A couple of months ago, I happened to be in New York over a Shabbat, and along with my brother and his family, got invited to a Friday evening dinner which was being hosted in honor of some participants in a program called GESHER, which means “Bridge” in Hebrew.

As you’ll hear in our conversation with JJ Sussman today—which I invited him to have after he and I had both returned to Israel—GESHER was originally created by a now legendary Israeli educator to build bridges between religious and secular Jews. But in recent years, GESHER has expanded its work in several ways, including building relationships between Israel and the Diaspora.

Here’s part of how GESHER explains the trips:

The “Gesher to the Diaspora” course offers Israeli leaders and influencers a rare opportunity to deepen their understanding of Jewish life outside of Israel and to strengthen the bonds that unite the Jewish people. Through learning, listening, and direct encounter, participants develop a deeper sense of shared responsibility and mutual belonging between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora.

The course brings together Israeli decision-makers and public influencers from across society, including local government, security and defense, media, education, and culture. Participants represent the full spectrum of Israeli Jewish life, including secular, religious, and ultra-Orthodox communities, men and women, and people from both the center and the periphery of the country.

The program culminates in a six-day visit to a Jewish community abroad, where participants meet with both professional leadership and everyday community members, visit central institutions, and engage in open and honest dialogue. The experience is supported by academic research and evaluation to ensure lasting impact.

The true measure of success is what happens after the course. Upon completion, participants become Gesher Syms Fellows, empowered to lead with empathy, courage, and vision. They return to their communities with a renewed commitment to civic engagement, bridging divides within Israeli society and strengthening Israel’s relationship with the Jewish world. To date over 500 leaders have participated in the course.

The Israelis at the dinner were fairly senior people in business, military, government and more. They were the kinds of people, I assumed, who, sure, might well have learned a lot from a trip like that, but who certainly had a fairly decent sense of American Jewry even prior to the trip.

But I was wrong. Virtually every person spoke about how little they’d known—or even thought—about Diaspora Jewry prior to the trip, how their visit to American Jewry had been a genuine wakeup-call, and how moved they were by the shared values and work of these two halves of the Jewish people. It was an evening moving and memorable far beyond what I’d anticipated, and it struck me that in this time of worry and division across the Jewish world, hearing about GESHER’s work is cause for genuine optimism and thus well worth sharing.

You can visit GESHER’s website here. We hope you enjoy our conversation with JJ Sussman.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

JJ Sussman is the International Director of Gesher. JJ has worked in Israel’s High-Tech sector for the last 18 years at firms including SanDisk, Jerusalem Global and Israel Seed Partners. JJ has always been involved in projects to help the Jewish people and was the International Director for Unity Day in its first year. He made Aliyah from New York 20 years ago and now lives in Modi’in together with his wife and six children.

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The conversations with people that I bring on to the podcast have their genesis in all sorts of ways. I read something that they wrote, somebody I know tells me, This is a fascinating person you should get to know. We meet each other at a conference or wherever. It happens in all different kinds of ways. I think this is the first one, though, that emerges from a Friday night dinner on the Upper West Side of New York. I happened to be on the Upper West Side, I guess, a couple of months ago already. I don't know when it was exactly, but a while ago, and I was invited to dinner at the home of friends of my brothers. My brother said, Oh, they're having a bunch of Israeli people over. It's some sort of Delegation. They've come to learn about American Judaism, that's all I knew, but you're welcome to come. My brother was going to go there anyway, or my sister-in-law, at least, my brother was post-surgery. I went and met these really fascinating Israelis on the delegation. And I met the person who was running the delegation for an organization which we're going to learn more about in just a minute, an organization I'm called Gesher, which means Bridge.The person who I had the privilege of re-meeting that night and sitting with today is JJ Susman, JJ is the International Director of Gesher. He made Aliyah to Israel about 30 years ago. He worked in various high tech companies, the names of many of which you would recognize for a couple of decades. He's been at Gecher for about a decade. He lives with his wife and kids in Modi'in. I wanted to talk to you, JJ, because you bring these people to America, mostly either to New York or LA, but whatever, and they're very important people. They have positions in ministries. They have very pivotal positions in very important high tech companies. They're players. They're definitely players in the Israeli system. I've always heard people say, Israelis don't really know a lot about diaspora Jews, but I always assume that you get to a certain point in Israeli society, a certain height on the ladder. Well, obviously you do because you meet people, you learn. I sat with these people. I think there were three of them that night at our dinner, each one of whom was impressive beyond words. I mean, these were really smart, smart people. And they all said to a person, I didn't know anything about American Judaism.And that's when I decided, I got to talk to you about this, because I want to hear from your vast experience of doing this now, what do you want Israelis to know about American Judaism? But perhaps even before that, what do they not know? And going through the experience that you put together for them, and you'll describe the experience, what do they leave knowing, and how does that change their attitude to diaspora Jews, to the relationship between Israel and the diaspora, perhaps a sense of responsibility to diaspora, given what's going on now? I guess later in the conversation, we should talk about whether they're picking up how much the sands are shifting under the feet of American Jews. I'm not sure American Jews know that, but we'll talk about that as a separate issue. So let's just start out. Tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us about Gesher, and then we'll dive in.So first of all, Daniel, thank you for having me on the show. It's really an honor and a privilege to be here. As you said, I made Aliyah to Israel in the late '90s. I've been here about 30 years now, or in the mid '90s, I guess I made Aliyah. I worked in high tech, and now I've been at Gesher for about a decade. Gesher is an organization that's been around for over 50 years, trying to bring together the secular and the religious and even the Haredi communities, trying to build a cohesive society here in Israel.Was founded by a really special person.Was founded by rabbi Dr. Daniel Tropper, who he in his own right is a special person, but today may be more recognized by his son, who is a former Minister in the government, Hili Tropper, and today is still a member of the Knesset. And about a decade ago, Gesher made a strategic decision to evolve from a strictly educational organization to one focused also on social impact. And to that end, established something we call today the Gesher Leadership Institute. And the goal of that program is to work with influential leaders in Israeli society, people who have influence, like you mentioned, director, generals of ministries or mayors or senior journalists, people who have really outsized influence on the public discourse in Israel and more than public discourse, educational leaders in Israeli society, and to work with them so that when they go back to their positions of influence, they can take the values that we've tried to impart to them and really spread them forward. So you have them act as social change agents in their positions of influence.What are those values that you're trying to impart to them?So the values of cohesive society. And then a decade ago, when we started this program where we bring them together for a course, which includes beyond the trip you mentioned, the delegation you mentioned, which is about a week long trip to a Jewish community outside of Israel. It includes also about 30 hours worth of time together here in Israel, where we learn about diaspora Jewry, where we learn about the different fault lines and issues tearing Israelis apart here as well. And getting back to the issue we want to talk about, diaspora Jewry. Like you said, they really know nothing. And I was also flabbergasted and blown away in the b...