Today, I visited an innovative community project in Lod. You may know the city because it’s where the airport is located. Or you may know the city as Lyida, whose poignant and tragic history was captured in Ari Shavit’s book “My Promised Land.” It is reputed to be the oldest city in Israel with Neolithic remains dating from 8000 years ago. Today, Lod is home to a truly integrated population of 78,000 people. 70% are Jewish, 30% are Arab (mostly Muslim). The community is integrated even at the level of the apartment building with Jews and Arabs living side by side.

I am here because we learned of an innovative comprehensive community project being planned in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Lod and being developed by St. Louisan Richard Baron. Richard and his firm have experience developing community infrastructure. He was a founder and developer of COCA (a center for the arts in St. Louis). And he most recently developed the new Covenant Place project in St. Louis, one of our community’s HUD subsidized low-income housing facilities for seniors (and a Federation beneficiary agency).

I met for a couple hours with Avital Blonder, the CEO of JINDAS, which is coordinating the community effort for the development. The development is hoped to involve the creation of 500 low income apartments, renovated community space, a social investment business (where profits are reinvested in the community rather than back to investors), a cultural arts center, and renovation of some of the historic infrastructure that remains dating back to the 13th century.

The project is being carefully planned and developed based on three key funding sources: local and national government, investors and philanthropists. The return or impact that they hope to achieve is to bring renewed life and vigor to what is truly a multicultural neighborhood. This is a place where Jews, Muslims and Christians are already living together; it is simply a matter of investing in what is here.

The neighborhood has some experience on this kind of intersectionality. In the center of town stands a structure in which a Greek Orthodox Church, a mosque and a synagogue share a common wall (with apologies to my old friend Aryeh Azriel, the structure has been here for a long time making the recent shared campus idea in Omaha perhaps the second of its kind!).

This project could reinvigorate life for thousands of poor Israelis – Jews, Muslims and Christian – and establish a model in which integration and pluralism are not aspirational ideals but lived reality.

That “lived pluralism” is already a reality here. Without romanticizing the tensions that remain, Avital nevertheless describes it this way: “It’s not ‘coexistence,’ it is simply life.” As you’ll see, the poverty and conditions of the facilities is difficult.

Will we find opportunities to invest in this? Should we allocate community dollars to support this project? That decision rests in the hands of our volunteer leadership.

If you’d like to be involved, please call us and let us know you’re interested. I promise not to mention all the spread sheets and detailed budgets you’ll help review to make sure our community dollars are responsibly resourced (not until your second meeting at least!).