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Dispatch from Israel #1

As many of you know, I am currently in Israel. Many have asked what I am doing in Israel, so I want to send a few dispatches to share a little information about the trip. The purpose of the trip was to visit Las Vegas’ partnership region in Israel. For the past several years we have engaged in a partnership with the Ramat Hanegev Region of Israel. The Ramat Hanegev Regional Council is the government organization that oversees fifteen small communities in the Negev. Geographically it makes up twenty-two percent of the land of Israel, but demographically there are only seventy-five hundred people that live within the area. The villages, kibbutzim and small development towns that make up Ramat Hanegev are just south of Beer Sheva and extend all the way to the Egyptian Border. I am here with Rabbis Goodman, Akselrad, and Cohen and a couple of lay people. We are all staying at a town called Midreshet Ben Gurion. It is where Ben Gurion and his wife are buried about four kilometers from Kibbutz Sde Boker where they lived out the last years of their lives.

Today, Monday, was the first day of the tour of the area. We started with a visit to the Regional Council offices where we met with the Mayor of the Ramat Hanegev and got to hear about the history of the area and some of the plans for the future development of the region. We learned that they have just started building their first public high school for the region. Until now the only options for high school were travelling over an hour by bus to the closest public high school or attending one of the private boarding schools in the region that are often quite expensive. They finally have enough students to merit building a high school. The picture below may not seem very inviting, but it represents years of pushing for, and planning for their own high school. The plans are to create the most innovate high school in the whole State.