'Phis We k

Cover Story

iiimersed
In Israel

For 15 years, Project Otzma has quietly built lasting
involvement in Jewish life for young adults.

ERIC L. ROZENMAN
Jewish Renaissance Media

Washington

Iff

ichael Rabkin graduated
from the University of
Colorado in only three
years, but rather than
immediately pursuing a "dot corn" job
in Silicon Valley, he wanted to spend
meaningful time in Israel. That desire
led him to Project Otzma.
Rabkin found his 10 months in
Israel "an eye-opener."
"You meet real people, off the beat-
en path. We were immersed in a cul-
ture ... and not [Jerusalem's] Ben
Yehuda mall culture" for the 'trendy
and the tourist.
Otzma, now celebrating its 15th
year, has a i rack record of intensifying
the Israel connection of a corps of
young Jewish adults and promoting

Eric L. Rozerunan is executive editor of the

ffnai Brith International Jewish Monthly

7/6

2001

14

their long-term involvement in organ-
ized Jewish life, often as professionals.
That has been the case for Rabkin,
for whom the program in 1996 was a
voyage of self-discovery.
His Otzma activities, he recalls, were
"a nice blend between structured and
individualized programs." They includ-
ed work in a kibbutz peach orchard
and plastics plant, directing a children's
Chanukah concert at an Ashkelon
absorption center, helping teenaged
Russian immigrants in Nazareth Illit
stage cultural events, and reviewing
employee expense reports at an
Internet firm in Herzliya.
Rabkin, who is from
Cincinnati, also shared an
apartment with three other
Ohio Otzma-niks in the
Arab-Jewish town of Akko.
Among other things, they
tutored Ethiopian students at
a community college and
converted a bomb shelter into
a clubhouse for psychiatric
outpatients.

Back in the States in 1997, Rabkin
still was 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. Then; he 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,

Calif., one works for the federation in
Philadelphia, and the third is studying
at the Wurzweiler School of Social
Work at NYU."

Life-Changing Experience

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 it
business. Instead, Otzma annually
immerses 70-80 young men and

Melissa Ellstein, 22,
of East Lansing, left,
wanted to return to Israel
ever since her first visit
at 16 Her mother,
Carol, right, visited
Melissa on Federation's
mission in January

