Werd to the Wise.

Ideal lists of ideas for idealists.

The idealist.org offices located in an anonymous building in midtown, Manhattan are home to one of the most well-known websites today. If you haven’t heard of idealist, you’ve probably never worked with or for a non-profit. Idealist is the nexus of non-profit resources for employment and networking. Their site includes job, intern, and volunteer postings; upcoming programs and events; and profiles on people and organizations.

Idealist was born in the early 1990s, during a time before the internet was what it is today. It was a time when very few people had actually heard of the internet, let alone used it.  “It was like trying to sell TV guide to people without televisions,” Ami Dar, founder of idealist says. The site, which is essentially a network of linked sites, was founded before search engines were designed. “You couldn’t search anything online. We had to just click on links until we found the sites we were looking for.” Almost twenty years later, the site has developed into the online hub of non-profit opportunities.

But it wasn’t always this way. Dar says that up until he was 25, he had “accomplished nothing.” He floated through the typical Israeli trajectory of completing his army service and traveling. When he took a job working for a friend in the early 1990s, he discovered the wonders of the internet. He saw in it powerful potential to answer a question he had wrestled with throughout his life: how to move people from intention to action.

Dar says that if you ask people what keeps them from making a difference, they all say the same 50 or 60 things, whether they’re thinking of potholes in the street or civil conflict in Syria. He finds that all excuses fall into the categories of time, money, power, fear of failure, feeling helpless or hopeless.

While idealist is one means of working to solve this, Dar sees a much more complicated picture, with three main issues coming to the fore. 

First, how do we find real connection in life? “We are overnetworked and underfriended. We think we’re connected, but we’re not. We don’t even know our own neighbors.” Once a year, idealist invites everyone in the building to lunch in their offices. “If you don’t smoke, you may never see these people. And we all work all day together in the same building.”

Second, how do ideas travel? “Before the internet, things were completely different.” Voices had to be louder, actions more drastic. He points to the case of Ted Kaczynski who threatened terrorism unless the New York Times published his ideas. “Today, the unibomber would just be a blogger.” How do we spread ideas today? How can we harness the internet to spread the word about building a global network to connect how to connect intention with action, people with people, and spread ideas?

But perhaps the most resounding question is how to move people from online to offline. “How do you inspire people to stand up and get out there? How can we help move people to act on the issues they care about?” 

Dar leans back in his chair and sighs. “With the internet, everyone knows everything. You just have to go and do it.”

What Does It Remember Like?

“Jews have six senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing … memory. While Gentiles experience and process the world through the traditional senses, and use memory only as a second-order means of interpreting events, for Jews memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks – when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather’s fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain – that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like?”

-JSF

How Good It Is

It’s easy to forget how lucky we are sometimes, to get upset and angry about things that won’t actually matter next week, next month, next year. Time for a step back to think about what does matter this Thanksgiving.

I’m so thankful for my parents. Saying that they are “the shit” would be a vast understatement. They support, they encourage, they inspire. I think I’m slowly becoming more like them the older I get, and I think that I might be ok with that.

I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve had by virtue of my skin color and socioeconomic class, being born where I was, when I was, to whom I was. I am so thankful for the luxuries of going to school where I want, to study what I want, to travel where I want, and work in what I want.

I’m thankful for my schvestie-bestie. There’s something pretty amazing about having family you’re close to and there’s something pretty fabulous about great friends and when those forces combine, you’re just left with a whole lot of amazing fabulosity.

I’m thankful for this ceasefire that will hopefully end this conflict that has unfolded in Gaza and the internets, pitting us against each other in a nausea-inducing “for us or against us” mentality, and lead the way to a more productive solution.

I’m thankful for food, that we can eat enough food tonight that will leave us all in comas on the living room couch, and not think twice about it. I’m thankful that I’ve never needed to think twice about it.

I am thankful for my Tribe, who have taught me who I am and where I’m from. Among other things, I am thankful for their help in leaving Egypt, their teachings and words of wisdom, and their scholarships to live in Israel.

I’m thankful for trees and other green things. I always forget how much I like them until I flee New York for greener pastures. Sometimes I need the the reminder that we weren’t here first. Oh, and for the oxygen they give us. Maybe that’s why people in New York are so crazy.

I’m thankful for the revival of the MTA post-Sandy. I’ve never loved the JMZ train more (though more accurately, I had never loved it at all). I’m thankful for those professionals behind it all who got our city running again, and the everyday people who gave their hearts, time and energy when it was needed most. But let’s not relegate Sandy to our two-week timeframe of caring and forget that volunteers are still needed.

I’m thankful for finding those who cross the lines we draw between friends, family, mentors, colleagues. I’m thankful for colleagues who are friends, friends who are mentors, and mentors who are family. They keep me sane, grounded, and growing, and for that, I am forever thankful.

Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

"Drawing a Crooked Line Between Right and Wrong"

Dear New York,

New York, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed the corner bodegas and music in the streets, the all night traffic, the seasons. I missed you more than I ever thought I would. I guess that’s why I’m back.

I wasn’t sure I’d be back. I thought I’d had enough of my world here. I’d grown out of the village. So I found a new world.

Brooklyn, I do believe I love you. You are everything I needed you to be. You’re different, grittier, harder. Now, let’s see what you can do.

Tikva Levi, Remembered

This past week, I learned of the passing of Tikva Levi, the director of the NGO Hila for Equality in Education, an organization where I volunteered throughout my year in Tel Aviv. I was so fortunate to have met her and become involved in her work. It soon became clear to me how important her work was, how great a need there was for it, how many peoples lives she had affected. Tikva was fierce. She stood up for what she believed in and she fought for it. Throughout her life, she struggled for herself and later for others. Here is an interview I did with her in the spring. We listen, we record, we remember.

An interview with Tikva Levi, Director of Hila

I’ve been the director of Hila for 25 years, since finishing my degree in Hebrew literature. When I was a student, I was active in social justice issues and looked for work in the field. Hila had just started and I began to work there and really felt like I had found my place. I had grown up in a neighborhood of activists in Ashkelon and there I really saw that only four or five students from my grade in elementary school finished high school with their bagrut (matriculation exams) and from what I know, I was the only one who made it to university. This situation did not seem logical or just. There is no reason why others exactly like me did not receive the same opportunity to obtain higher education and advance in life.

The main thing that I liked about Hila was their work with parents. We don’t make changes in the system as an organization versus the system. We empower parents so that the change will also come from them, in two ways: First, change in the home. The parents will create a good learning environment and do simple things like sign up for a library card to encourage their children. The second type of change will come from giving parents the information, tools, and strength to make changes themselves in their communities and schools. I know that this is longer and exhausting but I don’t believe in “instant revolutions.” You must go step by step, house by house, and community by community. That is the most important thing that Hila does. We try to give people the strength to change and give them the tools to make that change. We don’t see ourselves as people making change for the parents because the moment we leave, we don’t want things to go back to how they were so we must put tools for change in the hands of the parents.

Hila is open to opportunities. In the beginning, we did courses for parents, later we developed private consultation. Hila became one of the most well-known organizations because of our parent struggles against unfair and unsubstantiated referrals to special education. There were times when at the start of every school year, 50-60 parents would be up in arms and wouldn’t send their children to schools because they were forced into special education classes. Some kept their children at home for over a year. There were many struggles and Supreme Court cases and as a result the Ministry of Education released new regulations that emphasized parent rights in the allocation to special education. For example, up until 1996 parents were not allowed to access written material, i.e. psychological tests and school assessments on their children, in the placement committees,. So we took it to the courts! We argued that this just cannot be; it is like a person being held in jail without knowing his sentence!

This was one of the prominent achievements in the 1990s, in addition to cutting in half the number of children in special education from over 60,000 to 32,000. Today we’re coping with the same issues we’ve been dealing with in the past but now with other, additional things. We are fighting battles that we did not have in the past like the conversion of public schools to private schools. It is a big struggle but we are fighting this battle with teachers and so we often succeed. In Maale Iron, for example, a number of Arab villages in the north succeeded in keeping their school from privatizing. In other places, we work with parents who must pay increasing school fees, which is another part of increasing privatization. The whole idea of free education is a joke because parents are now paying hundreds of shekels to schools, especially in religious schools. Today we are also dealing with increasingly problematic selection processes. Before, when students lagged behind in class they could do the same year again but now children are divided into tracks in kindergarten already according to psychological examinations and teacher reports. And the bagrut (matriculation diploma) are more confusing. Which topics and how many points in each topic and which track will it qualify for. Students themselves need much more information and tools because a good bagrut is needed to qualify for university. These are not equal opportunities at all.

The future? I’m not sure, because from the perspective of the government policy, it does not look like things are advancing and not just in education but in all aspects. Things are getting worse. There are schools for the poor and schools for the rich and this cycle will just continue and worsen. But I hope that we at Hila and other organizations also working in social justice will succeed in getting more people engaged, people who are not content with this situation. People who will say stop! This is what I hope.

Like Leave It To Beaver, Only Drunk

People are sometimes shocked when I tell them I’ve lived in some comparatively bizarre places like Accra, the capitol of Ghana and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. They give me a blank stare tinged with confusion as if to say, “but why?” After this summer, I can now say that Princeton, New Jersey feels no less bizarre.

When I first moved to Princeton, I felt like I was living on the movie set for Pleasantville or Leave It To Beaver. The hedges are trimmed, the lawns manicured, the flowers in bloom, the birds chirping. Children play in front yards and there are ice cream stores on every block. People smile as they drive by, call out greetings to their neighbors. They even stop for you when you’re walking.

It was a hard transition from Jaffa to Princeton. I hated it at first. I missed the noise of Jaffa, the music of Jaffa, the people of Jaffa. I missed the pounding subwoofers and the call to prayer, the people yelling from their windows, the nightly fireworks, the horses interspersed with cars. I missed hearing tangles of Hebrew and Arabic and English. Princeton could not have felt further away. Everything is clean and quiet and controlled, and everyone is whiter than White-Out. 

But once I started to settle in, I began to really see Princeton. It’s pretty. I forgot how pretty trees are. It’s nice to bike around without someone almost running you over at every corner. And the people are real. The ice cream stores are only outnumbered by liquor stores. I heard a neighbor threatening to call the police over her next-door neighbor’s dog continually shitting on her front stoop. That’s real life and I like that.

I won’t miss living in Princeton but do appreciate the reminder of the value in a deeper look.  Onto Philly and then next stop, Brooklyn. Stay tuned.