Participants in the
Otzma program sit
near a stone scultpure
of the Star of David
on Mt. Herzl in
Jerusalem on April 23.
From left to right:
Melissa Ellstein, 22,
East Lansing; Arie
Paller, 21, Los Angeles;
Sharone Blue, 23,
Atlanta; Jennie Allan,
24, Ann Arbor;
and Michael Telpner,
24, Toronto.

women in Israeli life for 10 months.
This up-to-the-elbows participation
takes many forms.
For Melissa Ellstein, 22, of East
Lansing, it meant living in absorption
centers that catered to Jews coming to
Israel from Ethiopia and South
America. "I learned a lot, especially
from the personal stories" of how they
got to Israel, says Ellstein, who joined
the program after graduating from St.
Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.
She also worked in the middle-class
Israeli Arab commis pity of Tarshih?.
There she learned the hopes and fears
of Arab teenagers.
"They're scared, too, about war and
their future," she says, but also not so
different from American teens who
enjoy popular movies and music.
She returned home this May, deter-
mined to work with college-aged
Jewish contemporaries, possibly at a
campus Hillel or at a Jewish
Community Center.
Hillary Cherner, a Chicago native
and 1999-2000 Otzma-nik, also found

her life changed by the experience.
She says she "wasn't ready to look for
a job yet" after getting her bachelor's
degree in sociology at the University of
Colorado. "I'd been in Israel before
and was looking for a way to go back."
Her Otzma experiences — including
stints 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 pro-
gramming for the District of Columbia
Jewish Community Center.
"I would never have thought of doing
that before Otzma — or even right
after," she laughs. But an interest in
event-planning sharpened in Israel, and
an opening at the JCC pointed her way.
A key to Otzma's success and a dis-
tinguishing 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
the next generations.
Otzma (a Hebrew word meaning
"strength") was created as a partner-
ship, 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 real-
ly getting a sense of what Israeli society
is about." In this way, Otzma "is unique,
and it still has its niche," he says.

Ground Work

This year, 27 federations sent 82
Otzma-niks to 19 Israeli partner local-,

ities. Eight participants dropped out,
mostly due to parental concern about
the violence from the recent
Palestinian intifada (uprising), 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 cen-
ters in Ashkelon or Ibim, near Sderot.
Participants are simultaneously
"absorbed" along with Russian,
Ethiopian, Argentinian and other
newcomers in Hebrew ulpan classes in
the morning, then work as volunteers
for the center or nearby schools in the
afternoon.
Through this grounding in Israel —
a crash course in the people, language
and society — Otzma-niks "learn how
to get around," according to Bandler's
Israeli counterpart, David Beker.
Thus prepared, participants follow
track No. 2 in a town or region part-
nered with the volunteers' sponsoring
federations. For three to four months,
project members work in a variety of

7/6
2001