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(Afula, Israel Tuesday May 10, 2005).   Today is our family reunion and there isn’t a cousin in sight.  Our skin colors are black, white, and brown, yet we were born continents apart. We speak at least ten different languages. Some of us are doctors and lawyers; some of us lived in straw huts and were taught to use forks.  What connects us all is an ancient sliver of geography where legends hide under rocks, and every street sign tells a story…Israel.

Zahava is one of us. She is a 19-year-old widowed Israeli immigrant from Ethiopia with two toddlers who didn’t understand clocks. Her husband was killed by army soldiers before she was airlifted to Israel. She’d wake up with the sun, dress and feed her children, drop them at them “gan” (kindergarten) stoop at 5AM, and then head off to work. They waited alone until school opened at 9 AM. She didn’t know any better. Zahava  couldn’t tell time, hold a pencil, sit in a chair, or turn to the next page of a book.

This is one of many incredible stories revealed to Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford Mission members on a full day visit to Afula, population 43,000, in northern Israel. Twenty-five years ago, Afula and the Hartford Jewish federation began a unique social and philanthropic experiment called Project Renewal. It has blossomed into Partnership 2000 – Southern New England Consortium, involving  the family of Jewish communities in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. SNEC is a multi-faceted, people-to-people program targeting education, welfare, health and community empowerment. Students exchange places and there is constant flow of ideas and people.

In Hadera, Vice Mayor Robert Avramovich introduced us to our extended Juhuri-speaking Kavkazi family originally from the Caucaus mountains of Georgia and Azerbijan, Russia. High mountains, deep valleys and dense forests kept this culture intact for centuries, but they were cut off from the West.  There are over 100,000 Kavkazi Jews in Israel today, with large families and unique needs.  Several years ago, their teen drop out rate was 25%. With JDC intervention, it dropped to 14% in 1998, still high compared to Israel’s national dropout rate of 4%. We bid them “Shalom,” marveling at the children’s energetic music and dance stage revue.

Today our group reunited with former Connecticut Israeli teen emissaries – many now Israel Defense Force soldiers. Former Shaliach (Emissary), Asaf Ron, greeted us at lunch with the new crop of candidates applying for next year’s exchange program. Our visit was on a tight schedule. Traffic and routine life abruptly halts with the 8PM sounding of sirens tonight, Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day. The visiting young soldiers were due at memorial services at their bases.

Afula is 90 minutes northeast of Tel Aviv, a busy modern city home to high tech corporations, swank restaurants and cosmopolitan boulevards lined with boutiques, book stores and internet cafes.  For Yom Hazikaron, shopkeepers locked up early, businesses will remain shut for 24 hours. Couples quietly filed in holding hands, parents brought bundled up children to Kikar Rabin, joining our Mission and 20,000 others for Tel Aviv’s solemn outdoor memorial ceremony.   Three large screens broadcast images of young men and women,  with artwork created in childhood, flickering Yahrzeit (memorial) candles, interviews with parents, battle scenes from 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, Lebanon and the Intifada.  Poets, singers, musicians, the mayor of Tel Aviv and Israel Defense Forces officials addressed the crowd. No cell phones, no disruptions, no standing until the Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem.

The father of one soldier said: “We are a beautiful family with a big hole in our heart and in our life. There is no comfort, but we go on and build something with the pieces.”  Tonight our family cried together.