OU Community Partnership Program

A simple, powerful, meaningful way
to help take care of our family in Israel

Many basic social service needs in Israel are being exacerbated and left unattended to due to the worsening matsav. There are many Israeli communities, organizations, families, even units of soldiers thirsting for the kind of support and attention your synagogue could easily provide through small drives and projects. The Orthodox Union is compiling a list of community profiles, liaisons, and twinning projects to help you connect with an appropriate community in Israel. Please see the following page for sample project ideas, discuss the idea with your synagogue, and find the community that is right for you.

For help connecting with a community, youth center, family of a terror victim, or others, please call Tobey at 212-613-8399 or email herzogt@ou.org. If you are already linked, please feel free to use these suggestions and register your synagogue and community by calling or emailing Tobey.

OU Community Partnership Projects
These suggestions are just to get you started. Please let us know if you have a particularly successful program that we can share with other communities!!!

Realistic expectations
Discuss what each of your communities can expect:
Can a representative from the Israeli community come to speak in the US community
Will the US community send members to the Israeli community?
Fundraising/drives (scope)
Frequency & types of communication between whom?

Communicate!
Share news of simchas, and chas v’shalom, tragedies. News that effects your communities. Members’ personal interest stories about great accomplishments or unique experiences, or questions each might have. Link one another’s websites. News of members traveling between Israel/US. Posts in bulletin or special inserts.

Projects

Sharing Simchas & Refuah Sheleimahs
• Come up with a gift or gesture to send your sister community on the occasion of simchas: Bar/Bat Mitzvah, weddings, etc. (flowers, a sefer, a jersey, something unique to your community, donation, etc.). Survey your community for the best ideas (easily shipped or ordered)!
• Announce their simchas in your bulletin (post email/mailing address?)
• Exchange misheberach lists weekly. One may choose to summarize the circumstance to the other community.

Make a Kid Smile Campaign (Whenever a member plans a trip to Israel)
• Arts & crafts supplies, toys, games, English books, school supplies, clothing, Purim costumes, first aid supplies… all of these are expensive in Israel and badly needed for families, youth centers, and schools. Post a notice announcing when and where to drop off the called-for items (call the Israel liaison for what is needed then) and run a drive through the synagogue and deliver it through members traveling to Israel.
• Discretionary Fund
Dedicate a fundraising event to raising money for the community. A carnival, an “athon,” or sale of “Shabbat cards” (cards that indicate a donation made in lieu of hostess gifts).

Celebrate Chagim Together
• Rosh Hashanah: Collect and send Shana Tovah cards (pen pal opportunity)
• Sukkot: Have the students make sukkah decorations with their pictures to be sent to the children in the Israeli community. Each can send their address if they would like a pen pal.
• Chanukah: Use your imagination!
• Purim: Exchange communal shalach manos, signed by the entire kehillah
• Passover: A message of ge’ulah from Israel.
• Shavuot: Send a bouquet of flowers to one another

Help Israel Center | www.ou.org