By Amy Fouts
For Community
Amy Fouts (third from left) with friends at the 2023 Partnership2Gether meeting in Fort Worth, Texas (Photo by Nammie Ichilov)
When I first started working for the JCC and Federation back in 2012, I learned about Partnership2Gether (P2G) and how it connects 17 cities in the U.S. with Israel’s Western Galilee region and Budapest, Hungry. It’s a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel and Jewish Federations of North America, combining and promoting people-to-people relationships via cultural, social, medical, educational and economic programs. Yes, all those words make sense, but the whole thing felt amorphous — how did the program genuinely promote those relationships?
I didn’t fully appreciate P2G’s mission until I traveled to Israel in 2017 on the Jewish Federation’s MOMentum trip. While in the Western Galilee, we did touristy things, like eating an amazing lunch at a farm with homemade cheese and touring the old coastal city of Akko. We also visited Kivunim for special- needs youth, an arts-focused elementary school, and the state-of-the-art Western Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. We had a delicious family-style dinner and joined in a riveting discussion with Israeli Arab and Jewish women who participated in the Women Leading a Dialogue initiative. We met the people of the Western Galilee and were welcomed as family. It was then that I understood people-to-people and how as a member of Louisville’s Jewish community, the Western Galilee is my home in Israel.
In 2021, I proudly accepted the role of Louisville’s P2G Community Liaison with the intent of making P2G less amorphous, so our community could understand what it is and why it matters. P2G is Rabbi David Ariel-Joel’s twinning with Israeli students. P2G is the Women Leading a Dialogue multicultural empowerment program. P2G is involvement in global book club discussions. P2G is helping establish medical student externships in the Western Galilee. P2G is a five-day tour of Jewish Budapest in September 2022. And it is so much more.
During this past July 9-14, I traveled to steamy Ft. Worth, Texas for P2G’s annual meeting. Its goal was to better define the “much more” that is P2G. The gathering began and ended with a strong camp vibe. Old friends gleefully reunited in the hotel lobby with heartfelt hugs, and we closed with a friendship circle. New participants were welcomed as veritable familiars as their faces had been seen on many a Zoom meeting over the past three years. (It was surprising to learn that people were much shorter or taller than had been imagined!) Out of the 44 of us who gathered, 12 were from Israel and four were from Budapest.
Our itinerary included large group and breakout sessions, where we worked on our strategic alignment, analyzed our mission and pillars, and reviewed a 2024 work plan. It was wonderful to do this important planning in-person with such passionate and committed colleagues from Israel, Budapest, and other U.S. cities. It was abundantly clear that traveling delegations are key to our goal of building people-to-people connections.
We’ll resume Zooming to continue the work we began in preparation for P2G’s 25th Anniversary celebration in Israel, slated for November 6-9, 2023. Once finalized, I’ll be excited to share the new mission pillars and the 2024 work plan –including opportunities to travel to Israel –with the Louisville community.
To learn more about upcoming Israel travel opportunities or get involved with P2G, contact Amy Fouts at P2G@Jewishlouisville.org. You can follow Partnership2Gether events on Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/P2GLou
Amy Fouts is Grants & Outreach Manager at the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC
