Kisufim

Kisufim. English has no word for it. It is the longing that carried us for two thousand years — not the ordinary ache of missing something, but a yearning that never once loosened its hold: the one that kept a whole people, scattered to the far ends of the earth, gathered around a single memory, a single language and a single hope.

That longing has never traveled in only one direction. Jews in Cleveland carry Jerusalem in their hearts, and Jerusalem carries them in hers. Israel is the home of every Jewish man and woman, wherever in the world they are — and in the very same breath, we honor and love the home they have built where they live: the street they walk down, the community they belong to, the children they are raising there. We want to see them strong and proud in that very place, because the Jewish people is strongest when every one of its homes is strong.

The partnership we are working to strengthen is a partnership of two homes and one soul, joined by a spine of shared history, shared values and a shared Zionist calling.

Kisufim was opened, and is written, in the spirit of Ofir Libshtein z”l, who believed with his whole soul that we are one people, and that our strength lies in our oneness. He was among the founders of Netaim and served as chair of the Habonim Dror World Movement, and he held to a simple conviction: the Zionist calling belongs to the whole Jewish people — here and there, together.