Reaching Across the Gap - Jewish Action

Kesher Yehudi, an organization that builds friendships between religious and secular Jews around Israel, hosted a Simchat Torah event for Nova Survivors and hostage families. Courtesy of Kesher Yehudi

Michal Ohana, originally from Jerusalem and Mevaseret Tzion, attended the Nova Festival on October 7. Unlike her friends who were murdered and taken hostage, Michal is lucky. She survived hiding under an IDF tank for seven hours while bleeding from a bullet wound in her leg.

Michal was one of 110 survivors of the Nova massacre who attended a Shabbaton this past August in Jerusalem that aimed to bring healing to survivors and to help bridge the gap between religious and secular Israelis. Held at the Ramada hotel in Jerusalem, the Shabbaton, which featured iconic figures in Israeli society including Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi, journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir and singer Yonatan Razel, was sponsored by the Kesher Yehudi organization that has hosted a number of such Shabbatonim since October 7.

“Kesher Yehudi is bridging a huge gap in Eretz Yisrael,” says Ralph Rieder of New York, one of the organization’s supporters. “It is facilitating friendships between different segments of the Israeli population, resulting in achdus [unity].”

Founded in 2012 by Tzili Schneider, a teacher in Bais Yaakov, Kesher Yehudi is “a social movement bridging the gaps in Israeli society between religious and secular Jews by building friendships—two people at a time.” The organization seeks to build unity at the grassroots level across Israel by matching secular and Chareidi Jews as chavrutot (study partners). Its peer-to-peer model encourages participants to have meaningful conversations leading to lifelong friendships.

When Schneider first conceived of the idea, she approached Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, zt”l, who encouraged her and said that Am Yisrael has to be unified and that this is the way to save Am Yisrael. “Within a year of our founding, there were more than 1,000 chavruta couples,” says Schneider.

To date, Kesher Yehudi, a recipient of the prestigious Jerusalem Unity Prize, has created more than 17,000 chavrutot. That is 34,000 Jews who are learning together and talking to each other even though they come from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Kesher Yehudi also works with more than thirty of the year-long secular pre-army preparation programs, called “mechinot.” (Officially defined as “general,” they also include some Orthodox students. The original mechinot were Torani [religious] and began ten years before the general ones.)

Avishag Betser, head of the general mechinah in S’de Nechemia, in the upper Galil, says, “We’ve been working with Kesher Yehudi for about five–six years … most [chavrutot] maintain very beautiful connections afterwards.”

Michal, who was not raised Orthodox, had attended a previous Shabbaton where she met Yedida Menat, a Chareidi woman who is twenty-seven-years-old, like her. “We had an immediate connection,” says Michal. Currently, the two meet about once a week and study Torah together. At the August Shabbaton, they got up and spoke about their strong connection and how much they had learned from each other.

“When I met Michal, I saw the strength of someone who knows how to appreciate truth and who chose to take her survival to a place of kiddush Hashem, of keeping Torah and mitzvot, of loving life and a strong desire to act for the fullest of life and fill it with eternity!” says Yedida.

Michal feels it’s her mission to be the voice of the murdered and the hostages. Since recovering from the wound in her leg, Michal has been invited to speak at many events abroad and has appeared in films that have been shown in Israel and around the world. “I try to do everything to bring back the hostages,” says Michal. Hostages Eliya Cohen and Elkana Bohbot are among her friends who, as of this writing, are still in Gaza.

“As I travel abroad to tell my story,” says Michal, “Yedida gives me kochot [from afar]. I sometimes speak at Torah classes in synagogues in Israel, and she comes with me, and she says that she got much stronger as well, seeing how I handle the difficulties with which I am dealing. We give strength to each other.”

Toby Klein Greenwald is an award-winning journalist and theater director, and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com. She is recipient of the ATARA Life Achievement Award. She was a guest at the Shabbaton of Kesher Yehudi.