Michal Kohane came from Sacramento to attend the annual Israel celebration last year, when it was at SBC Park. While enjoying the day with her family, she ran into
the president of Shalom School, Sacramento’s Jewish day school. At the time, Kohane was working at the school.
“I said to him back then, ‘I don’t know where I’ll be next year, but I’ll make sure [Sacramento’s] coming,” said Kohane.
Six months later, Kohane, who is Israeli-born, became the executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region. One of the first things she did was call Alex Joffe, a chair of the Israel celebration from the Peninsula.
“I don’t know what to do, but put us on the map,” she recalled telling him.
And so for the first time, the Sacramento federation is on board as a co-sponsor of Israel in the Gardens. That makes four federations coming together to make it truly Northern California-wide.
Kohane said that attending the event is “a two-way street.” People who move from the Bay Area to Sacramento can often feel isolated, she said, and it’s valuable for Sacramento residents to attend so they feel part of something larger.
“It’s a fantastic event,” Kohane said. “I’ve gone the last few years, and it’s important for people from here to come down and experience that and be inside a bigger, active, lively community, which here we don’t have as much.”
Kohane said that Jewish children in Sacramento’s public schools often feel like the only Jewish kids around. At the event, she said, “there are thousands of very proud, energetic Jewish people. It’s very high-energy.”
She added that in Sacramento they were even deciding whether to send buses down to the event.
Caron Tabb, director of Israel in the Gardens, said even though it is produced by the Israel Center, the fact that four federations are involved demonstrates that Israel is a common cause for the entire community.
“The idea was to get the entire Bay Area Jewish community to rally behind Israel, and we thought the best way to do that was to invite our partners into the tent and have them become significant sponsors in making this happen.”
Calling Israel a kind of glue for community-building, Tabb said that “instead of it being splintered and each federation doing its own small thing, we’re putting Israel on the map in terms of the community. We’ve crossed all bridges here, literally speaking, and we’re hoping this partnership will expand even more in the future.”