PHOTO: Dance students at the Nevatim program in Berlin perform for the Jewish Federations of North America's FRD Leadership Mission Tuesday, July 9. Nevatim is a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is supported by JFNA's overseas allocations through contributions from the annual campaign of local federations. (Wendy Kahn/The Jewish Review)

By ROCKNE ROLL

The Jewish Review
Each year, the Jewish Federations of North America arranges an overseas mission for fundraising leadership throughout the country to see the work they’re supporting firsthand.
“The purpose is really not only to understand the work that happens overseas, but to also see the impact of that work,” Wendy Kahn, the Chief Development Officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland said. 
She and Jack Birnbach, the Federation’s Campaign Co-Chair, spent eight days in Germany and Israel for that purpose early in July. What they saw, heard, and absorbed encompassed a far larger portrait of the past, present and future of the Jewish world. 
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Arriving in Berlin, Birnbach and Kahn joined up with 60 other professional and volunteer fundraising leaders from around North America. The rest of the group, mostly in their 40s and 50s, left a strong impression on Birnbach. 
“The intellect in the room was very high, the engagement, the interest,” he said of his fellow mission participants. “If people in the retirement age that I’m in are concerned, they shouldn’t be. We’ve got great people coming up behind us.”
The group’s first stop was Berlin-Gruenwald railway station and its Platform 17. From here, more than 50,000 Berlin Jews were deported by the Nazis, first to the Polish Ghettos and, later, directly to Auschwitz. The platform features markers for each train that departed carrying Jews east.
“It’s all down one side, and then you go flip to the other side, and you see that it even goes, even all the way to a spot where there’s only 18 individuals and the war is essentially over,” Kahn explained. “They were committed to killing Jews to the end, even though they knew they were going to lose and the war was over, they were going to get those last 18 people on.”
Following a visit to the Memorial for Murdered Jews, the group visited Nevatim, a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) that, among other things, is supporting Jewish children fleeing the war in Ukraine. Many of them are Ukranian, but quite a few are Russian. At Nevatim, they’re studying performing arts, which a group of 60 students demonstrated for the visiting mission.
“They also shared about what their dreams were for their future,” Kahn said. “They came from a situation where they had no future, but because of what is being funded, they can think about a future.”
JAFI is funded by allocations from Jewish Federations across North America, including Portland’s. While emergency campaigns have become a staple of Jewish community giving, the infrastructure that makes those emergency initiatives so effective, Birnbach explained, is built in advance through ongoing support from Jewish communities. A prime example of that came from the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). 
“They indicated that in just two days [after Russia’s invasion began], they had 18 sites ready to receive Jewish refugees,” Birnbach said of JDC. “That’s because they were already there. That’s because we, as a Jewish community, invested in that infrastructure that allowed them to respond so quickly.”
“[Federations and the agencies they support] do this all the time, we’re set up for those emergency situations,” Kahn continued. “So we have those relationships. We know where to go. We know what to do, and those families, whoever they are, can be taken care of and not have to sit there feeling hopeless and helpless.”
Just as groups like JDC and JAFI are known for laying the groundwork for critical emergency response, Jewish Federations have their own sterling reputation with those and other organizations, as Birnbach recalled learning from JDC. 
“Jewish Federations have a great brand recognition and great reputation for spending money appropriately, investing money appropriately with these communities and so people are more likely to give and more likely to use these programs and want to work for them as well,” he said. 
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After two and a half days in Germany, the group was off to Israel. It was Kahn’s 10th visit to the Jewish state, but the first without her husband and typical traveling companion. For Birnbach, it was his second trip to Israel, his first coming in 1986. 
The visit was striking before they’d even stepped off the plane. 
“Just before we got off the plane, our flight attendant said, ‘let me take a point of personal preference, bring our hostages home,’” Birnbach recalled upon landing in Tel Aviv. “The whole plane clapped.”
That flight attendant was not the exception – the focus on getting the hostages back was all-encompassing. 
Kahn said that immediately upon stepping into the terminal at Ben Gurion International Airport, “there’s a big picture of the hostages and then all the way through the airport, pictures of hostage after hostage after hostage.”
“It is the constant narrative, whether you’re on the beach, whether you’re walking in the street, no matter where you are, there it is. It is a country enveloped in grief and sadness,” she continued. “Your head space and your heart space change immediately when you get off the plane.”
As if that narrative needed reinforcing, the group headed south to Kibbutz Nir Oz, which was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. One in four of its residents was killed, injured or kidnapped. The survivors remain in temporary housing. 
“You see where the toys melted, where they set the houses on fire,” Kahn recalled. “There was nothing uplifting or hopeful about it.”
She recounted a story of a friend of one of the kibbutzniks who called him on the day of the attack saying his grandfather’s house at the kibbutz was on fire, and could he help. The friend arrived to find the grandfather, frail and suffering from dementia, and his grandchildren in the house, with Hamas closing in. They put the grandfather in bed and covered him with extra blankets – the elderly man served as a decoy so the children could escape. 
“They believed in coexistence, and they were there to be at peace with their neighbors,” Kahn said of the residents of Nir Oz, “and they were then so violently taken and torn apart.”
“One of the people said, ‘I went back to my home, and there were a pair of shoes there that weren’t mine, weren’t part of my family’s, but one pair of my shoes was gone, and what I think happened was somebody came in from Hamas, took off his shoes and put mine on and left,’” Birnbach recalled. “The depravity of that; it was a free for all.”
The group also visited the site of the Nova Music Festival where 364 people were murdered and at least 40 kidnapped on Oct. 7. The festival took place in a broad, open field that was now a makeshift memorial.
“They had a stick in the ground, or a stake of some kind, and then a color photo of the person who perished there,” Birnbach said. “There were just dozens of them, if not hundreds. It just went on and on and on in this field.”
Israeli Police and security investigators have since concluded that Hamas did not have advance knowledge of the festival and had not initially planned to attack it – it was spotted by terrorists in light aircraft on their way to other targets, who then diverted to the festival site.
Kahn heard a story from the father of one of those murdered at the site, who now returns each day to recount his son’s final hours to visitors in the hopes of finding his own healing. 
“His son drove out three times. He went back and forth three times,” Kahn said, transporting other festival goers with him until he was killed by Hamas on his fourth attempt. “Everything is out in the open. There’s no hiding.”
Kahn pointedly recalled the group’s visit to the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa where they heard from Irene Shavit, a 22-year-old former resident of Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Her fiancé, Netta Epstein, was killed on Oct. 7 – as the pair hid from Hamas terrorists in their home at the Kibbutz, a hand grenade came through the window into the room they were concealed in – Epstein leapt on to the grenade to protect Shavit. 
“She had to jump over him four times, and it was so sad, because he died for her,” Kahn said. “She’s 22, he’s not much older. My kids are in their 20s. They should have their lives ahead of them.”
The center also hosted an exhibit by Israeli photojournalist Ziv Koren, including an image of a young couple, each of whom lost a leg on Oct. 7, holding hands in a hydrotherapy pool – an image that also stuck with Kahn.
“It’s beautiful that they’re healing together, but it’s so messed up,” she said. “I was surprised by how I felt so akin to them, like they were my children. And that’s why we should continue to do this work, and why it felt so meaningful.”
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While the group stood witness to the horror of the day, they also took in the inspired responses of the institutions and people of Israel, many of which are supported by the funds that these campaign leaders help raise. One such stop was Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, one of three major trauma hospitals in the country. Word of the attacks started coming in around 6:30 am, a half an hour before shift change. The night shift stayed on to help with the attacks, Birnbach was told. Employees who were set to have the day off showed up. It didn’t stop there.
“The interesting story for me was the cleaning crew, which is an outsourced service, they’re really not employees. They showed up,” he said. “Everybody just did something, and as a result, this trauma center, that, normally, can handle 300 people max, they handled over 600 that day, just because the community of employees showed up.”
It also helped that the hospital had moved their helipad from the building’s roof to the open space in front of the hospital, making landings easier for pilots and enabling a faster flow of patients into the hospital. The hospital is supported by JDC, which is supported by JFNA. 
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While they witnessed the communities that had kept Israel going in the days, weeks and months after Oct. 7 – folks that work with, and benefit from, the organizations and projects that North American Jewish Federations support – Birnbach, Kahn and the other members of the mission were building a community of their own.
“I have never met a better group of people. They were friendly, interested, interesting,” Birnbach said. “This was an awesome group of people, and it is because they understand that building relationships with each other and with their communities is the key to our success.”
“I sat with different people every day and the conversations were deep,” Kahn said.
Those connections weren’t just accidents – the people involved made a conscious, concerted effort to connect – with everyone. 
“If you were sitting by yourself, somebody would say to you, ‘Can I join you?’ or ‘Will you join me?’” Birnbach remembered, “This has been the pinnacle of my Federation experience.”
The relationships formed continued to this day on a WhatsApp group. But it’s not just a post-adventure group chat. 
“I can reach out to them at any time, visit them in their communities. They’re welcome here,” Kahn said. “We went deep fast, and it will be forever.”
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During a group conversation about contributing to their local communities, Birnbach shared a conversation with David Heller, JFNA’s National Campaign Chair. Heller asked Birnbach how he initially got involved with the Portland Federation. 
“I said, “Well, I was asked’” Birnbach recalled. Birnbach served on JFGP’s Finance Committee, becoming its Chair, and also on the Allocations Committee, becoming its Chair. “This is a valuable place to direct my charitable contributions. My giving has gone up 20-fold since I started. It’s because somebody asked me, and once I was asked, I was encouraged. Seeing the vast amount of things that we do locally, and now learning firsthand about what we do internationally, this is a great place to invest my time and my resources.”
Birnbach had always had a sense of what the resources he, and other donors to Federation’s annual campaign, contribute could do – but this was a unique chance to see it up close. 
“We heard story after story after story,” Kahn said, of the work they were supporting making an enormous difference for individuals, communities, and for the whole country of Israel. “It is transformative and lifesaving. That’s not just hyperbole. It is fact.”
For more on Kahn and Birnbach’s experiences on the FRD Leadership Mission, listen to “Campaign Travelogue with Wendy Kahn and Jack Birnbach” on The Jewish Review Podcast, available on all major podcast platforms. For more on the Federation’s Annual Campaign for Community Needs and how you can contribute, visit jewishportland.org/give.