ben Yehuda mall culture" for the trendy and the tourist.

Otzma (a Hebrew word meaning "strength"), now celebrating its 15th year, has a track record of intensifying the Israel connection for a corps of young Jewish adults and promoting their long-term involvement in organized Jewish life, often as professionals.

That has been the case for Rabkin, for whom the program was a voyage of self-discovery.

His Otzma activities, he recalls, were "a nice blend between structured and individualized programs." They included work in a kibbutz peach orchard and plastics plant, directing a children's Hanukkah concert at an Ashkelon absorption center, assisting teenaged Russian immigrants in Nazareth Illit stage cultural events, and reviewing employee expense reports at an Internet firm in Herzliya.

He also shared an apartment in the Arab-Jewish town of Akko with three other Ohio Otzmaniks. Among other things, they tutored Ethiopian students at a community college and converted a bomb shelter into a clubhouse for psychiatric out-patients.

Back in the States in '97, Rabkin was still thinking Silicon Valley. But "after returning, you're supposed to give a year of service in some manner to the Jewish community," he notes.

Rabkin spent that year on a Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps Fellowship at the University of California-San Diego. He then went to work as program director at UCSD Hillel. Two years later, he joined Hillel's national staff in Washington, D.C.

As for his three Akko roommates, Rabkin says, "one is young leadership director of the federation in Palo Alto, one works for the federation in Philadelphia, and the third is studying at the Wurzweiller School of Social Work at N.Y.U."

Life-Changing
Unlike the much newer Birthright Israel program, for example, Project Otzma does not serve large numbers of American Jewish college students and recent graduates; a two-week introductory Israel experience is not its business. Instead, Otzma annually immerses 70 to 80 young men and women in Israeli life for 10 months. This up-to-the-elbows participation takes many forms.

Hillary Cherner, a Chicago native and 1999-2000 Otzmanik, also found her life changed by the experience.

"I wasn't ready to look for a job yet" after getting her bachelor's degree in sociology, she recalls. "I'd been in Israel before and was looking for a way to go back."

Her Otzma experiences - including tracks at the Ibim absorption center, an air force base, the development town of Kiryat Gat, and at Kibbutz Kinneret - were training her, indirectly, for a career choice. She now works in programming for the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center.

Valley resident Lisa Levy, who went to the University of Arizona, participated in Otzma, 1999-2000.

"I did not know my long term career goals," says Levy, as she was nearing graduation. "I needed to get outside an academic setting to be in a community setting ... to do something productive."

She says she received advice to try out Otzma from the U of A Hillel.

A key to Otzma's success and a distinguishing feature from other "Israel experience" programs, participants believe, is the extended, face-to-face connection it provides to everyday life in the Jewish state.

In the mid-1980s, recalls Jeremy Bandler, Project Otzma's New York City-based North American director, "there weren't many programs with the 'encounter' aspect" for young North American Jewish adults seeking to establish or deepen connections with Israel. Otzma grew out of discussions at conferences between young Israeli and American Jewish leaders on strengthening ties between Israel and their respective next generations.

Otzma "was created as a partnership ... involving the Israel Forum, North American Jewish federations - now represented by the United Jewish Communities - and the Jewish Agency for Israel," Bandler explains.

Encounter meant "not only touring, visiting, but also living in Israel and really getting a sense of what Israeli society is about." In this way, Otzma "was unique, and it still has its niche."

Ground Work
This year 27 federations sent 82 Otzmaniks to 19 Israeli partner localities. Eight participants dropped out, mostly due to parental concern about the violence of the Palestinian Arabs' Al-Aksa intifada, but five eventually returned to the program.

Working with other U.S. and Israeli agencies, Otzma provides a four-track experience, beginning with three months at immigrant absorption centers in Ashkelon or Ibim, near Sderot. Participants are simultaneously "absorbed" along with Russian, Ethiopian, Argentine and other newcomers in Hebrew ulpan (intensive language training) classes in the morning, then work as volunteers for the center or nearby schools in the afternoon.

Levy volunteered at Sderot by working with the kindergarten and tutoring at an after-school youth hall, similar to a YMCA.

Through this grounding in Israel - a crash course in the people, language and society - Otzmaniks "learn how to get around," according to Bandler's Israeli counterpart, David Beker.

Thus prepared, participants follow track two in a town or region partnered with the volunteers' sponsoring federations. For three to four months the project members work in a variety of capacities - from teaching English to working with local officials on long-term planning.

"This is community service ... in schools, old-age homes, community centers, depending on the participants' Hebrew and skills and the communities' needs," Beker says. Art therapy, horse riding therapy for Down's syndrome children, working as a mayor's assistant, tutoring English, teaching drama, assisting a family with an adult son confined by multiple sclerosis to a wheel chair - individuals can customize their track two efforts.

For track two, Levy lived in Kiryat Malachi, the sister city of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.

"I found it warm and inviting ... and had a sense of community there that I had never felt anywhere else," she says.

Her volunteer service was teaching English by playing guitar and pairing lesson plans with pop music, she adds.

Track three is an elective, including an abbreviated version of the L'vnot program's usual three months of neighborhood renewal; a stint with Sarel-Volunteers for Israel, filling in at hospitals or army bases; or - depending on participants' skills - working in a high-technology business.

Other electives, adds Beker, include a stay at the Pardes Institute, studying Jewish texts; volunteering at Israeli offices of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel; or assisting in Israeli Arab schools like the one in Ma'alot Tarshisha. Vetted by security personnel after the outbreak of the intifada, this latter program went on successfully, Beker says.

Track four winds up the 10-month Otzma program with seven weeks working either on a kibbutz or in a youth village.

Levy chose work at a youth village in Hadassim. There, she worked with ninth-graders from problem homes with abusive parents, she says.

Building Involvement
Bandler says 1,164 young adults have completed the program in Otzma's first 15 years. Five- and 10-year follow-up studies showed that "83 percent of the participants say they or someone else in their household contributes to Jewish organizations; 73 percent have done volunteer work for Jewish organization, 66 percent belong to Jewish organizations other than synagogues, and 39 percent have become Jewish communal professionals."

Levy says after Otzma, she is much more concerned about Israeli current events and politics.

"I understand how I need to support Israel from here," she remarks. "Also, I urge others to go and take part and experience what I experienced."

Levy, who works with the American Red Cross as a donor account manager, is also active with the Young Leadership Division of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.

And in order to help recreate a sense of Shabbat she experienced in Israel, Levy says she works with "Raw Kabbalah" - in association with Bethany Friedlander, Joel Friedlander and Dan Siegel - to target young adults who have not found their place in synagogue life.

Though Otzma does not specifically promote aliyah to Israel, Bandler says approximately 50 have immigrated.

Ronit Rahamim, who attended Otzma with Levy, is one of the participants who chose to move permanently to Israel, says Rachel Richter, YLD director.

Ted Farber, the retiring veteran executive vice president of the Greater Washington Jewish Federation, has had Otzma alumni on his staff and estimates that two dozen former participants are active in the area's organized Jewish community. He says "there's a lot of common wisdom, I think, backed up by at least soft studies, that the longer the program (in Israel), ... the greater and longer the impact."

Farber himself spent six months in Israel in 1967, "and almost no one from that program is not either living in Israel or involved professionally or as a volunteer" with Jewish activity in the United States. So it's not surprising to learn that one way the D.C. federation found to support Otzma was by buying an apartment in its sister city of Beit Shemesh for the use of project participants.

Overall, Washington subsidized its eight Otzmaniks this year at $3,000 apiece, not including the cost of the apartment. That excludes airfare, which participants pay for themselves, and omits other significant in-country expenses, among them transportation and board during some of the tracks.

Likewise, the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix has advertised for Otzma, screened candidates and provided funding for participants, says Art Paikowsky, federation executive vice president.

Asked to appraise Project Otzma's strengths and weaknesses, Hillary Cherner cites the self-motivation required of participants. It can be either positive or negative, she says. "It's individualized, and that's great. You get to know Israel, to satisfy your curiosity through multiple experiences. But for people who need more structure, that's a weakness."

For the self-directed and flexible, she definitely would recommend Otzma. For those who want more guidance, she would suggest they think twice.

To Caryn Rosen-Adelman, co-chairwoman of Project Otzma, that's how it should be. Otzma, she stresses, "is not an 'Israel Experience.' And it's not the Jewish Peace Corps." It started as a project, she says, "but it became a model. ... It evolved into this international community" that brings together the North American and Israeli Jewish cultures.

During Otzma's first 15 years, she said, "the post-college environment has changed and the program reshaped itself" to meet participants' needs for professional growth. "Israel was changing, too, and the Israel experiences had to be relevant." Hence the emphasis on using the skills Otzmaniks bring with them, "finding places where they could write business plans, or teach deaf children, if that's their specialty."

Rosen-Adelman, overseas chairwoman of the Chicago federation board, doesn't think Otzma has done a good job of letting Israelis in general know what the project has accomplished. The new Otzma-Atidim component, through the Israel Defense Forces, should help.

Army officials want to boost the number of high schoolers from Israeli development towns able to handle military high-tech and to get into college math and physics programs. But the IDF faces a shortage of tutors. One officer, a project adoptive father, persuaded colleagues to try Otzma, Rosen-Adelman says.

So this August, Otzma, in conjunction with the Israeli military, plans to launch a pilot program. This new track will furnish 20 skilled tutors for a seven-month course preparing Israeli teens for graduation exams in five "peripheral" municipalities chosen by the IDF.

"This is a sector of Israel most programs don't get into," Rosen-Adelman points out. It's also an activity that exemplifies Otzma's approach to Israel, up close and personal."

Eric Rozenman is executive editor of the B'nai B'rith International Jewish Monthly.

Editor Barry Cohen contributed to this story.

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