Birthright connects budding entrepreneurs in Israel
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Birthright connects budding entrepreneurs in Israel

Excel Fellowship pairs up-and-coming foreign students with young Israelis

Birthright Excel Fellows are at their opening meeting in Israel in June 2024.
Birthright Excel Fellows are at their opening meeting in Israel in June 2024.

Alex Schlessinger of River Vale, 20, knows only a handful of Hebrew words and phrases, and he’d been in Israel only once before. That was about 12 years ago for a cousin’s bar mitzvah.

Yet in the midst of a war, the rising junior at Duke University chose to spend his summer in Tel Aviv, interning at Israeli company Fiverr through the 10-week Birthright Israel Excel Fellowship.

“My mom was a little apprehensive, but we talked about it a lot and decided that the Birthright organization had our best interests in mind,” he said. “That was the deciding factor in taking advantage of this great opportunity.

“I have older friends from Duke who’d spent summers in Israel on Excel, and they all said it was the greatest summer professionally and in terms of cultural immersion.

Being here during the war, he added, “has been more impactful on me and the other individuals in the cohort, connecting us even more with one another and with the country.”

The 2024 cohort of the Birthright Israel Excel Fellowship includes 64 college students from 10 countries — 44 from the United States and the rest from Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Spain, and Switzerland. They began the program on June 24.

Each international Excel Fellow is paired with an Israeli Excel Fellow, enabling the visitors to experience the country in a way that tourists rarely do. Since Birthright Excel started in 2011, this matching program has spawned not only long-term friendships but even investments in each other’s business ventures.

“It’s been amazing to interact with the Israeli fellows and spend Shabbat and holidays with them,” Mr. Schlessinger said. “I went with my peer, who serves in the IDF, to his girlfriend’s family home for Shavuot. It was one of the nicest family dinners I ever went to, with amazing food and friendly and welcoming people.”

The international fellows are staying in a northern Tel Aviv hostel near the beach and a park. “We have breakfast and dinner together nearly every night,” Mr. Schlessinger said.

He’s working as a partnership manager at Fiverr, a global online marketplace for freelance services.

New Jersey residents participating in the Birthright Israel Excel program this summer in Tel Aviv. From left, Jonathan Raport of Randolph, Alex Schlessinger of River Vale, Sophia Yunaev of Woodcliff Lake, and Ben Sherman of Short Hills. (Photos by Or Doga, courtesy of Birthright Israel Excel)

“I’m optimizing our portfolio of existing business-to-business partnerships with corporations such as Amazon and Google, and searching for potential new partners that can utilize Fiverr’s vast freelance network,” he said.

“I came in thinking my summer would be 75 percent about the internship and the rest about exploring a new country. However, it’s been so much more. Twice a week we have amazing speakers, such as the CEOs of Goldman Sachs Israel and Mercedes Benz Israel. We spoke with a soldier in rehab at Sheba Medical Center. Through all these perspectives on business and on what is going on in Israel, I’ve learned so much, and the program has surpassed my expectations.”

Excel Fellows do get free time to explore Israel with their peers, as well as weekend group trips to places such as the lower Galilee and Jerusalem. This year, participants had the option of volunteering to restore destroyed houses and gardens at Kibbutz Re’im, one of the hardest-hit areas in the October 7 terror attacks.

Florida State University student Sophia Yunaev from Woodcliff Lake, 22, recently returned from an overnight volunteering stint at Re’im.

“We were the first group of outsiders allowed in after October 7, and the first to come with the families when they came back to their homes after nine months,” she said.

“We helped them with yard work, painting, agriculture — anything needed to help put their lives back together. As much it was helping them restore their homes, it was more about holding their hands as they came home for the first time. Most of them are staying in Tel Aviv or Eilat, and it was difficult for them to return. Coming as a community and being supported emotionally was the way they were able to do it.”

Ms. Yunaev does not speak Hebrew. She was paired with a couple in their 70s — and it turned out that the wife is originally from New Jersey.

“That was crazy; we were playing Jewish geography,” she recalled. “They told us their story from October 7 — it was very sad, but their overall message was that they still believe in peace.”

Ms. Yunaev, an English major, is interning as a venture capital analyst at Porsche Digital, Porsche’s venture capital arm.

The Israeli Excel Fellow with whom she is partnered, Tomer Tetro, is a college student serving in the IDF human resources reserve corps.

Sophia Yunaev is with Tomer Tetro, her Israeli Excel Fellow peer.

“She is the best human I’ve ever met,” Ms. Yunaev said. “She’s my light through all of this in terms of feeling safe in this country. We’ve become best friends. Excel has done really well in integrating us into Israeli society in a way I was never exposed to.”

Though she feels safe, her parents are concerned and call her every day.

“It’s hard for them because they haven’t been to Israel in many years, and if you’re not physically here you just can’t understand,” she said. “You don’t see the innovation happening in Tel Aviv, the people dancing on the beach, the people out on Rothschild Boulevard every evening enjoying their lives.”

Ms. Yunaev did a gap-year program in Israel after high school; she has visited several other times and has friends here, but she felt it was especially important to go to Israel now.

“I knew about Excel for a while, but I felt that now, more than ever, to come here and get a firsthand experience is the most important thing I could do as a Jewish person.” She said that she has not experienced as much antisemitism on her Florida campus as her counterparts at other schools have, “but many of us have really been gaslighted to feel that our emotions post-October 7 aren’t valid.”

Birthright Israel Excel Executive Director Idit Rubin said the program is preparing fellows “for the hostile environment they might face on campuses, by giving them tools to better deal with the challenges they encounter there, along with a supportive network.”

Jonathan Raport of Randolph, 20, cited that supportive network as one of the main takeaways from his summer in Israel.

“Being on this program and sharing experiences with 65 very likeminded international students has created a community for me that I can rely on for support and know I am not alone,” he said.

A computer engineering major at Northwestern University, last year Mr. Raport was the vice president of the school’s Wildcats for Israel club. He said there were anti-Israel incidents on campus that were upsetting, but that in reaction to those incidents, he and many other students forged a stronger bond and became more active.

He’d been to Israel for extended trips during his high school years at the Golda Och Academy in West Orange and has many former classmates in Israel for the summer, as well as relatives living in Israel.

“I’ve always felt very connected to Israel and very comfortable here, so current events didn’t deter me very much,” he said. “I had applied to Birthright Excel before October 7, and afterward I assumed unless they sent me an email saying ‘you can’t go,’ I would go.”

He is interning in the automation development at General Motors’ Israel headquarters and was surprised to learn that “a huge amount of GM’s R&D is done in Israel. I see how many global tech companies rely on Israeli talent for the vital function of the company. It’s been cool to see that in action.”

After their return home, Excel Fellows “enter a global network that provides resources for professional and personal development, Israel engagement, Jewish leadership, and encouraging them as philanthropists,” Ms. Rubin said.

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