TORONTO — A group of young Israelis recently came to Toronto to discuss social entrepreneurship.

The panel discussion, called “Innovation Israel: Shaping Israel’s Future. Today,” was sponsored by Nefesh B’Nefesh, which helps people make aliyah, and PresenTense, a group that enables young Jewish people to take their ideas and make them reality.

Speaking at the event, which was held at The House on Feb. 9, were Romi Shamai, Elyssa Moss Rabinowitz and Chaim Landau. Sharon Millendorf, who works at Nefesh B’Nefesh, moderated the discussion. Shamai, Moss Rabinowitz and Landau participated in the PresenTense fellowship program in 2009.

Social entrepreneurship, Millendorf said, is forming a “venture” to solve a problem. It is similar to a business, but while businesses measure success on profit, social entrepreneurs consider their ventures successful if they are able to bring about change.

Israel, Millendorf continued, is overflowing with social entrepreneurs.

Shamai is the founder of Baabua Gigantic Bubbles and Peula.

Baabua Gigantic Bubbles, a business Shamai started in 2009, makes soap bubbles large enough to fit a person inside. Shamai takes Baabua to events – birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other events – across Israel.

Shamai, who was born in Jerusalem, began working on a social entrepreneur venture, Peula, a few months after starting Baabua. On Peula.net (peula means “action” in Hebrew) people can publish correspondence with organizations on the website, allowing others to follow it. When the organization sees that many people are following the correspondence, it encourages the company to take action on the issue,  Shamai said. The website went live at the beginning of the month.

“[Peula] gives power to the citizen, because instead of just writing your own letter and getting a polite response… and nothing happens, suddenly many people are part of the correspondence and waiting for a reply,” he said.

Shamai also said that people with business ideas should take the idea and run with it.

“If you have an idea that you want to pursue, the main thing is… to commit to your idea and start working on it. That will be the thing that will bring you results.”

Moss Rabinowitz was born in California and made aliyah with her parents when she was eight. She is the co-founder of Kol HaOt: Illuminating Jewish Life Through Art. The company’s goal is to use the arts to convey the meaning of Jewish texts and ideas, history and values.

While enrolled at Bar Ilan University, Moss Rabinowitz studied Jewish text and Talmud, which she continued doing after graduating.

“The more I learned, the more I felt how much I didn’t know,” she said. “I felt a disconnect between people who had the opportunities and access to study Jewish texts and the rest of the Jewish world, which doesn’t always have the same accessibility.”

As a result, she started A Day Away, a production company that created events with Jewish content. She did this for 12 years before realizing that she wasn’t satisfied with her one-night events because they didn’t reach a wide enough audience. That’s why Moss Rabinowitz, with three partners, founded Kol HaOt .

For two years, Kol HaOt has offered  workshops that use the arts to share Jewish ideas with groups of North Americans travelling in Israel. Kol HaOt’s next phase is to open a centre in Jerusalem with a beit midrash and a gallery for exhibits. At night, it will become a Jewish cabaret-type space, with drama, music, dance and comedy performances.

Landau made aliyah after he finished high school. He studied political science at Bar Ilan University, served in the Israel Defence Forces and got a master’s degree in international relations at the London School of Economics. Then he enrolled at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, a non-denominational yeshiva.

At Pardes, he found that many of the students, most of whom were from North America, would stay for one year, had limited opportunities to get out of the “English-speaking bubble” and had ambivalent attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. There were opportunities to hear Palestinian perspectives on the conflict, but not so much to hear the Israeli side, he said.

Landau started Perspectives Israel, a program for Diaspora students studying in Israel that gives them two-day trips in which they are exposed to a wide range of Jewish-Israeli perspectives on the conflict.

“[I] realized that we had to offer a program that speaks the language of these students – a young audience of political thinkers that don’t want to be told who to believe, what to believe, but are looking for the exposure to many different viewpoints,” he said. The first tour was held in March 2010. Landau also works for Shatil, an organization that each year, helps nearly 1,400 non-profit organizations with consulting and training.