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April 9, 2007
Happy Passover! Yeah, I know that the festival started a week ago, but it's still going. Here in Israel, there's another holiday at the end, and a number of Jewish ethnic groups have post-Pesach traditions like the colorful and tasty Mimouna, originally from the Jews of North Africa but now observed by many across Israel, now bursting with springtime. The second holiday, too, is an occasion for remembrance, yizkor, and that I do now.
It makes sense that Passover is not a one night affair. It's true that the first evening of the holiday -- seder night -- is by far the most elaborate, with the ritual reading, and telling, and singing, of the Haggadah, telling of our liberation from slavery in Egypt. But telling is one thing. Doing is another. In this eight day festival of reliving, we leave Egyptian bondage with our families and our people, bound for the unknown wandering in the wilderness, but ultimately with the prospect of deliverance in a Promised Land.
Passover is all about liberation, and freedom from the bondage of the mundane, of the everyday. Just as the first night of Pesach is "different from every other night", as we say in the seder. So are the days that follow, at least here in Israel. We eat matza. We travel the land. We don't work so hard. We get basic to basics. It is as if we have gone off into the desert, with minimal positions, a rucksack on our backs.
It's thus a time to get away from it all and decide where we wish to go with our God-given freedom. To leave behind the things and people that drag us down, to find and cherish those who lift us up.
This second holiday of Passover I am filled with gratitude. One year ago this day, I first made contact with my biological mom, after 47 years of separation. The reunion, triggered by an Internet-enabled discovery and some sleuthing, led me to find a remarkable woman, a noted author and mystic, who had pined to hear from me, just I had felt her absence my entire life. That initial phone and internet contact led to several physical reunions, included her visits to my family (her family) in Israel, and my visits to her family (my family!) in America.
This was not the easiest year, not for Israel and not for me personally. It was in the shadow of my dad's death -- what Freud has rightly called the most significant psychological event in a man's life -- and a legal and moral dispute that I won, albeit at great financial cost. But to reunite with my long-lost mother, and to shake hands with my long-lost biological father (though he does not yet know with whom he shook hands) -- these were life-changing events for me which filled "holes in my soul." Money comes and money goes, employees and colleagues leave, but life and love of friends and family endures, and makes all the difference.
Those emotional reunions, and fulfillments, and the surge of confidence and faith that they engendered, gave me strength in other areas, and to deal forthrightly with difficulty. One of those areas was my worry over the fate of Israel Insider. This publication is probably the best thing that I done in my professional career. To publish the news and views daily from Israel for more than six years -- more than 11,000 articles by now, this one being 11,111 (!) -- was an accomplishment I looked on with pride.
But it was a humbling experience to realize that I could not go on financially with the Insider, without outside help. Nor was I willing to let the publication "fade away" or just wither on the vine. It would either grow, or be suspended, as in the Jewish shmitta or sabbatical year.
At my wise wife's prodding, therefore, I reached out to you, my readers. The response was amazing. For days after my appeal appeared, the emails I received daily brought tears to my eyes. I was beseeched not to stop, told that the Insider was a part of people's daily lives, a personal connection to Israel, a valued source of reliable information whose disappearance would be mourned.
Along with the heartfelt messages came financial contributions: from $5 to $1000, from dozens of sources. Others bought our "Israel's Story in Maps" CDs as a way to help out. Many of these were not first time donors but supporters who had helped us all along the way, and stepped up to the plate in our time of needed.
Then, out of the blue, came one woman, an angel small but mighty, with whom I had the pleasure of meeting earlier in the year, who was moved to pledge $50,000 because of her belief in me and in the value of our work! This was the amount that I said I had needed to create stability and put Israel Insider on a growth track. She has since moved to fulfill her pledge, and in so doing has single-handedly assured the future of the publication.
But that was not the end of it. The head of a leading philanthropic foundation, one of the most distinguished and prestigious in American and Jewish life, active in helping the Israeli economy, contacted me and expressed an interest in helping out. That initial contact has now blossomed into a relationship that looks like it will bring Israel Insider to a whole different level, serving philanthropic purposes for the good of our country and its citizens beyond what I could have imagined on my own.
To realize these ambitious growth plans, there will need to be additional sources of funding in the future, but we can begin to build with the confidence that this lead foundation will help get us started and match future contributions from private sources. We will be able, for the first time, to provide donors with a tax-deductible vehicle for their contributions.
So that, dear friends and readers, is where it stands. The appeal I made was answered, and the answer will allow me and my newsmagazine not just to survive but to thrive, to expand our operations and better address issues that face Israel, the Jewish People, and the world. I am personally energized by the experience of admitting weakness, reaching out for help, and finding like-minded people who generously offered, and delivered, help.
Between last Passover and this one, I found a family that I thought I had lost forever, and I found friends that I never knew I had. My gratitude knows no bounds, and I know that the only way to repay that debt is to keep giving back to those who have given to me, and to serve my people, my nation, and my God. I thank you, Israel Insider readers, for your support and look forward to delivering, daily, throughout this year, and future years.
In the coming weeks and months, we will be revealing, and realizing, these plans. But for for now, as this festival comes to a close, I owe you, my readers and supporters, this provisional update -- on our way out of Egyptian bondage, as it were -- on this ongoing story of my own liberation and the deliverance of Israel Insider! May similar blessings reach each of you in your own lives and labors, wherever you are. Pass it forward!
To my friends and family, of all faiths in one world we must work to keep and grow together, I wish you Chag sameach! -- a joyous and fulfilling holiday of freedom to change.
Reuven Koret
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
publisher@israelinsider.com
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