A new, pro-Israel campaign may be coming to a living room near you.
The effort, dubbed Israel Neighbor to Neighbor, seeks to educate Jews and non-Jews alike about the Middle East conflict by holding informal coffee talks in homes throughout the Bay Area.
Volunteer speakers will give presentations and moderate discussions with gatherings of about 20 people. Organizers hope to provide a casual and comfortable setting that promotes better understanding and a deeper bond to the Jewish state.
“We’re looking for people to host and invite their friends,” said Steve Berley, director of Israel programs for the Jewish Community Relations Council.
The project is being launched jointly by the JCRC and the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay.
It comes in response to what is viewed by some in the Jewish community as a vitriolic and lopsided debate locally over Mideast politics. “A lot of people in the general population have heard the Palestinian perspective,” said Berley.
“Let’s teach them the other side of the story, let’s teach them something that’s more historically accurate.”
Riva Gambert, director of the East Bay federation’s Israel Task Force, said that while the message is pro-Israel, organizers welcome differing opinions. “We’re unabashedly pro-Israel as well as recognizing there’s a diversity of opinion in Israel about how best to have peace.”
The ultimate goal, she said, is “strengthening the Israel-American connection.”
The campaign is modeled after a grassroots effort started last year by Rosalind Franklin Jekowsky of Tiburon.
Jekowsky decided to invite 20 to 25 friends over for coffee and discussion because she was alarmed by “a lot of anti-Israel sentiment” in the Bay Area. “I just needed to do something,” she said.
At the gathering last spring, she provided literature from local Jewish agencies, photocopied maps of the region and gave some historical background.
Since that first session, Jekowsky said there have been about eight more coffees in Marin and San Francisco led by volunteer speakers who are active with the JCRC, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and other organizations.
The goal is to “inform and educate, but in a very comfortable and nonthreatening way,” she said.
“It’s not antagonistic. This has to be a friendly environment.”
By the time the evening was over, a dozen people had signed up to host coffees of their own.
“The wonderful thing is it just regenerates,” she said.
Berley and Gambert now hope to take that concept to homes throughout the area as soon as they can line up volunteer hosts.
“This is really geared for people who are less familiar with the conflict,” Berley said. “It’s about bringing people up to speed and educating them.”
Berley already has a list of some eight to 10 speakers, including himself and Yitzhak Santis, the JCRC’s director of Middle East affairs. In the East Bay, Gambert said some two dozen speakers, both scholars and lay experts, have been trained.
For people already familiar with the basics, the JCRC and East Bay federation recently started a “Pathways to Peace” program.
Targeted for synagogues, community centers and other venues, that effort involves large-group discussions about President Bush’s “road map” to Mideast peace and related issues, Berley said.
The two outreach efforts have been added to ongoing community programs at the JCRC that are intended to support Israel. One of them is a “rapid response” e-mail system that notifies community members of troubling events and media reports, suggesting letter-writing and other possible responses.
“There are a lot of people who want to do something and are not sure how,” Berley explained.
The notion behind the living room chats is to offer people a “more comfortable setting than going to a lecture.”
Berley hopes the coffees will become an ongoing program throughout the Bay Area.
Speakers will provide a general history of Israel, the Middle East and the Palestinian conflict through a pro-Israel lens, he said.
“Our focus is on understanding rather than sound-bites.”
Gambert will try to tailor speakers to the interests expressed by hosts and their guests. Possible topics could include the peace process, civil rights or women’s issues in Israel.
“We’re hoping that we’ll increase our outreach by going to where people are, namely their homes and the homes of their neighbors,” she said.