Press
Healing the Hatred
Israel’s Secret Revolution
BY SARA YOHEVED RIGLER
Just when you think Israeli society couldn’t become more polarized,
something arises – like the present crisis over judicial reform – to push
the poles of national unity further apart.
The massive protests this week, leading to the shutdown of the airport, the bankeven diplomatic and consular services abroad – all indicate how seriously the
country is reeling.
Israel is steeped in ideological di- vides, hence the famous adage, “two Jews, three opinions.” Since the modern state of Israel was founded, tensions have persisted between the parties that make up each coalition and the constituencies that voted them in. Many Israelis have never sat down to engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas with those holding opposing worldviews and values.
But one quiet organizationis challenging the standoff and bridging the gap. And in this case, it’s a chasm that a Jerusalem Post survey claimed was oneof Israel’s most serious of social ills: the rift between secular and Hareidi Jews.
Enter the Be A Mensch Foundation, established in 2011 by two American
olim with the aim to foster genuine Jewish unity galvanized by complementary shared values. The elegantly simple concept of “being a mensch” caught on
and attracted the attention and participation of such Israeli icons as Tal Brody,
Yehoram Gaon, Nobel laureate Professor Robert Aumann, WIZO president Tova Ben-Dov, serial entrepreneur Noah Alper, educator par excellence Rachelli
Sprecher Fraenkel, and from the U.S., former Senator Joe Lieberman.
Moshe Kaplan’s Oct. 7 book offers ‘a message of hope’
By Steve Linde | May 22,2025
t the beginning of his new book, Moshe Kaplan MD observes that the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel—which he terms “Hamasticide” (apocalyptic barbarism)—”brought in its wake thousands of stories of ‘ordinary’ people rising to the occasion and providing every kind of support, comfort, care and resource imaginable for those in need.”
As an example, he tells the heroic story of Dr. Gedalya Fandel, who on Oct. 7 set up and managed an improvised emergency room and field hospital at the junction leading to his home in Shuva, a religious moshav near the Gaza border, “treating numerous wounded people with limited resources, while facing a medical and psychological crisis of unprecedented proportions.”
Meanwhile, Fandel’s wife and children managed the home command, offering survivors of the massacre a safe haven while other residents of the moshav joined in their efforts. “The Fandel family’s actions exemplify human kindness and the power of community support during times of unimaginable crisis,” Kaplan notes.
When Kaplan, who compiled the book of essays and opinion pieces, first encountered the stories of resilience and loss from survivors and experts, he knew that they had to be shared.
Looking For a Few Good Mensches: Israeli NGO Seeks to Inspire Jewish College Students in US to Confront, Transcend Rising Antisemitism
By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner | JULY 9, 2025
A nonprofit based in Israel is launching an effort to reach thousands of Jewish college students in the US amid what it called an “unprecedented global surge” in antisemitism.
Founded in 2012, the Be a Mensch Foundation grew out of a partnership between author Dr. Moshe Kaplan, MD, and Mordecai Geduld, which began after Kaplan edited and published a book of the same title in 2009.
Kaplan conceived the book, which comprises essays by Israeli academics and medical practitioners, as a vindication of the role of ethics in forming complete young men and women.
Later, “Be a Mensch: Why Good Character Is the Key to a Life of Happiness, Health, Wealth, and Love” became the basis of programs the organization held to unite religious and secular Israelis.
Now, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and the resulting war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Kaplan has published a new book, titled “Extreme Trauma: October 7 as an Outlier in the Range of Human Potential,” to help Jewish communities across the world process the globalization of antisemitism promoted by social media, far-left groups, and far-right podcasters.
Trump calling for end of Netanyahu trial ‘his way of saying thank you’ on Iran, expert says
JANUARY 7 ,2025
An upcoming meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu to
potentially end the war with Hamas, free the hostages, and work for peace in the region.
Yoseph Haddad and Eric Sandell provide analysis on Iran and expectations for Gaza.
Mark Sanders joins to talk about his book, Extreme Trauma.
Timestamp: 15:31
Looking For a Few Good Mensches: Israeli NGO Seeks to Inspire Jewish College Students in US to Confront, Transcend Rising Antisemitism
JUNE 17, 2025
A nonprofit based in Israel is launching an effort to reach thousands of Jewish college students in the US amid what it called an “unprecedented global surge” in antisemitism.
Founded in 2012, the Be a Mensch Foundation grew out of a partnership between author Dr. Moshe Kaplan, MD, and Mordecai Geduld, which began after Kaplan edited and published a book of the same title in 2009.
Kaplan conceived the book, which comprises essays by Israeli academics and medical practitioners, as a vindication of the role of ethics in forming complete young men and women. Later, “Be a Mensch: Why Good Character Is the Key to a Life of Happiness, Health, Wealth, and Love” became the basis of programs the organization held to unite religious and secular Israelis.
Now, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and the resulting war
between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Kaplan has published a new book, titled “Extreme Trauma: October 7 as an Outlier in the Range of Human Potential,” to help Jewish communities across the world process the globalization of antisemitism promoted by social media, far-left groups, and far-right podcasters.
Trump calling for end of Netanyahu trial ‘his way of saying thank you’ on Iran, expert says
JANUARY 7 ,2025
An upcoming meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu to
potentially end the war with Hamas, free the hostages, and work for peace in the region.
Yoseph Haddad and Eric Sandell provide analysis on Iran and expectations for Gaza.
Mark Sanders joins to talk about his book, Extreme Trauma.
Timestamp: 15:31
Be A Mensch Foundation: Advancing dialogue between secular, haredi Israelis
By Abigail Klein Leichman | JANUARY 12, 2025
The Be A Mensch (BAM) Foundation has been working for the past 11 years to promote tolerance among Jews with extremely different values and lifestyles.
BAM provides trained facilitators to lead dialogues actively educating each side about the “other,” changing attitudes, dissolving hatred, and fostering mutual understanding – which is not the same as agreement and doesn’t have to be.
HEBREW UNIVERSITY students at a BAM meeting. (credit: Courtesy of Be A Mensch Foundation)
HEBREW UNIVERSITY students at a BAM meeting. (credit: Courtesy of Be A Mensch Foundation)
Physician Moshe Kaplan, a psychoimmunologist who moved to Israel from San Francisco in 1986, established the foundation after seeing the infighting among religious and non-religious Jews. He felt that facilitated dialogues could help.
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So far, about 50,000 individuals have been involved. Today, Kaplan says, this approach has more potential, and more need, than ever.
“Everyone agrees that the trauma of Oct. 7 broke down all barriers and prior
Trump calling for end of Netanyahu trial ‘his way of saying thank you’ on Iran, expert says
Aaron Bandler, Izzy Salant | June 27 ,2025
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Thursday that there should be a plea deal in the criminal trial against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after U.S. President Donald Trump said the case was a “ridiculous witch hunt against their great wartime prime minister.”
“Bibi and I just went through hell together, fighting a very tough and brilliant longtime enemy of Israel, Iran, and Bibi could not have been better, sharper or stronger in his love for the incredible Holy Land,” Trump stated. “Bibi Netanyahu was a warrior, like perhaps no other warrior in the history of Israel.”
Trump added that the corruption trial is “politically motivated” and “should be canceled immediately or a pardon given to a great hero, who has done so much for the state.”
“It was the United States of America that saved Israel, and now it is going to be the United States of America that saves Bibi Netanyahu,” added the president.
U.S. experts who spoke to JNS are divided on the degree to which Trump’s statement on domestic Israeli politics was appropriate……
Gavriel Sanders, spokesman for the Be A Mensch Foundation that seeks to unify Israelis across religious divides, told JNS that “strong U.S.-Israel relations do not imply a vassal state dynamic, in which the larger imposes its will on the smaller.
Religious and secular Israeli teens find common ground
By Abigail Klein Leichman | September 23, 2021
Many organizations work to defuse tensions and promote understanding between Israel’s 74% Jewish majority and 21% minority Arab population.
But few address the big divide between secular Jews and the 13% minority of ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Jews.
A poll published in February by Hebrew University’s aChord Social Psychology for Social Change Center revealed that nearly 37% of secular Israelis between 16 and 18 hold negative stereotypes of ultra-Orthodox Israelis. (In contrast, about 20% hold negative stereotypes of Arabs.)
While 23% of the secular youth expressed hatred toward haredi Jews, only 7% of haredi Jews expressed hatred toward secular Jews. And more than 70% of respondents from both groups said they want relations between them to improve.
Hard feelings often arise from the fact that most haredi Israelis do not serve in the military or National Service, as most secular and centrist Orthodox Israelis do. The Covid epidemic only heightened the animosity, with each group pointing to examples of the other violating public-health guidelines.
But the underlying problem is that it is easier to hate or fear “the other” if you have never had a conversation with them and you only see that they dress and behave differently.
L’Hiyot Mensch – Meeting Our Jewish Brothers with Respect and Understanding
By Sholom Nachtman | July 13, 2017
In his coverage of the 1986 confirmation hearings for
William H. Rehnquist, columnist Richard Cohen made the following observation: “Maybe the supreme gift of Yiddish to the English language is the word ‘mensch.’… The question before the U.S. Senate can best be stated in Yiddish: Is William Rehnquist a ‘mensch’?” Proponents of salty words like “chutzpah” and “schlemiel” might disagree, but it is hard to argue with Cohen’s assessment of the value of the word “mensch.”
Mensch is a unique term, perhaps without cognate in the English language. It denotes a holistic ideal of goodness that encompasses religious, interpersonal, and societal behavior. In Judaism, being a mensch is something of an uncomical 11th commandment, a convenient shorthand we use to sum up our vast library of mussar and halachic literature relating to personal conduct.
However, as the Ramchal points out in his introduction to Mesilas Yesharim, it is often our most funda- mental beliefs that we tend to over- look. Despite its centrality in our thoughts, menschlich behavior is of- ten absent in our conduct, whether it is within families, communities or just between strangers in the street. Many bemoan the disappearance of menschlichkeit and the decline of common courtesy in modern society.
One man, though, is attacking the problem head on and is changing worlds.
A ray of light
By Jonathan Rosenblum | June 15, 2021
The openness of young Israelis to learning more about Judaism is a secret from much of the Torah world.
Be A Mensch, an organization promoting the simple message, “We are one family — let’s try to learn about and understand one another,” has been working for years with leaders in the Israeli Scouts movements, in which a very high percentage of Israeli youth participate, through weekly discussion groups. The feedback has been so positive that the Scouts have invited Be A Mensch to establish as many such groups with the Scout troops as their manpower will allow.
In addition, the organization has begun working with Israeli high schools. Recently, a group of Be A Mensch mentors visited a high school in Hod Hasharon. After a preliminary sociological description of the chareidi community, the students broke up into small discussion groups with individual mentors from Be A Mensch.
While some students stuck with the sociological aspects of the chareidi community, I was surprised to hear from a neighbor who heads the high school project that few of the questions were about army service or other such hot-button topics.
Rather, one group wanted to know why my neighbor believes in Hashem. He replied that there are many answers, but for him his feeling of closeness to Hashem is strongest when he is swimming in the discussions in various batei medrash spanning thousands of years on a single amud of Gemara.
He proceeded to show them how the discussion proceeds from the Tannaim to the Amoraim to Rashi and the Baalei Tosafos a millennium later. Then he invited them to join him in learning the day’s daf yomi.
That same question, in a slightly different form — Can you prove to me that Elokim exists? — was the subject of another discussion group.
If those are the questions being asked by high school students in one of Israel’s most secular areas, then the potential to enter into deep discussions around the Torah is unlimited.
Let’s get going in reaching out to secular learning partners, and stop moping about a political situation beyond our control.”
Video Announcement Mensch of the Year Winners!
Posted by Editor | April 16, 2015
Shabbat.com, the world’s largest Jewish social network, along the “Be a Mensch Foundation”, was on a mission to find the “Mensch of the Year” and pay that individual $1,000
The Be a Mensch Foundation awarded $1000 to two of Shabbat.com’s most popular families for being amazing hosts!!
The winners were the Beyman and Zahav Family- who have together invited over 4,000 guests.
The goal of the contest was to promote Derech Eretz in our community and to remind hosts that the mizvah does not end with signing up for Shabbat.com. Rather, each week hosts on Shabbat.com have the opportunity to go on to the website and invite guests who may be too bashful to request an invitation.
The Be a Mensch Foundation, which aims to promote better social
behavior among Israelis, was established in 2011 by Moshe Kaplan. Its
advisory board includes three Nobel prizewinners — Professor Dan
Shechtman, Professor Aaron Ciechanover and Professor Robert Aumann — as
well as former US senator Joe Lieberman, Tova Ben Dov, acting president
of World WIZO, former basketball player Tal Brody, and others.
Congratulations to the winners! Keep on inviting!