At dusk on May 26, in the courtyard of Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills, smartly dressed Angelenos sipped scotch and swiped sushi from hors d’oeuvres trays. Two figures stood out: a pair of Israeli Air Force (IAF) personnel in powder-blue uniforms, mingling politely.
The two officers had flown in for the inaugural banquet of the IAF Center Foundation, the Beverly Hills-based fundraising arm of a civilian-military partnership called the IAF Center.
“I can feel the love for Israel in this room,” Lt. Neta Shinekopf, 25, an IAF Center youth instructor, told the guests after everyone had moved inside for the gala.
Framed photographs of Israeli aircraft hung from the ballroom balcony, where the $500-a-plate dinner was held. Before dinner was served, the photos were auctioned for as much as $3,000 apiece.
Though the foundation wouldn’t disclose exactly how much was raised, a spokesperson said it was enough to sponsor 50 Israeli high schoolers to attend the center’s youth leadership training program, which includes a four-day boot camp.
“We’re able to build together a bridge between the force in uniform and the youth,” Brig. Gen. Uri Oron, director of IAF intelligence, who also traveled from Israel to attend the event, told the Journal.
Simcha Salach, executive director of the center, said it was founded some 16 years ago, when a group of air force veterans began looking for a way to give back to the institution responsible for securing Israel’s skies.
Visiting high schools, they began to understand the impact they could have simply by donning their uniforms and speaking with young people.
“We saw the admiration,” Salach said. “We saw how the younger generation are looking at the Israeli Air Force.”
Also at the gala was Lt. Ben (his last name was withheld because he is an active duty combat officer), an IAF fighter pilot originally from New Jersey. He knows firsthand the power of the uniform.
He said a visit to his Hebrew school class by a group of uniformed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers when he was a child in the United States was a formative experience.
“Seeing a solider in uniform was very compelling and made me want to be the same one day,” he said in an interview at the IAF Center Foundation office, wearing the IAF uniform himself.
The IAF Center handles various services, including bereavement support for air force families, and runs a think tank to grapple with questions from air force leaders. But its core function is to inspire leadership and Zionist values among pre-IDF youth.
“The main goal is to enhance the sense of Zionism and patriotism among youngsters, and to instill values, the culture, the history, the stories about the Israeli Air Force,” Shinekopf said.
Besides the heroics for which it is famous, the IAF holds a special status in Israel because of its centrality to the state’s security apparatus, Oron said.
“I cannot imagine almost a single major security issue that the Israeli Air Force is not involved [in],” he said. “So basically we have a very unique perspective.”
At the gala, Salach framed donations to the center as an “investment” in the future of the Jewish state.
“The State of Israel was a miracle, but it took leaders with vision to bring us back to the land that was promised to us,” she said.
In the interview, Salach said the job of nurturing leaders was once taken up by widespread youth movements similar to the Boy Scouts (she was a member of two separate movements growing up). But now, she said, a deficit in leadership looms.
The IAF Center’s youth training program seeks to remedy that. It culminates with an actual flight experience, where trainees see the country they’re defending spreading out beneath them.
Salach added, “The idea is not only to experience flight, but to see Israel from above.”
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