February 25 - March 3, 2013

See ‘Israeli’ on Page 2

Made in Israel, bought overseas

Israeli companies succeed in U.S. marketplace

ANNA HARWOOD TAMI BENMAYERInternational Media Placement

MAAYAN JAFFEBaltimore Jewish Times

From tickling your palate by spreading tangy hummus on pita bread to smearing soothing Dead Sea

mud on aching parts of your body, Israeli-made products are successfully integrating themselves into the highly competitive American consumer marketplace.

While “loyal” American Jewish kosher consumers and pro-Israel Evangelical Christians provide a built-in marketplace for Made in Israel products, a growing number of Israeli companies have burst onto the mainstream consumer scene by either forging alliances with local manufacturers and distributors or crossing the

ocean to open flagship stores in key U.S. cities.

For instance, the joint venture partnership between the Strauss Group, one of Israel’s largest food conglomerates, and New York-based PepsiCo Inc., which was inked in 2007, has in a short

period of time sparked a culinary revolution in the American consumer marketplace via the introduction of a series of hummus spreads and chilled Mediterranean accented dips under the “Sabra” brand name. Hummus and chilled dips now represent one of the fastest growing segments in the American food industry.

The United States is a key strategic growth market for many Israeli companies and the desire to enter the U.S. retail arena can be strong. But

Story list: Page 2

Jewish News of Greater Phoenix

2 – JEWISH NEWS OF GREATER PHOENIX – February 22, 2013

doing business in America involves a lot of work, say marketing experts.

Take Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories products. It is the only company indigenous to the Dead Sea region. It is known internationally for its ability to recharge the skin’s natural functions by optimizing cell metabolism, protecting from UV damage and increasing moisture levels.

Back in the 1990s, Ahava Cosmetics initially produced a small line of skin care products made from mineral rich Dead Sea muds for the Israeli marketplace. That is until Ahava’s spa technicians discovered that foreign tourists were scooping up the muds and taking them back home. By 2010, Ahava Cosmetics reported sales of more than $150 million dollars a year in the U.S., with the company’s products being sold in upscale department stores such as Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom.

“We have a dedicated sales and

marketing team that allows us to be close to the consumer as well as to our retail partners,” says Elana Drell Szyfer, chief executive officer of Ahava North America. “This helps us better penetrate the

market and understand trends.”Ahava has used several key

strategies to gain buyers. First, it has tapped into American tourists by positioning its products in key tourist venues. Americans buy Ahava in Israel and then look for it when they return to the States, says Szyfer.

Second, the company mounted what Szyfer called a “major PR push.” Ahava stays in touch with print and online beauty editors. This helps place the product in the eyes of those who are interested in beauty.

Finally, Ahava has dramatically increased its sampling efforts – in all major retailers and online at www.ahavaus.com.

Gidon Katz, vice president of IMP Group in Jerusalem, a company launched 30 years ago that represents well-known brands such as Tnuva, Osem and the Golan Heights Winery, says he has seen a shift in the way Israeli products make it to American shelves.

“Thirty years ago, for sure in the

Jewish market, people bought Israeli products out of guilt. You could call it ‘wanting to help’ or ‘philanthropic reasons,’” he says. “There is almost no such thing anymore. Today, Israeli products really need to prove themselves.”

Katz says quality and price (value) are the top priorities for U.S. consumers and supersede the products’ origin.

Just like Ahava, Katz’s clients generally have U.S. representatives to help them place their products and to handle customer service. He says Tnuva, for example, is the biggest kosher food manufacturer in the world, with $2 billion in sales each year. Tnuva’s American subsidiary, Tnuva USA, brings in the company’s products direct from Israel to New York and then distributes them to other states.

Katz says there are four types of U.S. Jewish consumers. First, Israelis living in America. They’ll buy Israeli products because of the nostalgia.

Next, Orthodox Jews who say Israel is a high factor in their purchasing decisions.

Affiliated Jews, explained Katz, say Israel is a factor, “but there we need to compete more on quality and price.”

The final category, unaffiliated Jews, “there is almost no difference.”

With this in mind, Katz says the test of whether or not an Israeli product is thriving in the U.S. is not by whether or not it is carried by Jewish establishments, but if it makes it to major chains like Costco or Wegmans.

Continued from Page 1

Feb. 25 - March 3

Popularity of Israeli products growing in U.S.

Ahava skin care products are sold in upscale department stores in the United States.

Photo courtesy of Ahava

Buy Israel Week stories

Made in Israel, bought overseas ........................... 1Experience one of Israel’s sweet sides ................ 3Israeli designs demonstrate flair for fashion ....... 4Zion’s bling marked by unique creations ............. 5Website helps find Israel products ....................... 5Reclaiming the brand ............................................. 6From the kibbutz to your kitchen .......................... 6 ‘Buy Israel’ not just this week, but forever........... 7

Buy Israel Week and this special advertorial issue is a cooperative marketing effort among the publications and organizers noted below. Be sure to check out the blog and marketplace at www.buyisraelweek.com.

PARTICIPATING NEWSPAPERS: Baltimore Jewish Times • The Jewish Week, New York • Chicago Jewish News • Florida Jewish Journal • j, The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California • The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles • Jewish News of Greater Phoenix • New Jersey Jewish Standard • Philadelphia Jewish Exponent • Texas Jewish Post • Washington Jewish Week

ORGANIZERS: Stand With Us • Conference of Presidents • jdeal.com • Israel-America Chamber of Commerce

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Fresh from the Kibbutz

February 22, 2013 – JEWISH NEWS OF GREATER PHOENIX – 3

Experience one of Israel’s sweet sides GABRIELLA JAFFEE Special to Jewish News

Israel isn’t just the land of milk and honey — it’s the land of milk and cocoa, too.

Maybe you enjoy whimsical candies like candy canes, jellybeans and gummies. Maybe you revel in the nostalgic feeling evoked by eating halvah. Maybe you enjoy chocolate with popping candy inside. Whatever your tastes, Israeli candies have something to offer every sweet tooth.

Achva: Achva’s sesame seed halvah has come a long way since the company started in 1929 in Tel Aviv. Combining Polish, Turkish, Russian and Greek influences to make the best sesame products available, Achva produces a wide range of offerings, including vanilla, marble, pistachio, curly, spread and sandwich halvah. Achva now produces organic halvah and sugarless halvah in vanilla with dietary fiber and nuts.

Aleh: For more than 40 years, Aleh’s factory in Petach Tikvah has been producing fine candies and chocolates. With the advent of new technology, Aleh’s manufacturing process has become auto-mated and involves little to no hands-on contact. Among its products are Gazoz Candy Canes (plastic tubes filled with small, colorful candies), Moon Stones (chocolate rocks) and Blessing Sticks (large tubes filled with small, colorful candies).

Maya Foods Industries: Candy might seem an unlikely product for Maya Foods, which started out selling baking powder and spices three decades ago under the name Mia Spice of Life Jerusa-lem Ltd. The company, based in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem, has since expanded and, in 2010, changed its name to reflect its offer-ing of more than 300 products, among them beans, rice, cereal products, baking products, spices, nuts, dried fruits, snacks and candy. Jellybeans come in apple and cherry, cola and lemon, orange and lemon and Carnival (mixed) fruit flavors.

Strauss Group: Israel’s second-largest food and beverage producer, Strauss Group, owns several different companies, including Elite. Eliyahu Fromenchenko, a Russian Jew living in Latvia, had a candy factory in 1933, which he sold due to the rise of anti-Semitism and moved to Israel. He then partnered with seven other people to create “Elite.” In 1938, Elite produced chocolate for the British army and other allied forces in

Palestine, according to the Strauss website. Strauss merged with Elite in 1996. These days, Elite sells $93 million worth of candy annually, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek article.

Carmit: Founded in 1973, Carmit produces a wide range of confections including chocolate coins,

marshmallows, 100 percent dairy-free chocolate and gluten-free wafers. The whimsical marshmallows come in a variety of shapes and flavors, including: Spaghetti, Twister, Coconut, Fruit-Shaped and Spring.

Hashachar Ha’ole: Hashachar Ha’ole’s Chocolate Spread has been a staple as a sandwich filling in Israeli chil-dren’s lunchboxes for decades. According to the company’s website, five Wideberg brothers started a small candy factory in 1948, and were joined by the

Levkowich family two years later. Seeing a need for a new product in the Israeli market, Hashachar Ha’ole focused its production on chocolate spreads in 1955. The spreads come in a variety of flavors, including milk, dark and white chocolate, with milk chocolate variety being the most popular.

Israel offers multiple treats, such as Achva’s Halva Snacks, to satisfy the American sweet tooth. Photo courtesy of Achva

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4 – JEWISH NEWS OF GREATER PHOENIX – February 22, 2013

Israeli designs demonstrate flair for fashion PAULINE DUBKIN YEARWOODChicago Jewish News

With a staggering array of fashions from everyone and

everywhere to choose from, why should American women buy clothes made by Israeli designers?

To support the Jewish state, sure. But more likely for the quality, the flattering fit, the colors, the size range and the

reasonable prices, say several of those who work in the business.

One is Tali Kogan, whose downtown Chicago showroom, Tel Aviv Couture, features fashions and accessories by a wide range of Israeli designers.

Kogan is an Israeli native who originally worked in real estate after moving to Chicago but switched careers after a designer friend suggested that she offer fashion-conscious Chicago women something they hadn’t been exposed to

much before — Israeli fash-ions. The business took off quickly, and now Kogan visits Israel every few months to identify new designers for the trunk shows, fashion shows and shopping events she pro-duces. She also sells online at www.telavivcouture.com.

Several attributes make Israeli designs different, she says. “The country is very warm, and a lot of the clothes are very body-conscious, yet very comfortable. The styles are a little bit more drapey and the fabrics are very soft, and because of that, they can complement many different body shapes. You don’t have to be a supermodel to wear them,” she says.

Many of the designers she features are graduates of the Shenkar School of Engineer-ing and Design, a famed institution based in Ramat- Gan, which is Phoenix’s sister city. “The education they get there is extraordinary, and the beauty of Israel inspires these amazing young kids to create unique designs,” Kogan says. “My clients go crazy over these designs,” she says, adding that more than half are neither Israeli nor Jewish. “They just love this stuff.”

One reason: The clothing is versatile. “As a modern working woman, I understand that clothing has to work for so many different life needs and be easy to travel with,” she says.

In California, meanwhile, Ruti Zisser sells fashions from her native land out of three Ruti Boutiques, in Palo Alto, San Francisco and Santa Monica, and plans to open two more this year, says sales associate Darcy Fowkes.

Zisser, currently in Israel scouting designers, “looks for a specific look,” Fowkes says. “Her look is clean lines, and comfort is one of her primary goals, both in fit and fabric.”

Clients also look for quality, she says, and find it in Israeli clothes. “The fabric is of higher

quality than you can find in most department stores” because most of the material comes from Japan and Italy instead of cheaper wares from China, Fowkes says.

“There are higher quality colors, too. Israelis have a way with color,” she says, citing a

popular T-shirt “of the richest brown, a deep gorgeous color with a little mahogany. Cus-tomers who bought that shirt seven years ago will come back for another one. The col-ors are so contemporary, with an earthy feel.”

Fowkes also cites the wide range of sizes Israeli design-ers use, “zero all the way up to 24. (Zisser’s) ability to ser-vice the population is amaz-ing,” she says.

What customers really come for, though, Fowkes says, is the unusual quality of work done by Israeli designers. “They do a good job of combin-ing fabrics in a way that is artistic that you don’t usually see” with designers from other countries, she says. “It’s reach-ing deeper into that concept and doing it very successfully.”

One of the Jewish state’s best-known designers is Ronen Chen, who, since the 1990s, has been selling fash-ions to women throughout Israel and Europe but is still relatively new to the United States. In this country, he sells through an e-commerce site, www.ronenchen.com.

May Sofi of Stylehouse PR, which represents Chen in the United States, says he is looking to enhance his profile here and it seems to be work-ing. American women like the

versatility and draping of his fashions, she says.

Chen recently released his spring/summer 2013 collec-tion, which includes four the-matic groups: Metropolis for spring, consisting of clothes that feature art-deco and geometric lines; Savannah for

early summer, described as giving “a nod to African grass-lands (and bringing) together elements of both the forest and desert”; Ocean Blue for summer, with light fabrics in Chen’s signature asymmetri-cal draping in various shades of blue evoking sea and sky; and Time Out for late sum-mer, “dreamy getaway wear” that looks airy and fresh for the hottest days of the year.

Chen “is known for the fit of his clothing,” Sofi says. “Every woman says it’s like he came into her closet and fitted the clothes just for her. It’s all about draping, celebrating the female form by making cloth-ing that is comfortable and flattering without being too revealing.”

Spring and summer designs are colorful, Sofi says; Chen’s fall collections feature rich dark browns and navy blues in keeping with the season.

“But his signature thing is the draping and the fit,” Sofi says. “He does a lot of asym-metrical designs inspired by geography and architecture. That’s what got him into fash-ion design in the first place.”

So now, when you see those knockout Israeli women prancing down the street in their flowing, flattering outfits, you’ll know where you can get some, too.

Fashion designs by Ronen Chen, who is one of Israel’s best-known designers, are known for draping and fit. Photo courtesy of Ronen Chen

Feb. 25 - March 3

February 22, 2013 – JEWISH NEWS OF GREATER PHOENIX – 5

Yael Setty, who, like me, counts Ayala Bar designs among her personal favorites.

Another pioneer in contemporary Israeli jewelry is the much-lauded Michal Negrin (www.michalnegrin.com/country-4-USA). This grandniece of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, grew up on Kibbutz Naan. She got her start selling hand-crafted wares in 1988 at Tel Aviv’s popular open-air

market. The company very much remains a family busi-ness; her husband, Meir, serves as CEO.

Negrin’s style could be clas-sified as a whimsical mix of Victorian romance, color and contemporary bedazzle. Her pieces range widely from more classic monotones to South

Beach-friendly, candy-colored fun. Her massive product line grows each season with everything from simple post earrings and bejeweled key chains to elaborate chandelier earrings, brooches, barrettes, hat pins, apron-style neck-laces, bracelets and chokers.

Although frequently imi-tated, Ayala Bar and Michal Negrin are the true trendset-ters. “They are so creative,” Setty says, “they are not copy-ing anyone.”

Another Israeli designer of note is Leetal Kalmonson (www.lkjewelry.com). Among her specialties are large dangling earrings in white, yellow and rose-plated gold, which Setty describes as, “so light and very fun to wear.” A recent fashion show featured mini-laptops decorated with Kalmonson designs. In this joint ven-ture with Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, models carried clutch-sized computers with her signature bling on the catwalk — a very far cry from my childhood shul.

Zion’s bling marked by unique creationsLISA ALCALAY KLUGj. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California

In the early decades of the Jewish state, bril-liant green Eilat stones

and intricate Yemenite silver filigree were the hallmarks of Israeli jewelry. Of course, there were also traditional Judaica pieces: tiny mezuzot, chai charms, Jewish stars, names spelled in Hebrew letters.

The more classic designs captured the attention of my Israeli grandparents, who gifted my mother with beau-tiful pieces she would wear to synagogue and then tuck away until the next Shabbat or holiday. As we sat in shul, she would ease my restlessness by occasionally handing me a ring or a bracelet. The prayers washed over me as I turned the jewelry over and over, marvel-ing at the craftsmanship and studying every detail.

Some of these pieces are now mine to wear. Among my favorites is a large silver teardrop outlined with fine Yemenite detail. It hangs not from a chain, but from a black silk ribbon. A large, beveled smoky topaz rests perfectly in the center. The look is Victo-rian/Middle Eastern.

This unusual fusion of

genres typifies today’s leading Israeli jewelry brands. Several hugely popular brands escape conventional definition. And the hottest design-ers among them are women whose eclectic signature styles extend well beyond Israel to the United States.

The crowning jewel of them all might be Ayala Bar (www.ayala bar.com). After gradu-ating from art school in the 1980s and pursuing a career in theater and inte-rior design, Bar has become known for her use of simple metals, glass, stones, beads and fabric, sometimes even presenting fabric under glass in unparalleled combinations.

From her studio in the Tel Aviv suburb of Givatayim, her innovative creations are sometimes referred to as “Art Deco Meets Middle East.” Some have a Bohemian feel; others resemble some-thing Cleopatra could have worn. Released twice a year, each collection features 200

designs and is available for a limited time only.

The extensive online bou-tique of Israeli jewelry, Setty Gallery, carries many Israeli designers but Bar’s are the site’s top sellers.

The gallery’s website, www.settygallery.com is owned and operated by Israeli-born

An earring designed by Leeta Kalmanson is an example of the unique jewelry created by Israeli jewelry designers. Photo courtesy of Setty Gallery

Feb. 25 - March 3

Website helps find Israel productsDid you know that wares from household staples like

Black & Decker and Stanley are manufactured in Israel? Furthermore, were you aware that Israeli goods are found in plain sight at Target, Home Depot, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Sears, Brooks Brothers and even Walmart?

With the goal of spreading the word on Israeli brands available in the American market, the Buy Israeli Goods (BIG) website (www.buyisraelgoods.org) — launched by Chicago-based businessman and former America-Israel Chamber of Commerce-Chicago president Howard Bernstein — has endeavored to help connect products, technologies and services to consumers throughout the U.S.

The site, launched in 2002, is broken down by metropolitan regions, and according to Bernstein, reaches up to 75 percent of the American Jewish market. “BIG is a nonprofit site that encourages people to buy Israeli products and facilitate that by making available the names of retail outlets and businesses,” he says. “We started out with a handful of major markets and have since expanded it to 24 market areas nationwide. Anybody who visits the site will gain access to sellers of various made-in-Israel products.”

In fall 2011, the Israel Center, a project of the Jewish Community Association of Greater Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, began compiling a list of businesses in the Greater Phoenix area that sell Israeli products; the listings now appear on the site’s Phoenix page.

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6 – JEWISH NEWS OF GREATER PHOENIX – February 22, 2013

Feb. 25 - March 3

portion going bad, whereas the frozen products stay fresh for 24 months.

Dorot’s product line keeps growing and now includes almost 30 different frozen, cubed products: garlic, herbs, pasta sauces, rice herb mixes and meat marinades.

The products begin in the fields — the kibbutz has more than 3,500 acres of

field crops — where the ingredients are harvested at the peak of the season, when flavor, vitamins and minerals are at their best.

The processing plant is out in the middle of the fields so that within hours of harvesting, the ingredients are washed, peeled and chopped and then flash-frozen to lock in the

freshness.The plant

operates three different production lines: one for the individual trays, one for jars for private home use,

and one for larger pails for the food service and industrial markets. The plant’s production lines produce about 4,000 trays per hour and the annual turnout reaches several million trays and jars.

The company adheres to the strictest international industrial standards, as well as the strictest kosher certifications. There is also an onsite mashgiach supervising production.

An in-house lab tests every batch coming into the factory and every pallet leaving the factory to ensure food quality and safety.

Dorot, which has invested in enlarging its current plant, uses feedback from each market to help develop new products that will appeal to consumers.

Dorot is pushing the boundaries of the desert south, making Ben-Gurion’s promise to bring life and prosperity to the Negev Desert a reality. The vast green fields of the kibbutz are proof that with hard work and true Zionism, this dream can become reality.

This article was compiled by Salvatore Caputo, assistant managing editor, from material supplied by Dorot Foods Inc. and from Dorot Garlic & Herbs’ website (www.dorot.co.il). Dorot products are available locally at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Visit www.mydorot.com.

From the kibbutz to your kitchen

A farmer working in the vast garlic fields of Kibbutz Dorot, Israel, in the northwestern tip of the Negev

Desert, wanted to devise a way to make garlic bulbs that were too big, too small or too cracked to sell at retail stores into a saleable commodity.

So, in the late 1980s, he turned his home into a laboratory and developed what would become the flagship product of Dorot Garlic & Herbs.

His solution?He decided to

peel and chop the garlic, adding oil and lemon juice as natural preservatives, and started filling jars and placing them in the freezer for easy use.

A few of the other kibbutz members loved the idea and asked him to make a few jars for them. Very soon almost every retail store in Israel was selling these jars.

Dorot established its first factory at the kibbutz in a portable building (known in Israel as a caravan) in 1992.

A few years later, Dorot developed the idea of delivering the mix in trays — very similar to ice cube trays. Then, more products, such as green herbs, were added to the cube-tray offerings.

In 1998, Dorot began exporting its products, with sales in Britain. Since then, Dorot’s sales have expanded to the United States, Canada, South Africa, Spain, Hungary, Austria, Lithuania and Latvia. The company also expects to be selling in Russia soon.

In the U.S., Dorot owns its own marketing company, Dorot Foods Inc., which ensures that its “little red tray” products are sold in every state of the union.

Many factors helped make the company successful in the U.S. One of the key factors is the convenience of its products. Pulling a tray from the freezer and popping cubes into the recipe without having to peel, chop or crush the ingredients is a winning idea with American consumers.

Another key factor is that the ingredients are always available. Some green herbs such as basil, dill, parsley and cilantro are hard to get fresh at some times of the year. Even when fresh batches of these herbs are available, they’re hard to use up without some

EDITORIAL

Reclaiming the brandRichard L. Cravatts, a marketing professor who spoke

at the Bureau of Jewish Education’s Passages lecture on Feb. 17, says that Israel’s brand has been hijacked by its enemies, that the narrative to demonize and delegitimize Israel is one that has legs despite its inherent falsehood.

For instance, he says, 80 percent of the security barrier in Israel is a chain-link fence, but it is portrayed as a bleak cement wall, like that of a prison. Those who pro-mote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement never explain how an effort to weaken Israel’s economy could help the Palestinians’ cause. Can they not see that a strong Israeli economy creates synergies that can float boats from the Jordan to the Mediterranean?

It’s time for Israel and its supporters to re-hijack the brand, so to speak, to stump with almost mission-ary fervor on behalf of the start-up nation, the only functioning (however dysfunctional its politics might be) democracy in the Middle East, the only one where women, immigrants from all nations and the LGBT com-munity have civil rights, the only one where freedom of religion is practiced, and the only economy in the region that produces the stuff of the future — like solutions to the looming world water shortage — instead of old fossil fuels that are poisoning the world’s environment and fueling global conflict.

That’s why Jewish News has signed on to Buy Israel Week since 2011 — to counteract the BDS crowd, who have no idea what apartheid really is or even how to pronounce it (it’s apart-hate, not apart-hide), and to sing the glories of Israeli wares — from wines to foods to clothing to bling.

We do this to add our editorial voice to the many other efforts that seek to forge local connections with Israel. For instance, earlier this month, the Arizona Israel Busi-ness Council launched with the hope of bringing Israel into the Top 10 of Arizona’s trading partners in the next five years. And there are strong hints that trade ties with the Navajo Nation, the largest American Indian reservation and tribe, will grow as a result of President Ben Shelly’s visit to Israel.

In the past year, we’ve witnessed the formation of local chapters of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) and Volunteers for Israel (VFI). The FIDF chapter has put on events like a tour of Valley syna-gogues last March by IDF soldier Sharon Grisaru, who explained how the FIDF provides financial, moral and psychological support to Israeli soldiers on the ground in a nation that — thanks to its inhospitable neighbors — must maintain a permanent war footing. As for VFI, which supports the Israeli program Sar-El (in which volunteers assist in noncombat duties on Israeli military bases), more than 300 Arizonans had participated in the program before the local chapter formed.

Add these new groups to the mix of long-established groups such as Jewish National Fund, the community’s Israel Center and the upcoming Yom Ha’atzmaut fes-tival, and it becomes time to remember that hallelujah is a Hebrew word. So, hallelujah, brothers and sisters, spread the word. Am Yisrael chai.

“The little red tray” of frozen crushed garlic is the flagship product of Israel’s Dorot Garlic & Herbs, based in Kibbutz Dorot. Photo courtesy of Dorot Foods Inc.

February 22, 2013 – JEWISH NEWS OF GREATER PHOENIX – 7

Feb. 25 - March 3

‘Buy Israel’ not just this week, but forever

Pick a Jewish holiday, any holiday. Let’s take one of my favorites: Sukkot. This is a holiday bursting with meaning. Inside a sukkah, we can experience the fragility of life and appreciate some great Jewish values, such as gratitude, modesty and hospitality.

Now, ask yourself: After the eight days of the holiday are over and you put away your sukkah, do you also put away the spiritual meaning you gained during the week?

If, for example, during the holiday you reconnect with the virtue of gratitude, shouldn’t you keep that connection all year long?

The Kotzker Rebbe once wrote that when we speak of keeping Shabbat, the deeper, spiritual meaning is that we’re supposed to keep Shabbat with us during the week. In other words, Shabbat’s message of peace and renewal is always relevant, always appropriate, always needed.

It’s the same with Buy Israel Week.

The notion of “one week” is not there to be taken literally. It’s only there to concentrate the mind on a great Jewish value — supporting Israel.

Buy Israel Week is always relevant, always appropriate, always needed.

When I try to convey the importance of supporting Israel to my kids, I remind them of how much they love their bubbes and zaydes. I ask

them to visualize a long human chain of 100 bubbes and 100 zaydes holding hands in a big field. These are your grandparents, I tell them, your direct ancestors, going all the way back to the destruction of the Second Temple.

For almost 2,000 years, I say to them, your bubbes and zaydes prayed every day to return to Zion, to Jerusalem, to the land of our Bible. And you are privileged to live in the generation that has fulfilled that dream. How fortunate you are!

But that’s just one side of the

David Suissa

story. There’s a catch, I tell them, and it’s this: With blessings come responsibilities.

Now that we have regained this priceless gift of our own nation, we have so much more to lose, the stakes are so much higher, the responsibilities so much greater.

It is the fate of the Jewish nation that we seem to always be put in very difficult situations.

It’s hard to imagine a more difficult story than the rebirth of Israel. As soon as we came out of the womb, enemy armies swarmed us. Somehow, we fought them off and survived.

This pattern has continued for the 64 years of our existence. Enemies attack us, and, somehow, we fight them off and survive.

But as Israel survived, another miracle was happening.

While the eyes of the world were on the wars that threatened Israel’s existence, little Israel started building things.

It built roads, highways, farmlands and desalination plants.

It built hospitals, universities, high-rises, hotels and brand-new cities.

While being virtually under siege, Israel built the freest and most sophisticated civil society in the Middle East.

By the time this little country turned 60, it had turned into an improbable “Start-Up Nation,” winning Nobel prizes, developing cures for diseases and inventing new technologies.

It embraced more than a million new immigrants, spawned a thriving, homegrown culture in music, film and the arts, and sent rescue teams on humanitarian missions all over the globe.

Of course Israel, with all its achievements, is far from perfect. It has tried but failed to make peace with all its neighbors. It is what I call a “mess in progress.”

But what sets the country truly apart from its neighbors is its “corrective mechanism,” rooted in the sacred right to protest and dissent. For every flaw or problem you find, you’re bound to find a

group or entity fighting to fix it. The solutions don’t always come, but the corrective engine never stops roaring.

Perhaps because of this corrective noise, Israel’s problems are much more visible to the outside world. This is a sign not of weakness, but of success. Israel is an open society, with no fear to show its faults.

And still, despite this success — or maybe because of it — Israel’s enemies have not gone away. If they can’t fight Israel with bullets, they will fight it with boycotts.

Buy Israel Week is a direct response to this challenge.

For many years now, the enemies of the Jewish state have been on a global mission to undermine and delegitimize the successful Zionist enterprise. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement is the centerpiece of their effort. It doesn’t matter if these attacks are unfair or hypocritical.

What matters is that they are real, and we must respond.

How do we respond? The Jewish way — by transformation. By transforming boycott into “buycott.”

If our enemies tell the world to stop buying Israeli products, then we shall encourage the world to do the exact opposite: Buy Israeli products.

Optimism is a deep Jewish value with a long and complicated history. Despite all the hardships and tragedies we have suffered in our long history, we never stop looking forward with hope and strength.

The ultimate Jewish question is not “What shall we believe?” or “What shall we think?” but “What shall we do?”

During Buy Israel Week, we shall all buy Israeli products.

And when the “holiday week” is over, we shall buy Israel forever.

David Suissa is the president of Tribe Media Corp. and Jewish Journal. This commentary is part of the Buy Israel Week! project, a partnership involving Jdeal.com, 10 Jewish newspapers across the U.S., Israeli business groups and American Israel advocacy groups.

While the eyes of the world were on the

wars that threatened

Israel’s existence, little Israel

started building things.