Name: Across the Divide: Examining the Past, Present, and Future of Israel Engagement
Start: 2019-9-5T19-19-30-00
End: 2019-9-5T21-21-00-00
Location: Selig Center

A Message from the Steering Committee

(January 2019)

It is my pleasure to write as the newly appointed 2019 Chair of the IPF Atid New York Steering Committee.

First, I would like to acknowledge and express gratitude to Michael Hershfield, Founding Chair of IPF Atid New York. Through his leadership, our community and impact in New York City have grown impressively, including:

Diverse and Varied Programming – from Washington Heights to Bed-Stuy, Chelsea to Midtown, IPF Atid events have spread across neighborhoods and times of day to ensure wide accessibility
A Truly Wide Tent – professionals from many different backgrounds and political/organizational affiliations comprise our still new and growing community
2018 Partnership with Council for Young Jewish Presidents (CYJP) – a three-part educational series for lay leaders from dozens of different Jewish young leadership networks (2019 details TBA)

Having attended a number of Israel Policy Forum events myself, I was taken aback by the combination of passion and knowledge that exists in each lay leader (the IPF Atidnik, as we like to say). We hope 2019 will be a year in which we cultivate this passion and knowledge, extending it across new local networks to elevate the discourse and increase support for a viable two-state solution amongst new stakeholders.

In close cooperation with the IPF Atid professional team, our Steering Committee plans to hit the ground running with new “Focused Action Committees,” or FACs. These include:

Jewish Community Outreach: to have focused conversations with the many different Jewish communities of New York, knowing that each are unique and have their own respective, nuanced views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Multi-Stakeholder Roundtables: knowing that the richest discourse is based on having a diverse group involved, which will also allow us to reach out to entirely new groups of stakeholders

New York leaders have already volunteered to work on each of these and are drawing up plans for long-term success. We look forward to reporting back with our progress and opportunities to be involved.

Julien Lederman
IPF Atid New York Chair