By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
In 1981, 20 graduate students left their academic lifestyles in Berkeley, Calif. to follow a Zionist dream to create more unity and understanding between the diverse ethnicities and religious denominations inside of Israel. Believing the Galilee could be a great learning laboratory for programs about Israeli society and the Jewish world, they started a communal moshav and called it Shorashim.
A part of the Misgav Region Local Council, the Shorashim community is a 5 minute drive from Karmiel, 45 minutes from Safed, Tiberias and Haifa and close to both Jewish and Palestinian-Arab settlements.
Surrounded by mountains and overlooking the Mediterranean, Shorashim is also close to Zippori and Acre, historical sites in the region.
The moshav operated several businesses: a medical imaging company, a tropical fish hatchery, and a seminar center catering mostly to groups of tourists on Israel programs. The center offered a full Galilee hospitality service, including a dining room and guest rooms as well as educational programming.
Moshav Shorashim underwent a grueling privatization process in 1992. Today, 50 families from places such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, England, the U.S. and Israel live there. While it is no longer a communal settlement, it retains a close, community feeling. At the time of privatization, some of the previously communal businesses went bankrupt. Rabbi Marc Rosenstein, along with several partners, bought the seminar center and renamed it Makom Ba-Galil A Place in the Galilee.
Due to the harsh economic climate in Israel, Rosenstein closed the business side of Makom Ba-galil in 2003, but maintained the educational aspect. Instead of offering full service seminars, he currently out-sources the hospitality side and provides a wide variety of educational programming. Dedicated to informal education, he runs a non-profit foundation called the Galilee Foundation for Value Education Shorashim, and offers programs that deal with pluralism and community building, values education, Jewish-Arab cooperation and Israel Diaspora relations.
I think weve really built an institution known for thoughtful educational work, said Rosenstein, who moved to the Galilee in 1990 from Philadelphia along with his wife, Tami, a speech therapist, their three children. Our main goal is an internal goal. Were trying to make life inside Israel better. Internal fault lines have to be fixed, he said.
Rosenstein was recently in Seattle speaking to groups and visiting family. He presented at two engagements: one at Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, and another at Hillel at the University of Washington. His son, Josh Rosenstein is the assistant editor at JTNews.
Rosenstein is a Reform rabbi from Chicago. After graduating Hebrew Union College in New York, he served as an assistant rabbi in Long Island for three years. He earned his doctorate in Modern Jewish History and has extensive experience in teacher in-service training and informal education.
His groups main goal is to build the Galilee into a model of a civilized society using an informal educational technique. They want to bring different people with opposing ideologies together.
The foundations programs focus on bridging three major areas of deep division in Israeli society and the greater Jewish world: Jewish-Arab, Jewish-Jewish and Israel-Diaspora.
The intra-Jewish community work focuses on the differences between the Jewish States Orthodox and non-Orthodox communities.
The foundations work is motivated from a belief in Zionism, an idea which Rosenstein said can unite Israel and the Jewish people along with the values of equality, freedom of conscience, and religious and ethnic pluralism.
One of the foundations more innovative programs, a Galilee Circus, tries to make a difference in the lives of Israelis and Arabs within Israel by encouraging each group to get to know the other.
Located at the center, the circus has places for 25 Jewish and Arab children to study at a circus academy.
Theres multiculturalism, trust and making people smile, said Rosenstein. The Circus Academy has 12 Arabs and 12 Jews juggling. We also brought in an Ethiopian performer who did schtick about coming to Israel.
They also run a Neighbors program that develops teen leadership in Galilean Arab villages. Both groups meet and spend time with their peers.
The pluralism and education programs include music, drama, lectures and festivals held in the Culture Center. The pluralism building is a place where local communities can come and study texts together or participate in Bar/Bat Mitzvah workshops. Jewish identity workshops offer lectures and courses for teachers, students and local organizations.
We aspire to be the 92nd Street Y of the Galilee, said Rosenstein. We run lectures, festivals and dramatic presentations with people of different religious backgrounds.
The Galilee Foundation also operates an Israel-Diaspora program that provides seminars and encounters for teens, communal leaders and educators, and they publish an Israel Connection online weekly column.
I think weve established ourselves as a well-done meaningful encounter and we provide it in a very human professional way, added Rosenstein. We had 1,000 visitors last summer in our educational tourism programs. Before the intifada we used to get 5,000.
There is also an intensive two-year seminar for teachers from Pittsburgh and the Galilee on how to teach about Israel. The research division of the Jewish Agency Education Department provides formative evaluations of the Melton Senior Educators Program.
The non-profit receives funding from user fees and supporting agencies in the U.S., including The Mandel Foundation, The New York Federation, and The Abraham Fund, as well as The Jewish Agency, The United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh, Partnership 2000 Karmiel-Misgav, Tzachar, Central Galilee region, The CRB Foundation, The Galilee Foundation and private donors.
A grant from The Mandel Foundation provides for four internships for teachers who want to specialize in informal education.
Seattle teachers and community organizers can send teens to meet Arab-Israelis and teachers who are teaching about Israel and can take seminars.
To find out more about The Galilee Foundation, visit www.galilan.com/hamakom or write to Makom ba-Galil, Galilee Foundation for Value Education Shorashim, Moshav Shorashim, D.N. Misgav 20164, Israel.