Geva Rapp wasn’t always a religious man. A ba’al tshuvah, someone who returned to the religious fold, he founded the Israeli organization Panim el Panim – meaning “face to face” in Hebrew – with the motto, “Jewish unity through Jewish identity.” It aims to connect secular Israelis with their Jewish roots through direct discussion and learning. A reserve colonel in the Israel Defence Forces, he was in Toronto recently to meet supporters of the group, who number more than 100, as well as raise its profile and solicit donations.
Tell me about the organization. Why did you start it?
Israel is a newborn nation and a newborn nation has some periods of life like you see in a newborn person. First of all, he is a child and everything is natural and obvious. Then he becomes a teenager and he is starting to question, “Who am I? Where am I going?”
We see the same stages in a newborn nation. We were very natural Zionists for a couple of decades, fighting the Six Day War, building the country, drying the swamps, taking any risk that was needed.
After the Six Day War, the second stage of being a teenage nation started, and step by step, people started to have questions of life: Who we are as a nation? What we are doing here in the Land of Israel? Who is right? Who is wrong? What are our goals? What is the vision?
People were questioning, but they were against answers from Judaism, answers from the Torah.
In the last eight years, we see a second change. People are beginning to become open and want to hear what the Torah has to say, what the rabbis can tell them about themselves. Because people realize Judaism is not only a historical issue, a cultural issue, it really gives us the meaning of life – the attitude, the goals, the visions, the values. There is more openness and a desire to hear us. That was the cause for establishing Panim el Panim. It started as a small group and almost doubles in size every year.
READ: GIVE YOUNG JEWS REASONS TO BE ‘LOVERS OF ISRAEL’: RABBI
Who is your target audience?
We target everybody who gave us signs that they’re willing to hear us. We’re not forcing ourselves on anybody.
We started in private homes, knocking on doors. We knocked on doors and said, “How are you? We are the same family, the Israeli family, and we want to speak.” We found more and more people opening doors and wanting to hear, and then we started in high schools and afterward the army. And last year, the universities.
You say people wanted to hear your message. What were you saying to them?
The meaning of being the only Jewish state, the Jewish nation, the Israeli nation, and sometimes questions of personal life. What is the meaning of being a Jewish guy and how to build Jewish home, a family. We give answers to various questions.
How large has your organization grown?
The first step was volunteers knocking on doors. We reached more than 100,000 doors in the first two years.
After two years, we felt we needed to be more professional and get people who more and more fit this mission, so that instead of being a huge operation of volunteers, we became more narrow, but more professional. We chose rabbis who were themselves officers in the army, combat soldiers, and they are really inside the environment of Israeli society.
Are the rabbis all Orthodox?
Yes. The main issues that we are taking with us are from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the first chief rabbi of Israel. He passed away 80 years ago, but he left a huge explanation about us being a nation, no longer just private Jews spread all over the globe. When you are a nation, you need new paragraphs of Torah not only to guide your private life, but to guide the national life, the economy, the IDF, like a kingdom that you can read about in the Bible.
Are you trying to make Israel like the biblical society it was 2,000, 3,000 years ago?
We are the biblical nation. It’s our nature that we really kind of left for 2,000 years being in exile, and now we are coming back to our nature. People hear this idea and feel so connected. It gives them the strength, the spirit to be a fighter.
For example, every Sunday, I meet hundreds of soldiers and I tell them Sunday is the happiest day of the week. Why? Because it starts a week in the army. I tell them it’s a merit to be a soldier of the newborn nation, Israel. Then I tell them, it’s more than a merit, it’s a mitzvah.
I tell them the State of Israel is the heart of the world. And being the heart of the world, all the sick bodies of the world try to fight us. So we need some heart surgeons to make this heart strong.
So our goal is to bring this message of aiming to be good, to help, to love, shalom. This is the main goal of our nation. In order to survive, we need our soldiers. We don’t need soldiers to kill or destroy.
Your organization’s website says it wants to create Jewish unity through Jewish identity. Is there a lack of Jewish unity in Israel?
You say “create.” I hope the word create is not there. We say Jewish unity through Jewish identity. You cannot create unity. It’s there. By nature, people feel we are one family. You can see it in the army especially, but also in civilian areas.
When somebody comes to a point to risk his life to save another, we are there. In Israel, we are like brothers. So we are very united.
The problem is that the media, sponsored by many evil forces, I think, are trying to tell us that we are separated into many kinds. It’s nonsense. Unity is the main characteristic. It is there. We just help people see it, understand it, to strengthen it.
READ: GUEST VOICE: COMMUNITY NEEDS UNITY, NOT UNIFORMITY
What about the second part of the slogan, Jewish identity. Is there an absence of a Jewish identity in Israel?
We are living our identity. It became obvious we are a Jewish nation. Once you are born in Israel, it is obvious you are Israeli, you are part of the nation.
We are human creatures and we want to understand our being, so we need to understand our identity. We have it, but we have to study it and to understand the features that combine with this identity and we want to identify with it. So this is the work.
Tell me about you programs in the IDF. What do the rabbis actually talk about?
Today, people need everything. Just before the holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah, we can deal with that.
At the same time, if there is war or army operations, we can deal with being a hero, the meaning of your personal life, if you can give your life, yes or no, the unity of a unit. Also, we are open to hearing the demands of the commander of the unit, who says I need you to strengthen A, B, C, so we aim to fulfill his request. Then we have a program of Shabbatons where a rabbi spends a whole Shabbat on a base.
How many soldiers do you reach?
We got to a point of thousands of shiurim, lessons, given. Let’s say the average is about 25 to 30 guys.
What about programs in the schools?
The first high school we got to was in Tel Aviv, a completely secular place. I think for decades they had zero Yiddishkeit studies. No Bible, no Torah, no Halachah, no chagim. There was an examination on Jewish knowledge, and people were really ignorant. Even Shema Yisrael, they never heard of it.
It came to the point where people became more pacifist, more leftist. More and more didn’t want to go to the army or wanted to quit it early.
So the principal in one of these leading schools invited an Air Force general to speak to students, and some tied themselves with chains to the gates of the school and said we don’t want a general in our school. You are a conquering army and we don’t want you. For the principal, it was shocking, and he thought about it and decided we needed basic Jewish studies.
In the first year, we had six high schools in Tel Aviv. The second year we had 12 high schools, also in Ra’anana and Kfar Saba. Then we had 20, and now we have 90 schools all over the country with thousands of students.
What is taught in the classes?
We meet guys from the age of bar mitzvah, 13 to 18, and each year we have special subjects. For example, for bar mitzvah, usually we teach the basics of what is a bar mitzvah, what is shul, tfillin.
At age 16, they get their identity cards, so we have lessons about our identity, like studies about who were Moses and Abraham, about our identity. People like to hear and understand who we are, what is our identity. At age 17 in Israel, they get their driver’s license. We have lessons we call nehiga v’hitnahagut. In Hebrew, nehiga is driving and hitnahagut are manners. We explain that by building your manners, you’ll be a better driver.
I understand you also have programs in kibbutzim and moshavim, which used to be known as anti-religious.
Yes. They were very dedicated to building the country from nothing and flourishing through agriculture. They brought prosperity to Eretz Yisrael, but ignored the deep understanding of what we are doing here. We see the young generation feel the need to rebuild their identity. So we arranged programs of minyanim during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Some places want us for Chanukah, Purim, the main holidays. This year, we’ll go to 70 kibbutzim.
This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.