Over at Yeshivat Netiv Tefachot, Rabbi Eyal Greiner told the UJIA much the same thing. Netiv Tefachot, between Tiberias and Karmiel, is a hesder yeshiva — designed for young Orthodox men who serve in the Israeli army in specialist units. It is home to 110 young adults, from high-risk backgrounds and poor urban neighbourhoods. It offers a five-year programme of Torah and practical studies. The students graduate with a thorough knowledge of Jewish sources, a professional qualification where appropriate, and an impressive roster of volunteering at local schools and farms. Thanks to the UJIA and its partner, the Rashi Foundation, a new beit midrash (synagogue) will be built on the Tefachot campus.
Since the yeshiva was first established in 2001, new young families have moved in to the adjoining moshav, and now 100 new plots are being prepared for young couples on Moshav Tefachot.
All of this is the stuff of brochures and glossy hand-outs: what no-one expected was the joyous, dancing and musical welcome to the UJIA donors from the yeshiva members, a genuine, unprompted embrace of the diaspora partnership. Yes, there will be a building at Netiv Tefachot, but it’s plainly the people who make the difference.
Over in the notional capital of the Galilee, Sfat, two Britons, Professor Mary Rudolf and Professor Michael Weingarten, are making a difference in one of the UJIA’s most exciting projects — the brand new Bar-Ilan University Medical School.
Designated by the Israeli government as a national priority initiative, because of the national shortage of doctors, the school aims to breath new life into the Galilee by groundbreaking research and wooing back to Israel top medics who have been working abroad.
Londoner Mary Rudolf is one of them. She was, for 20 years, a consultant paediatrician at Leeds General Infirmary and honorary professor of child health at Leeds University. In January 2012 she joined fellow Brit Michael Weingarten, vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine, to become professor of public health.
The UJIA is one of four partner organisations, working with the Israeli government, which have enabled the core buildings of the campus to be built in a record eight-and-a-half months.
Now the school is educating 120 new medical students and working with all the hospitals in the Galilee, including three in Nazareth. “Our aim,” said Professor Weingarten, “is to bring up a generation of Israeli doctors who are not just technically brilliant, but are truly committed to the patients and the community in which we work.”
Professor Rudolf, using the “vision” word again, added: “This place is a public health dream in the Galilee; and our vision is that this place will transform the region.”
To date there are just 15 faculty members, but they are doing extraordinary research, focusing particularly on two areas: cancer and Alzheimer’s. It is hoped to build the numbers up to 40, bringing them back from Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Oxbridge, to establish labs at the Medical School. President Shimon Peres was in no doubt: “When the faculty is completed,” he said, “it will change the face of Israel.”
Just north of the port city of Akko, another academic institution, supported by UJIA, is trying to do much the same thing. The Western Galilee College (WGC) has recruited the super-smart Brigadier-General Eival Gilady, said to be the “intellectual father” of the Gaza disengagement plan, as its chair of governors. He is also chief executive of the Portland Trust in Israel and the chairman and co-founder of the Israel-Palestinian Chamber of Commerce.
Wearing all these hats Brig-Gen Gilady is helping WGC, academically credited in 1994, to transform itself into the management hub of Israel, with a strong British presence supporting the initiative — Sir Harry Solomon, co-founder of the Portland Trust, is chairman of the WGC board of trustees.
WGC, described as the UJIA’s flagship capital project, is building a state-of-the-art school of management on its its campus, due to be completed by October 2014. The Gilady vision is nothing if not ambitious. “Seventy-five per cent of our students come from families where they are the first generation to have a higher education,” he says. “Fifty-two per cent of the Galilee is not Jewish, and 40 per cent of our students are Arab.
“The real change is the difference we are making to women: 72 per cent of the Arab students are women, and we are transforming their lives.” He has the backing of Cherie Blair, whose foundation is paying for a special women’s empowerment programme at WGC. (Blair herself is receiving an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University in May for her work with women in underprivileged communities.)
Gilady is confident that the economic growth in the Galilee will keep pace with the number of management-savvy, techno-literate graduates whom WGC is turning out each year. Even if he is wrong in the short term, in the long term the huge input of UJIA in the region, and its carefully thought-through projects, are clearly bound to make a difference.
The vision for the Galilee is being methodically planned in the UK. Jewish learning and economic improvement are marching side-by-side. Israelis and their British partners are changing the region, quietly but effectively.
