From Israel to Zambia, with hope

With war raging in Gaza, tens of thousands evacuated  in the north and south, many hostages feared dead and prospects of a regional war, it is understandable that Israelis  are preoccupied with their own crises.

But one extraordinary orthodox rabbi and activist Micha Odenheimer, in addition to thinking about Israel’s plight, is keenly focused on another country that is in deep distress: Zambia, where a national emergency has been declared due to famine. It is the latest part of his longstanding and multifaceted mission to engage Jews and Israelis in a kind of tikkun olam outreach (“heal the world”) for impoverished parts of the world.

During a phone interview from Zambia in early August, Odenheimer described to The Jewish Independent how the Israeli NGO he founded and directs, Tevel b’Tzedek (World in Justice) is responding to a crippling drought threatening millions of people. It was caused by a major drop in rainfall at a critical time, which led to huge crop failure, including of the staple, maize.

“We’re focusing now on growth of emergency irrigated maize,” Odenheimer said. Tevel had just hired four additional Zambian agronomists to help work on rapid fire solutions for farmers. “The efforts seem to be going well,” he said, adding that the desperately needed maize crop should be ready in November, when it will be dried and turned into cornmeal.

Tevel’s estimate is that the produce will be enough to assure at least one meal a day for about 3000 residents of Mphande, the locale village Tevel helps, through March-April.

It was far from the first foray into the developing world for Odenheimer - or Tevel., Although ordained by a preeminent orthodox sage, the late rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Odenheimer, born in 1958 in California, has never been one to remain confined to the study halls.

When he identifies human need, he tries his best to do something about it. Over the years his exploits have included locating and speeding up the rescue of hundreds of forgotten Jews from a remote corner of Ethiopia, and spearheading efforts by Tevel to help Nepal fight poverty, give hope to youth and recover from an earthquake. The journeys have taken him to places no other rabbi has ventured.

Early this year, he travelled to a palace to entreat and persuade a Zambian princess to back Tevel’s efforts. “We had to get up and explain to her what we’re doing,” Odenheimer said of the chieftainess, who holds sway over some 300 villages as part of Zambia’s dual governance system through which local chieftains wield authority in parallel to ministries of the formal administration.

Odenheimer is unfazed by such encounters, perhaps because he has travelled widely for decades, including early on in combat zones as a journalist. Reporting from Ethiopia, he was deeply moved by the Jews he met there and by the country as a whole.

In 1994 he founded the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jewry to lobby for people who have immigrated to Israel (olim) to redress mistreatment and to open up educational opportunities. He remains a board member of the now entirely olim run group, renamed the Association for Ethiopian Jewry, and maintains deep ties to the community.

“Part of my intention in creating Tevel B’Zedek is to create a more universalist horizon in religious Zionism and move towards our religious obligation as Jews to engage with all humanity and to create a better world for everybody,” he explained at an earlier interview in a café at Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market.

This may sound idealistic in today’s cynical societies, but in practice such thinking has impelled Tevel to help directly and indirectly many thousands of people.

In Zambia, for example, the group is up against poverty beyond what most Westerners can imagine: hungry people, no health care and children who grow up stunted.

Odenheimer cites texts and teachings that point to a Jewish obligation to help out, including one from Genesis about God revealing himself to Abraham to promote righteousness and justice. A formative personal experience was becoming a close disciple of the legendary Hasidic teacher Shlomo Carlebach. When Carlebach would travel from New York to Israel, he would leave Odenheimer in charge of his congregation, which among other things meant caring for the needs of the poor.

“Even though he was super committed to particularism in terms of our tradition and our torah, in terms of our goals and our respect for others, he was very universalistic,” Odenheimer said. One manifestation of this is that Carlebach taught to recognise that there are holy people and teachers in other traditions.

Tevel launched in Nepal in 2007, bringing together Israeli and Jewish volunteers (including Australian groups) to work alongside Nepali peers, and has chosen to come to Zambia because the country, which is Christian but, as Odenheimer learned, also has many believers in magic, combined relative political stability with great need.

It also has a pro-Israel orientation, as shown recently in its opposition to South Africa’s allegation at the ICJ that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. The Zambian government strongly backs Tevel’s efforts, says Odenheimer.

Beyond redressing the overwhelming need intensified by the famine, Tevel’s goal is to work on what it hopes will become a model to lift subsistence farming villages out of poverty and transition their residents into small commercial enterprises.

At present, much of the rural population harvests charcoal from trees, making less than a dollar a day, and severely depleting forest land. Tevel seeks to stop this and encourage them to enter agriculture and in the process hike their earnings.

Tevel operates in three villages that have a total population of 5000 people. It runs an experimental farm where it bases its flagship Youth Service Program which trains local Zambians in leadership. They act as the program’s key activists in the community, taking advantage of their family and friendship ties to help gain backing for Tevel initiatives. They suffer from acute poverty, with many seeing a major advantage in that the program offers lunch.

Vital to all of this are the youth aged 18 to 30 being trained as leaders. The focus on youth as key to community enhancement is inspired by the role of youth movements and the kibbutz movement in building Israel, Odenheimer says. An Israeli veteran of the kibbutz movement advised Tevel in setting up the Youth Service Program.

Odenheimer’s daughter Ayala, the program director, spends the most time on the ground in Zambia. Equipped with a master’s degree in public policy, she first worked in Tevel as a stand-in after being influenced by a visit to Zambia with her father.

Coming from Israeli work culture gives Tevel an edge in Zambia, she believes. “We were one of the first organisations to react quickly to the drought. We’re bringing something unique coming from the Start Up Nation: the ability to do things quickly, be flexible, take risks, and respond quickly and creatively to things in the field without a lot of bureaucracy.”

Eight Volunteers came over the summer from Israel, the US, UK and Germany, including an Israeli psychologist and a filmmaker who gave theatre lessons. The Zambian youth cohorts have had traumatic experiences growing up in harsh conditions, leaving some of them traumatised, Odenheimer says.

“We’re definitely learning to understand the youth better. On the surface, they’re bright, strong, they can work hard and they show up. But a lot come from backgrounds of trauma. Poverty produces trauma at the emotional level,” Micha Odenheimer adds.

“On the one hand, they have aspects of modernity such as Facebook accounts and in a way they have a lot of sophistication. But at the same time, pretty much everyone believes in magic. They think negative things can happen because someone tried to do something bad to them or are afraid people in the village engaged in witchcraft. Even people with PhDs can think this way.”

Odenheimer says Tevel is absolutely against trying to change local beliefs.

Is his end goal a pipe dream? Odenheimer, at least, thinks it is both doable and imperative.

“Israel as a country and economy is global in every way: in terms of the companies we own abroad, the trade we engage in, the foreign companies that own companies here. We’re completely global. To say we’re global in every way except ethically means that we ignore the extreme poverty in the global south. I think this is wrong.”