Israeli philanthropist Raya Strauss Ben-Dror leaves her mark on entire region
[Israel-Lebanon border area] Like most revolutions, this one begins quietly.
Raya Strauss Ben-Dror, the scion one of Israel’s leading conglomerates, the Strauss Group [1], from which she retired 11 years ago, is changing the way philanthropy is done in the State of Israel.
Guarding a very low profile, she is transforming the way money is donated here and at the same time transforming the Western Galilee region in which she was born 76 years ago.
Raya Strauss was born into well-to-do circumstances in Nahariya. The Strauss family was generous in the traditional sense, discrete, and non-systematic in the way it gave charity.
In an exclusive interview with The Media Line, Strauss Ben-Dror reflected that “there’s always been philanthropy, since the establishment of the state, and people who gave a lot to culture, such as the Recanati family, a lot of philanthropy but not enough. And we didn’t ever know much about each other.”
“The style of giving in Israel has always followed the precepts of anonymous donations, our understanding was that what the state didn’t take care of we’d volunteer for. There is an enormous amount of volunteering. But my many years of involvement in the Jewish Agency helped me understand that we needed to rethink our style of doing things,” she says.
Israel’s founding ethos was suffused with Socialist aspirations regarding a government for the people and ample disdain for displays of wealth.
In the past few years, Israel’s culture of philanthropy has started to shed its bashful, haphazard nature, and, led in part by pioneering women such as Shari Arison [2], of the Ted Arison Family Foundation, and Strauss Ben-Dror, is starting to show its face to the public.
Eight out of nineteen members of the three-year-old initiative Committed to Give [3], the first philanthropic umbrella organization in Israel, of which Ben-Dror was a founding member, are women, among then a few Recanatis.
In the emergent State of Israel, the regulatory environment included numerous impediments to American-style organized charity in the form of foundations. For one, Israel offers very few tax incentives for donors. In addition, any legally registered foundation is obliged to appoint a board containing “representatives of the public” that can place obstacles before the unhampered philanthropic intentions of donors.
Strauss Ben-Dror does not operate a foundation. Her patronage of various causes is direct and has a deeply personal style that her philanthropic director, Tal Frieman, describes as “total devotion,” her involvement, “daily.”
“Her attitude is, ‘whoever gets my money gets me too,” Freiman said, speaking with The Media Line. “When she gives to any organization she is there when problems arise; when we choose an organization we in general go in and perform a strategic analysis, we go to great lengths to understand what are its’ strengths and weaknesses, and not only in the respect of getting the work done. Raya is very much part of the undertaking in every way she can be, with years in business behind her.”
“I’m different in that I do it businesslike,” she affirms, “using benchmarks and strategy.”
Strauss Ben-Dror recalls that as of her retirement from the family firm, “I took philanthropy seriously. I said, ‘let’s have a look.’” She became a sponsor of several national initiatives, one of children who have fallen out of all frameworks, a kibbutz dance company. Then 6 years ago, “I asked myself, ok, what do you really want to do?”
She decided to focus the bulk of her attention on the Western Galilee, specifically on its potential as a tourist draw and to that end established a dedicated, staffed enterprise called Treasures of the Galilee [4].
The Galilee is Israel’s breadbasket, a lush green region that encompasses vineyards, the Mediterranean Sea, treasures of antiquity and the birthplace of Jesus, among many other unparalleled assets. But is has suffered the fate of other rural destinations, principally its distance from the standard touristic track running between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Where does she live these days? Strauss Ben-Dror laughs. “On the road. Principally between Nahariya and Tel Aviv.”
What she has become, according to an official in the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, is “a factor as important as any other, like almost a local authority, when it comes to the future of the Galilee.
Her umbrella organization offers what is, in essence, the services of a close friend who knows the region like the back of her hand and will guide you to visit the gems you’d never hear about. Only here, the gems and their setting are part of that friend’s vision.
For example, Yoney Skiba, an Ethiopian-born resident of Kibbutz Evron, has not only built an authentic traditional Ethiopian home [7] on the roof of her cookie-cutter kibbutz residence, but offers culturally encompassing workshops about the history of the most significant Jewish community in mainland Africa.
In Acre, in the cavernous warrens beneath the fortress built by the Ottoman Governor Ahmad al-Jazzar , has installed interlocking stalls of women performing, teaching—and selling—the traditional crafts of the region, among them basket-weaving, clay-throwing and glass-blowing, each artisan throwing her shadows in the curved halls, the sounds of Arabic, Hebrew, Russian reverberating as they display their wares.
The project is part of a multi-million dollar investment by the Israel Tourism Ministry, via the Old Acre Development Company.
The cultural riches don’t stop there. On the border with Lebanon, in the Bedouin village of Arab al-Aramshe, Suad and Mohammed Miza’el, host visitors in their home for traditional Bedouin meals and conversation about their family and their society’s history, including the intricacies of family and village life, split in two by the border.
Straus Ben-Dror’s focus is not a matter of chance. “The connection among religions, all the different populations of the region I was born into, even all the mess, and in all the mess, when you think historically, the fact is we know how to live together. The life of cooperation moves me very much.”
“Together: that is the word that has carried me forth all my life. That is my life. Starting with my with my family, with my brother, and now with my activities.”