Greater MetroWest began its historic partnership with the Druze community of Hurfeish in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War. This was the first formal partnership between a Diaspora Jewish community and a non-Jewish Israeli community. Since that time, our relationship has flourished, including our friendship with now-Member of Knesset Mufid Marie. Mufid’s daughter, Yara, is now a graduate of our groundbreaking program, Leaders for Cohesive Society, which brings together leaders from diverse communities in Israel to discuss the most difficult challenges in Israeli society.
We are now embarking on the creation of a Steering Committee in Hurfeish to further develop our work in, and our Jewish-Druze partnership with, this community. Joint Steering Committees (JSC) are one of the pillars of the Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) Partnership2Gether (P2G) model. That’s a lot of acronyms, but to simplify, JAFI’s P2G program encourages partnerships to develop committees which include lay leaders from both sides of the ocean to discuss and decide together their visions and the programs and projects they’d like to support.
We are grateful for our partnership with JAFI (the Jewish Agency For Israel) which helps to facilitate our robust network of partnerships throughout Israel. We look forward to reporting back as this relationship blossoms.