Representing Israel – on a global scale

A family from the South is setting off on a year-long journey around the world with a single aim: to change the stereotypical way the country is viewed.

By YOCHEVED MIRIAM RUSSO
Yulia, Chami, Oksana, Tamar, Gali and Michal Zemach 521 (photo credit: Courtesy of the Israeli Family Project)
Yulia, Chami, Oksana, Tamar, Gali and Michal Zemach 521
(photo credit: Courtesy of the Israeli Family Project)
On August 1, Chami and Oksana Zemach, their daughters Gali, 13, Tamar, 11, and Michal, four, will close up their comfortable Negev home and step into a worldwide fishbowl. For one whole year, the family will travel around the world, stopping and staying on four continents, spending time in local communities in 27 countries – all with the objective of changing the world’s attitude toward the State of Israel.
“All along the way we’ll meet and talk with local citizens,” Chami Zemach said from his home in Kadesh Barnea, an agricultural moshav in the Negev. “We believe that much of the prejudice directed toward Israel is based on the fact that most people don’t know any Israelis.
“Our plan is to travel to their cities and villages, meet with people, discuss topics of mutual interest, sometimes share a meal along with our life stories, and thereby change their perceptions.
“By creating a bond of appreciation and identification with us – allowing people to see us as a perfectly typical, normal Israeli family not all that different from their own – we can make a difference in the way the world views Israel.”
The program the Zemachs devised to create those common bonds is highly specific.
“We have several different meeting formats, each of which is designed to reach out and connect with the local population.
“In some places, Oksana will cook a meal with the local women, leading to a discussion of Israeli food, cooking and education. In others, our teenage daughters will invite local teenagers to come, sing and play music with them, discovering all the things they share.
“In other sessions, I’ll show a 15-minute video about our life in the Negev, which has been translated into all the languages of the countries we’ll visit.
After the video, we’ll enjoy an informal discussion about desert agriculture, water, settlements, whatever they want to talk about.
“In some communities, we’ll open a discussion about books and films – we’re great readers, all of us, and in talking with other book-lovers, we’ll have a way to explore mutual interests and values.
“When Shabbat comes, wherever we find ourselves, we’ll share a Shabbat meal with local residents and talk about life in general. In each of these settings, our goal is to find a topic of common interest, something that we share, something that will allow us to connect with Jews and non-Jews alike.”
When the idea for the worldwide public relations tour was just beginning to percolate, Zemach recalled, he had a meeting with officials in the Foreign Ministry.
“They were very excited about the project, saying it was exactly the kind of thing that was needed. They showed me a research survey that had just been done.
Researchers had taken 40 separate American focus groups, people from all walks of life, and asked them about their impressions of seven countries, one of which was Israel.
“They told the focus groups to imagine they were walking into a home in Italy, for example. ‘What do you see?’ they asked them. ‘What do you smell? What’s the family like?’ “The American subjects responded to Italy by saying that there was a happy and smiling poppa and a chubby momma, and you could smell spaghetti cooking.
“[But] when it came to Israel, the survey results showed that average Americans thought Israelis all lived in houses behind very high walls, where few outsiders were ever invited. Israelis, they said, all had long beards and black hats, and were generally a very cold people, very serious and patriarchal. They had small families, the Americans said, with few children.
“When asked if they’d like to visit an Israeli home, the average American responded by saying, ‘Yes, but I don’t think they’d let me in.’ “Imagine how happy the ministry was when they heard about our project. Sending our very typical family all around the world to counteract those stereotypical notions was exactly what was needed to offer a different perspective.”
How did the Zemachs begin to think of themselves as emissaries? “It was a long, slow process,” Zemach noted. “It all started nine years ago when we moved from Rehovot to Kadesh Barnea, a unique little moshav not far from the Egyptian border.
“When we lived in Rehovot, I worked in marketing and commuted to my office in Tel Aviv. We were very typical urban dwellers. Then we moved to the Negev, and everything changed.
“Kadesh Barnea is a very green place, with many different kinds of fruits and vegetables being grown. Tour guides tell me that they liked bringing tourists to Kadesh Barnea because they knew they were going to show the tourists something they’d never seen before.
Visitors are always surprised to see so many things growing in such a free, open, green and lovely place.”
The path to becoming informal ambassadors began in the family kitchen.
“When we saw that most of our neighbors were growing fruits and vegetables, we decided to take advantage of that. We began making all kinds of jams, sauces and condiments from the produce our neighbors were growing. I’m not completely sure when the idea of ‘from our own kitchen’ cooking transitioned into building a small condiment factory, but it did.
“As the word spread about the jams and sauces we were making, people from all over came knocking on our door, asking, ‘Are you the people who are making Cherry Tomato Jam?’ They’d heard that someone in Kadesh Barnea was making something awfully good, and they wanted some.
“People even knocked on our windows: ‘Is it you? Can we buy some?’ One of them commented that our products were ‘just like magic,’ so when we moved the operations to the factory, we branded our products ‘Desert Magic.’ “It’s funny,” Zemach recalled. “In my career before, I was a marketing expert. I always knew that whenever you had a marketing success, you never really knew why it happened.
No doubt many things went into it, some of them elements you couldn’t replicate – after all, if everyone knew ahead of time what would result in a success, then everything would be a success.
“That’s the way it was in our case: I’m not sure exactly how our brand, our form of hospitality, caught on, but it did.”
As a result, a significant part of the world started beating a path to the Zemachs’ door.
“A lot of groups came, at first mostly from Israel, but then more and more from abroad. We began adapting ourselves to them, answering their questions, talking about our lives, the things that were important to us.
“The thing they most wanted to know was, ‘What brought you to the desert?,’ followed by ‘Why are you doing what you’re doing?’ We’d end up talking with the visitors, some of them for a long time. It became a very emotional thing with them – something about us had piqued their interest and curiosity. They felt connected to our story and to what we were doing.”
THERE MAY be more to it than that: the Zemach family story is just audacious enough to be fun.
“I was born in Rehovot, my wife was born in Belarus,” Zemach smiles. “I studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where, 70 years before me, my grandfather David had studied. We have four daughters: Our oldest, Yulia, is a student at Bar-Ilan University; Gali and Tamar attend a local school with neighborhood kids, and Michal is just four. We’re very typical, wouldn’t you say?”“But what happens then? One fine day, this very typical family moves itself into the desert, builds a house and creates a factory out of nothing more than a dream. When you think about it, our story is really the story of Israel itself, a tale of settlement and renewal, initiative and pioneering in both industry and agriculture. It’s about the process of self-realization and social awareness, of education, culture, assuming responsibility and of making the desert bloom. It’s a very personal story and quintessentially Israeli.”
Theory aside, the logistics of the journey boggle the mind. How does a family of five live out of suitcases for a year, hit 27 countries via plane, train and automobile, in all seasons, plan stopovers in several hundred individual communities – and manage to keep smiling the whole time? “You’re right,” laughed Zemach. “It’s a challenge.
Actually the toughest issue of all is the question of laundry – well, laundry and ironing. How are we going to handle that? We’ll have to see how it all works.
“The big questions right now are how to pack: how to take essentials like books and guitars, plus everything else we’ll need for a year. We’ve designated suitcases for everyone, but what to put inside them is another issue entirely.
“We’re a very musical family. When you walk into our house, six guitars welcome you. Almost always, someone, somewhere, is playing. The music is part of what we’ll use to connect, so at least some of the guitars have to come.”
At every stop, part of the success of the tour will be the family’s ability to blend advance planning with spur-of-the-moment decisions, said Oksana.
“The perfect example? The cooking sessions I’ll do with locals in most of the countries we visit. For months, I’ve been working up recipes, testing them, trying to come up with dishes we can cook together that will use local produce, be tasty, somewhat representative of Israeli foods, and maybe most importantly, not too expensive.
“Even so, I know that when we arrive in some countries, changes will have to be made and I’ll have to adapt whatever recipes I’ve created. For me, that’s part of the fun. I love that kind of a challenge.
“When we know we’ll have a cooking session in one of the locations, I’ll ask our local sponsor, whoever it is, to take me to a local grocery store. Together we’ll shop for ingredients that are in season, not too expensive, for something we can all make together – a kind of fusion food, something we might make in Israel, but made from produce available locally.
“One staple dish we can make in most places is a tomato stuffed with a spicy lentil filling – that will work in many places, except where tomatoes are out of season or not available. Then we’ll find something else to stuff.
“I’m really looking forward to being creative like this.
I’ve been cooking all my life, and for me, creating food with other women, in countries all around the world, will really be fun.”
In order to provide a respite and sense of normalcy, the family will stay in local hotels along the way instead of seeking home hospitality.
“We thought about it, spending nights in some of our supporters’ homes,” Chami said. “But this journey is going to be so intensive, so emotionally draining, that we decided it would be too difficult for us if we had to adapt to someone else’s home in every location. We need to be able to be by ourselves at the end of the day to relax and unwind. Just being away from home for a whole year will be challenging enough.”
And food? How about for family meals? Will finding kosher food in, say, Japan or Norway constitute a problem? “That’s an important question,” Zemach acknowledged.
“The truth is that we don’t keep strictly kosher at home. We don’t eat pork and we don’t mix milk and meat, but… nevertheless, on the journey, things will change a little bit.
“It’s obvious to us that our journey must be kosher.
Why? Because that’s what people expect. We’re Jews, and keeping kosher is part of who we are. It’s our tradition.
So on the trip, everything will be kosher. It’s also a subject we expect to talk about in our community meetings.
Lots of people around the world think they understand about kashrut, but they really don’t. It will be a good subject to discuss.”
Holidays will present more teachable moments.
“We’ll use the holidays as discussion topics, too. We’ve scheduled very carefully, given lots of attention to where we’ll be, especially for the High Holy Days and for Pessah. We’ve already put a plan together to deal with it when we’re traveling.
“Each of the holidays will be a great time to talk about Jewish culture, about the holiday itself and what it means to us. Shabbat, too, of course. We always light candles and recite Kiddush on Friday evenings, so of course we’ll do that in every place we stop. We hope we’ll always have local residents to share our Shabbat.”
Who will all these local residents be? “We’ve been working on this a long time. In each of the 27 countries we have contacts, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Some of them are Israelis living abroad, some are embassy staff or other kinds of representatives, others are from pro-Israeli Christian organizations.
In each case, we’ve asked them to organize some meetings for us.
“Nothing more – all we want them to do is to invite people to some location they think is best, and try to focus some media attention on our visit to attract others.
All of our meetings in the early part of the journey are set. Those for the latter part of the trip will have to wait until we get closer.
“Out of the 27 countries, the one country where we thought we might have trouble was China, which is, after all, a communist country. We weren’t even sure they’d let us in. But then we got lucky – we happened upon an Israeli company which is a partner with the Chinese government in a health insurance company.
They’ve helped us enormously, to the point that we’ve had no problems in China at all.
“It’s interesting, because we discovered that the Chinese people think that right after the Chinese, we Jews are the smartest and most successful people in the world. They educate their children to respect the intelligence and success of the Jews. We’ll be in China in April and May of 2012, and we’re really looking forward to it.”
THE JOURNEY begins on August 1, when the family flies out of Ben-Gurion Airport to Greece – which could present a problem right from the beginning.
“We’ve been watching the news for the last several days, and saw all the reports and photos with headlines like ‘Greece is on fire!’ From what the media is reporting, Greece certainly looked like a place where we wouldn’t want to be right now.
“But then we stopped and thought: Israeli tourism could be much greater than it is, but unfortunately, when there’s an incident somewhere in Israel, people around the world tend to believe the problem is everywhere. So we didn’t write Greece off, but instead contacted Yossi Bar, the Israeli deputy ambassador in Athens, asking him what was happening. “Yossi explained that the economy was very bad, that there was a lot of rage – local strikes and big demonstrations near parliament.
“Okay – we decided we could live with that. Moreover, it’s important to us that right now we show solidarity with the Greek people, who are suffering such huge economic problems.
“So we’re going to Greece as planned. Of course, if something really radical happens, we’ll change our plans; but so far, we’re staying the course.”
After Greece, on August 9, the Zemachs head to Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, arriving in France on September 8. Then they set out for Spain, England, Belgium and the Netherlands; on to Germany and Canada, entering the US on November 17.
On January 2, they leave the US for New Zealand, Australia, Japan, India and China. After that, they’ll board the Trans-Siberian Railway, through Mongolia, for two weeks during April.
Then it’s on to Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. From there, it’s back to Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, arriving home again in Israel on July 31, 2012 – one year exactly from the time they set off.
For 13-year-old Gali, this trip is something like a dream come true.
“Music is my thing,” she smiled. “Music comes from my heart, it’s something I love very much. For me to be able to travel around the whole world, singing and making music with other kids my age, is just an incredible opportunity.
“In our family, we all love playing and singing, everything from classical music to jazz, rock and pop. Even now we sing in Hebrew, English and a little bit of French and Russian – but can you imagine all I’ll learn in this year, with all the other kids I’ll meet? It’s going to be amazing.”
Eleven-year-old Tamar is the family extrovert, Oksana said with a laugh.
“We don’t know where she got it – certainly not from Chami or me – but Tamar has always been the family’s people-person. If we ever see a group of boys and girls together, laughing and having fun, we know exactly where Tamar’ll be: in the middle of it. This trip will allow her to use every one of her schmoozing skills.”
“That’s right, I’ll make new friends all over the world,” Tamar giggled.”But I’m already missing my friends here. I can’t quite imagine being away from them a whole year, even though I’ll be busy with all the new kids I’ll meet.”
THE ISSUE of “missing friends” gave rise to new Facebook rules for the Zemach kids.
“While we were living here in Kadesh Barnea, we had very strict rules about Facebook,” noted Chami. “We opened Facebook pages for both Gali and Tamar – and even for Yulia, before she went off to university. They were allowed to have only ‘friends’ who were their own age, and they had to be kids they actually knew, no strangers at all, and no adults, no matter who it was.
“But as the plans for the trip solidified, we realized those rules weren’t going to work very well. Gali and Tamar would want to keep in touch with people they’d met all along the way – and those new ‘friends’ wouldn’t necessarily be people who were actually personal friends. And vice versa, too – people we’ll all meet along the way will want to stay in touch. That’s something we want to encourage.
“So we decided to open new Facebook pages for each girl. These new pages will be in English only, and anyone who would like to be their ‘friend’ will be welcome.
We’ll manage these pages together – it will be like a business page, something we’re doing to enhance the trip itself, making and keeping in touch with people we’ve met.”
Both Gali and Tamar will be missing a whole year of school, but that’s not a problem, Chami says. “It’s all taken care of. We’ve met with all the teachers and they’re extremely supportive of this project and very excited for all of us. I spent the last seven years as chairman of the PTA, and education is very important to me – more than that, education is everything. So we’ll make this trip an incredible education all by itself. The girls will be writing their blogs, preparing reports – they’ll get more education in this one year abroad than they would in school.”
Farming out the family pets was another issue, especially for four-year-old Michal, who admitted she’d miss their dogs and cats.
“We have lots of pets,” Chami chuckled, adding that finding good places for them to live for a year took some doing. “Our three dogs will stay with friends right here in Kadesh Barnea. They’ll be fine. Our neighbors will be feeding our cats – these were cats that found us, you understand, so cats being cats, they probably don’t care who feeds them as long as someone does. My sister took our rabbits, so they’ll be fine with her.
“We’re still making last-minute arrangements about who’ll keep the lawn watered and things like that. The Desert Magic factory is in good hands, that will continue without our being here.
“I think we’ve taken care of almost everything – and our 22-year-old daughter Yulia will still be in Israel. She couldn’t take a year off from university, so she won’t be coming with us. Of course we’ll miss her – which is another issue entirely.”
“A year is a long time,” Chami reflected. “Lots of changes will occur even in our own family during that time. One of the other things we’re looking forward to is maybe meeting other family members as we travel. Here in Israel, we’re a small family, but we do have relatives around the world – maybe we’ll have a chance to meet some of them.
“I know I have a second cousin in Vienna I met only once, when I was 10. Will we seek him out? Maybe.”
Judging from advance publicity, the Zemachs may not have to seek out their long-lost cousin. It could be he’ll find them first. The family arrives in Vienna on August 19, and recently a Vienna newspaper printed the first international story about “The Israeli Family Project”: “In collaboration between Christians for Israel and the Embassy of the State of Israel, several events are planned,” reads the German-language news story.
“Among them will be an afternoon with Chami Zemach, who will present a film about [the family’s] Negev moshav, as well as a talk about life in Israel, farming in the desert and building a factory.”
To allow for serendipity, the Zemachs have left a few “time cushions” along the way, just in case something happens that wasn’t planned.
“Actually, we’re looking forward to that, having things happen that we hadn’t expected,” Chami said.
“There are little pockets of time we haven’t filled in yet. Some things are set – we have our plane tickets to Europe, to the US, to New Zealand and Australia, but not beyond that. It’s too far away. We don’t have a visa for India yet because it’s too early to apply. We’ll have to do that later, from one of the Israeli embassies along the line.”
What surprises have they already encountered? “We thought it would be easier to raise money,” Chami laughed. “That’s harder than we thought. On our website, there’s information about how to donate to the project, and donations are still coming in. We expect the whole trip, all included, will cost about NIS 1 million, so we’re being very modest in our travels.
“But it’ll work out. First, we know we’re doing the right thing, and second, we believe in what we’re doing. We’re getting great feedback from everyone already, so the finances will work out.
“After we get back, a second objective takes over. We don’t want to lose all this experience we’ve gained, the knowledge of how an outreach program like this works. We want to pass that wisdom along, somehow. Maybe other Israeli families could be encouraged to take such a trip, too. That’s something else we’ll work on as we travel.”
“What we do know is this,” he said. “As tourists came to visit us in Kadesh Barnea during the last nine years, we saw that people were very much taken by our story, were interested in what we’re doing. They came to us without a clue, but left with something else. They’d seen something they hadn’t expected.
They had a little peek into Israeli society they hadn’t known existed. Through that, they came to understand the values of the Israeli family, and then, the greater story of Israel itself.
“As people come to know us, to meet and talk with us, their perceptions of Israel will change. All that’s different is that now, instead of waiting for people to visit us in Kadesh Barnea, we’re going around the world to see them. Something good will come out of this, for all of us.”
Readers can follow the Zemachs’ journey through their website, www.il-family.com. Also, at noon on Friday, each week, www.walla.co.il will present a short video of the family’s travels during the week. Contact them at isrfamily@gmail.com on Facebook and Twitter, or at (08) 657-3993.