Building Relationships

The Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven contributes funds to international Jewish agencies and organizations to support and promote Jewish life in sixty countries around the world.

The Israel/Overseas Taskforce
The Israel/Overseas Taskforce, is charged by the Board of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven to coordinate the community's efforts on behalf of Israel and Jews in peril worldwide. The goal of the taskforce is to increase Israel awareness, to educate the community about issues relating to Israel and about Jewish communities outside Israel, and to strengthen the voice of Israel advocacy

The taskforce has a Speakers' bureau, formed in conjunction with the ADL, of trained individuals available to speak in the community about Israel, her history and her struggle for survival. There are also individuals involved in media watch and letter writing, responding to inaccurate reporting or anti-Israel editorials in the press.

The New Haven Israel/Overseas taskforce is represented on the Statewide CT Israel Advocacy Taskforce coordinated by the ADL, the AJC and JFACT.

Joint Distribution Committee
Amid the 20th century's turbulence, American Jewry remained the only community of size to escape calamity or significant threat. This relative security ensured that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), our overseas arm, would become an indispensable agent of aid to the world's battered Jews.

Indeed, the Joint has been involved in aiding Jewish victims of virtually every disaster to befall world Jewry over the past 86 years. It brings, as its credo proclaims, "Rescue, Relief and Reconstruction" to Jews in 85 countries, fulfilling its commitment to the idea that all Jews are
responsible for one another and that "To save one person is to save a world". – Talmud

The JDC is funded primarily through United Jewish Communities (UJC), which is supported mainly by Jewish federations throughout the United States, including the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven.

The Jewish Agency for Israel
The Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) is dedicated to cultivating Israel-Diaspora relationships and to increasing prosperity within the State of Israel. Assisting immigration to Israel claims a significant portion of JAFI's budget with services such as:

• Pre-immigration preparation and absorption centers
  
• Hebrew language ulpanim (learning programs)
  
• Resettlement programs
  

JAFI has close to 500 emissaries in 37 countries throughout the world including some 150 teachers. JAFI is also involved in worldwide Jewish-Zionist education, and youth programs now exist in 26 cities and more than 150 outlying towns in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Jewish Agency for Israel has been an essential instrument of nation building
in Israel for almost seventy years. More than 700,000 new immigrants have come to Israel from the FSU since 1990.

• Helped rescue and absorb 2.5 million immigrants
  
• Established 885 settlements throughout Israel
  
• Helped settlements in the Galilee and the Negev achieve economic independence
  
• Cared for 400,000 children
  
• Transformed 100 disadvantaged neighborhoods
  

The Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven raises funds that provide financial support for programs and humanitarian services for Israel and in 60 countries throughout the world.

Partnership 2000
The Federation is committed to establishing relationships with the people of Afula and Gilboa by sharing in the development of mutually beneficial programs and by participating meaningfully in the budgeting and distribution of Partnership 2000 funds through the Joint Steering Committee.
Partnership 2000, a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) funded by United Jewish Communities (UJC), has focused Israel-Diaspora relations on having partnering regions in Israel and North America to fulfill needs on a equal and shared basis.

The goals of Partnership 2000 are:

• To assist newcomers to Israel
  
• To create programs which benefit both partners
  
• To encourage cooperation between the city of Afula and the surrounding Gilboa region of 8 kibbutzim, 15 moshavim, and 5 Arab villages.
  
• To establish relationships with partners in the Southern New England Consortium (SNEC), which includes the nine Connecticut federations, three Massachusetts federations, and the Rhode Island Federation.

HaEmek Hospital is a beneficiary of the Partnership 2000 program. The hospital’s professional staff cares for Jews and Arabs from throughout northern Israel. Through medical routine and emergency, through peaceful times and political struggles, the hospital staff, nearly half Jewish and half Arab, demonstrates the possibility of cooperative coexistence.

Click here to learn how you can travel to Israel with a UJC mission.

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Teen Emissary Program
Since 2001, the Greater New Haven Jewish community has welcomed two teen emissaries from our Partnership 2000 region, Afula/Gilboa in Israel. They joined us through the Young Emissary Program, in its pilot year in New Haven. The two eighteen-year-olds have been selected from among the top 70 youth leaders in the region to serve for one year as a National Service project prior to their army enlistment. A lay committee welcomes, hosts and facilitates their integration and contribution to the Greater New Haven Jewish Community. Members from many congregations are involved in this exciting project.

The teens will be working as Israeli specialists leading activities, holiday and Israel programming, and enhancing their “mentor sites” with spirit and creativity. Their primary work is with the Jewish Federation’s Department of Jewish Education, Ezra Academy and the JCC, Congregation B’nai Jacob, MAKOM, and other area synagogues and senior care facilities in the area. In addition, the teens will participate in the upcoming Israel Desk outreach education program for public schools. To learn more, please contact Israel Desk email.

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