By Avigayil Kadesh
Nobel Prize winner Prof. Dan Shechtman and Master Chef winner Nof Atamna-Ismaeel have more in common than their PhDs from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
Both strive to be a “mensch” -- a Yiddish term for a decent, caring person – in the face of an ugly childhood memory.
At the kickoff for Israel’s
Mensch Foundation, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to promoting kindness in Israeli society, they shared their stories.
“One day, a group of my friends caught a boy who was the smallest and weakest in the class, and they locked him in a storage shed. I didn’t participate, but neither did I pay attention to his cries. I am not proud of this,” said Shechtman. Now 73, he is working toward improving Israel’s educational system.
Atamna-Ismaeel, 33, described how she felt like a social outcast in high school as the only Israeli-Arab in her class. Though she went on to earn her doctorate in microbiology, she was determined to help others avoid the pain of rejection for being different. Winning the popular TV competition Master Chef last April sharpened her vision.
“I want to do something to bring people together, and I think cooking could be the way to do this. My goal is to open a bilingual cooking school for Arabs and Jews, children and adults, and through cooking change the reality. I believe we can change heads and hearts,” she said.
Let’s talk
Dr. Moshe Kaplan heartily agrees. The 68-year-old immunologist, formerly of San Francisco, has lined up a star-studded roster of Israeli role models and celebrities to spread the word about his Mensch Foundation.
Living in Jerusalem since 1986, Kaplan dreams of sparking a nationwide values initiative that could ripple out to the rest of the world. “If we know that truth and love overcome hate and derision, then we’ll have a stronger world,” Kaplan says.
The Mensch Foundation is based on Jewish values but has no religious or political affiliation. “Our organization’s primary mission is to improve basic values such as integrity, concern, mutual respect and tolerance in an attempt to make better students and citizens to foster unity in Israeli society,” he says.
“We hope this will reduce the disturbing trend of violence in the schools, break down barriers in the religious-secular divide, decrease traffic fatalities, improve interpersonal relationships and, ultimately, make Israel a more desirable place to live.”
Shechtman endorses the foundation’s campaign for values
Photo by Doni Lerner/Doni DigitalWith a Jewish Agency grant and private donations, the foundation has been running professionally facilitated dialogue groups, informal get-togethers, school-based programs and leadership groups to foster mutual respect among diverse populations – secular kibbutz youth, religious youth, haredi (ultra-Orthodox) and religious Zionist families, Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
“At our first clubs in Beit Shemesh, people started talking to each other and realized everyone is a human being even if they wear different clothes and have different spiritual values,” says Kaplan.
In 2013, the informal gatherings reached 2,450 participants, youth leadership groups met in seven cities, and a dozen schools got involved. Next year, 70 kibbutz encounters are planned.
‘World’s Biggest Mensch’
Israeli basketball legend and goodwill ambassador Tal Brody wrote the prologue to the companion book released in Hebrew on May 20, 2014, Be a Mensch: Why Good Character is the Key to a Life of Happiness, Health, Wealth and Love.
“The successful people in our book all attribute their success to being a mensch,” says Kaplan. Former Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, singer Yehoram Gaon, former Minister of Justice Yaakov Neeman and Nobel laureates Shechtman, Aaron Ciechanover and Robert Aumann are among the foundation’s cheerleaders.
The good doctor says this is just the beginning.
“We’ve been invited to run dialogue groups around the country, and we are putting educational materials on our website. We are developing a questionnaire with our psychology consultants where a person will be able to self-evaluate where he/she is holding on the ‘mensch’ scale. We have even signed for doing a television show, and all we need is money.”
The TV show might be a reality competition where the teenager judged the biggest mensch would win a few thousand shekels. Meanwhile, Kaplan has started the Mensch Corporation of the Year award, which in 2013 went to software company
Webydo.
Prof. Dan Shechtman and Master Chef winner
and microbiologist Nof Atamna-Ismaeel
Photo by Doni Lerner/Doni DigitalHe wants to sell T-shirts, bumper stickers and cookies with the Mensch Foundation logo, which is modeled on the Superman emblem.
“I want to get everybody in the country involved in thinking about the effects of what they do in the long term,” says Kaplan. “Our educational material is of universal value and will be available to Jews and non-Jews alike through the world.”