Israeli-born educator Metuka Benjamin is fond of the Theodor Herzl quote, “Im tirtzu ein zo agadah,” Hebrew for, “If you will it, it is no dream.” It’s a sentiment she applied to her life’s work building Jewish day schools in Los Angeles. And it’s a notion the Jewish educator is applying to her latest initiative: Connect Israel.
In the Diaspora Jewish community, there’s no shortage of organizations that focus on bringing young Jewish adults on short but impactful trips to Israel. While Birthright Israel is the most well-known, there are countless other groups that provide the coveted demographic of 20- and 30-somethings with the opportunity to familiarize themselves, up close and personal, with the Jewish state.
For Benjamin, the key question was: How do you keep them engaged with the Jewish State after they’ve returned to the United States? “Many participants of these programs have been frustrated there was no ‘day after’ to involve them beyond their trip,” she said. “I’m trying to change that.”
A recent Pew Report showed the growing disconnect between young American Jews and Israel. It’s precisely for this reason that Benjamin has undertaken the new initiative. Dr. Stephen Marmer, a Los Angeles-based psychiatrist and the founding chairman of Connect Israel, explained that Benjamin realized that to cement a deeper connection between American Jewry and Israel, “she needed to establish an organization that had an ongoing, hopefully lifetime interaction, based both on business and professional interests, but also personal interests.”
A recent Pew Report showed the growing disconnect between young American Jews and Israel. It’s precisely for this reason that Benjamin has undertaken the new initiative.
Designed for those ages 30-42 who’ve achieved midcareer professional success, Connect Israel is a multidimensional, experiential and, most importantly, lifelong program with the aim to strengthen American-Jewish and Israeli bonds by offering unprecedented experiences, professional collaborations and friendships between American Jews and their Israeli counterparts.
Those who participate get more than a trip to Israel. The program includes a leadership network, career acceleration, workshops and mentorship. The only criteria for being accepted into the program is the person must’ve traveled to Israel on an organized program in the past. “My goal is that the American-Jewish visionaries of tomorrow have a lifelong relationship with the State of Israel,” Benjamin, founder and CEO of Connect Israel, said in a recent interview at her home in Westwood. “We’re investing in a Jewish future.”
“My goal is that the American-Jewish visionaries of tomorrow have a lifelong relationship with the State of Israel … We’re investing in a Jewish future.” – Metuka Benjamin
Founded in 2019, the program is highly subsidized, though participants are responsible for paying for their travel to Israel, where they spend approximately one week. Benjamin says that while she’d initially intended for the program to be free, she quickly realized those participating in Connect Israel had the means to pay for aspects of the program. Early participants of Connect Israel readily agreed to paying for their own travel, she said.
But Connect Israel is “not a sightseeing trip,” Benjamin emphasized. While participants of other programs visit the Western Wall, the Dead Sea and Masada, Connect Israel reaches people at a different, more mature stage in their lives.
Participants spend their days differently than they would on other trips. Their time in Israel includes meeting high-level experts in numerous fields, including communications expert Frank Luntz; journalist Khaled Abu Toameh; Amir Hayek, the first Israeli ambassador to the United Arab Emirates; and OurCrowd CEO Jonathan Medved, named one of Israel’s 50 most influential Jews by The Jerusalem Post.
As of 2022, the United Arab Emirates has also entered the mix. The Abraham Accords — which saw four Arab countries, including the UAE, normalize relations with Israel — has allowed Connect Israel to expand and include midcareer professionals from UAE in the program as well. In 2022, participants of Connect Israel traveled to Dubai and Abu Dhabi — a visit, Benjamin said, that “opened the door for future relations, investment and opportunity.” The group met with UAE Minister of Tolerance Sheik Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahyan, among others.
A Lifelong Educator
Those who know Benjamin — whose first name, “Metuka,” is Hebrew for “sweet” — know she has two passions: Jewish education and Israel. In pursuit of the former, she spent more than four decades leading the Stephen Wise and Milken day school communities in Los Angeles before retiring from the position of Milken Community School president in 2018.
Born in 1936, in Tel Aviv, before Israel was officially declared a nation-state for the Jewish people, Benjamin was raised by a Lithuanian father and American mother. She spent her early life in Israel — where her father opened an American-style ice cream company, Kar Tiv — until the family emigrated from Israel to the U.S. and settled in New York. At the time, Benjamin was 15. Later, she attended Columbia University’s Jewish Theological Seminary, where she received a master’s degree in Jewish education.
After moving to Los Angeles, her introduction to Jewish education was working as a teacher at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills. There she met Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin; they co-founded Wise’s educational system, which today includes an early childhood center and elementary school. Their efforts, according to Jewish education experts, legitimized the idea of Reform Jewish day schools.
Alongside with pioneering work in Jewish education lasting more than four decades, Benjamin always kept her eye on Israel. For decades, she’s fundraised for causes there close to heart, including for the Israeli air force, the country’s hospitals and for populations living on the peripheries of Israeli society, including the Ethiopians.
The extent to which she, an Israeli expatriate, has been embraced by Israel is uncommon. In 2005, she and Canadian philanthropist Charles Bronfman were selected to light the Independence Day torches in Israel during an annual ceremony on Mount Herzl, a rare honor for Israelis who’ve left the country.
Marmer attended the Yom HaAtzmaut ceremony in Israel where Benjamin was honored with torch-lighting duties. The two have known each other for decades, their relationship dating back to Benjamin’s school-building days.
“She’s a dynamo,” Marmer said. “She’s got unbelievable energy, creativity, passion. She’s just a phenomenon. I count it among my great blessings to have been her friend for so many decades.”
Benjamin attributes much of her success to her mentor, the late Rabbi Zeldin. A formidable fundraiser, supporter of Israel and believer in Jewish education, Zeldin taught Benjamin the way to attract supporters of any new endeavor is to “sweeten the pie,” she said — meaning to offer it at no charge. “To me, my hero was Rabbi Zeldin,” Benjamin said. “I learned a lot from him, and from his wife, Florence Zeldin.”
Connect Israel Fellows
Participants of Connect Israel — or “fellows,” as Benjamin calls them — have come from a variety of professional backgrounds. One fellow is entertainment attorney Eden Rachel Cohen. Cohen said her experiences with Connect Israel have been invaluable. One of the highlights, she said, was meeting with Luntz. The successful communications consultant and pollster taught Cohen strategies she’s since incorporated into her work, she said.
For Cohen, meeting with Luntz as well as other “high level” leaders was a gamechanger. “The level of access was amazing, the people we met were so high level, and I can’t imagine going to any other country and being welcomed by the leaders of a nation in this way,” Cohen said. “The amount of time we got to spend with the Israelis was unlike any other program that I’ve been on. The way the Israelis opened their workplaces and homes to us formed a basis for a lifelong relationship with all the people we got to meet.”
Another fellow, Alex Weil, is a software engineer at Google. Prior to his trip with Connect Israel, he’d been to the country approximately 20 times, including four trips while in middle school and high school at Milken Community School. However, before his Connect Israel experience, he hadn’t developed any relationships with other young professionals in Israel. That all changed because of Connect Israel. During his trip, he spent his days meeting business and tech leaders while enjoying shared experiences with Israelis at a similar stage in their lives.
Connect Israel was “different than any of the organized trips I’ve done in Israel,” Weil, 28, said in a phone interview. “There was an assumed familiarity already with Israel. No one had to learn what Tel Aviv or Jerusalem was … I loved going to the Dead Sea and Masada, but I don’t need to do that again. The goal was to learn things I wouldn’t learn in other contexts, so [with] some of the speakers who were on the agenda, there was an opportunity to get insights and make connections with Israelis I wouldn’t have [otherwise had] the chance to do.”
Daniel Siegel, 29, learned about the organization through his former boss, Luntz. He joined Connect Israel on its inaugural trip in 2019, and he returned to Israel as a Connect Israel fellow in 2022. The latter trip included several days in the UAE, with the group spending time in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
From the beginning, Siegel, a L.A.-based tech communications strategist, saw his participation in Connect Israel as an opportunity to “broaden and deepen my commitment and interest in Israel,” he said in a phone interview.
Ultimately, it is precisely these ongoing connections between Americans and Israelis that sets Connect Israel apart, Marmer said. “We’re trying to establish meaningful relationships and be a catalyst for ongoing business and personal interchange.”
What’s Next?
Benjamin is pleased with the early successes of Connect Israel, but she has her mind on even more growth. For one, she’d like to facilitate the involvement of the spouses of the current fellows. Additionally, she’d like to find ways to engage young adults who are ages 26-29.
Since Oct. 7, the organization has adopted three kibbutzim in Israel — kibbutzim Nir Am, Nahal Oz and Holit — and is supporting the development of early childhood programs in the three Gaza-adjacent communities.
“We’re trying to help them raise money,” Tomer Nitzan, a Connect Israel fellow from Israel, said in a phone interview from his home in Tel Aviv. “They’re like refugees in their own country at this point.”
Nitzan, 42, became involved with Connect Israel through his association with Stephen Wise Temple summer camps, where he worked as a counselor. When he first became active in Connect Israel, it was in 2022. At the time, many of his conversations with fellows from the U.S. were focused on the protests over judicial reform in Israel. After Oct. 7, however, many of the discussions—mostly held over Zoom—have been about the ongoing war.
As the head of the U.S.-Israel desk for BDO, a leading accounting and consulting firm in Israel, he routinely travels back and forth between Israel and the U.S., and he can visit with fellows who live here. His experience is proof that Connect Israel has been successful, he said, in “ensuring there is a constant relationship between the Jewish communities in the U.S. and the State of Israel.”
Led by a board that includes L.A. husband-and-wife Julie and Peter Weil; former Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles Jacob Dayan; and Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Connect Israel is seeking financial support from the community.
Benjamin readily admits fundraising is not her forte — she’s more comfortable focusing on recruitment, education and developing the programmatic aspects of Connect Israel, she said. But the need for philanthropic support is a reality, and she’s hoping the community recognizes the value in what Connect Israel’s offering.
She says she’s not trying to take away from the Israel-focused programs that are already out there, be it Birthright Israel or something else. Rather, Connect Israel provides the next step in strengthening ties between the Diaspora American-Jewish community and Israelis, she said. “The whole thing is Am Echad,” Benjamin said, using the Hebrew term for “one people.” “We want it to spread everywhere.”
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