Therese Stewart knows the smallest details about California’s marriage equality case.
After all, she argued it before the state Supreme Court.
But as for her knowledge of the Middle East? It wasn’t nearly as deep.
That changed last month when Stewart visited Israel for the first time. The chief deputy attorney for the city of San Francisco spent 10 days learning about Israeli life on a trip organized by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council.
“I gained a lot of insights into things I knew very little about,” she said.
For example, Stewart said she learned how the Israeli army used flyers and text messages to warn Gaza civilians about bombing plans so they could avoid harm. She met feminists, environmentalists, and a range of activists working for Druze, Bedouin and gay/lesbian equality.
“It is an inspiration to see people working against ultra-conservative religious factions, unapologetically standing up for what they believe in,” she said.
Stewart was one of 11 Bay Area community leaders — most of them not Jewish and all of them visiting Israel for the first time — that participated in the JCRC’s annual Israel trip for civic leaders, funded by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.
The trip’s primary goal, said Rabbi Doug Kahn, JCRC’s executive director, is to expose community leaders representing diverse communities to the Israel not often seen in the American media.
JCRC lets participants know that it advocates for Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and supports a strong American-Israel relationship, but JCRC staffers say the best way to make the case for Israel is by sharing all of it with visitors. They affectionately refer to the trips as “Israel: Warts and All.”
“I didn’t come away feeling that Israel has no faults,” Stewart said. “On the contrary, those faults were the subjects of much discussion.”
This year’s travelers represented organizations such as the San Francisco Commission on the Environment, Chinese for Affirmative Action, Latino Issues Forum and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
“Being there on the ground has really given me a greater depth and understanding of the issues — and not just learning from policy experts, but from a range of Israeli people,” said Dan Bernal, district director for Pelosi.
Two JCRC staffers also participated in the trip. Kahn was one of them, and he told participants the same thing he says every year he goes on the trip: “You’re visiting Israel at a particularly interesting time.”
“We say that with the near absolute guarantee that there is no non-interesting time to visit Israel,” Kahn said.
Sure enough, this year’s group arrived just months after the war in Gaza, and during the week Israel’s new government was being formed and installed.
The tour included lectures with diplomats, journalists, politicians, scholars and army officials, and introductions to Israelis doing work similar to the Bay Area participants. For instance, Stewart met with a number of gay and lesbian activists.
On the seventh day, the group did not rest, not by a long shot. It visited a community center in Sderot, saw Israel’s borders with Gaza and Egypt, drove the Trans-Israel Highway along the security barrier, approached the Lebanese border and overlooked the border with Syria from the Golan Heights.
“Within a 24-hour span, we were close to so many borders,” Kahn said. “It was a powerful reminder that this young country of nearly 61 years has continuously tried to develop its society while facing extraordinary external threats.”
Kahn said this year’s participants quickly bonded and told him they want to reunite in the Bay Area.
“Everyone had the opportunity to engage with Israel in a very personal way,” Bernal said.