By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—Eyal Dagan, the shaliach (emissary) to San Diego's Jewish community from Israel, says he has two major goals during the two to three years he will be living among the Americans.  First, he wants to promote travel to his country, particularly on study programs.  Second, he wants Americans to understand Israel as a complex country, not simply as the Jewish protagonist in an existential conflict with the Arabs.   Dagan's own biography provides insight into some of that complexity.

His Russian and Romanian grandparents immigrated to Israel in the early days of the state.  His father, Mati, a career military man who rose to colonel before retirement, met and married his mother, Ruth, in Haifa, where she works for a chemical company.  Mati today is the director of the Haifa Auditorium, a premier show place in Israel's third-largest city.  Haifa has the topography of San Francisco, the weather of San Diego.  Like its two California counterparts, it overlooks a bay.

To the north of the city center is the Kiryat Chaim, a neighborhood that Dagan says is so pro-Labor in its orientation that Labor politicians made certain to include it within the city limits rather than let it become a separately incorporated city. The strategy swelled Labor's voter rolls, helping the party to routinely win municipal elections in Haifa.  It wasn't until the national elections just last Tuesday that the trend was broken when the centrist Kadima party outpolled the Labor party.

In such a milieu, Dagan grew up in Hanoar Haoved ve' Halomed (Youth Working and Learning)  the youth movement affiliated with the Histadrut—the broad-based Israeli Labor organization similar to the AFL-CIO, not to be confused with its political ally, the Labor party.  He rose through the ranks during his high school years, winning election in his senior year as chairman of Kiryat Chaim branch.  The organization's large building with sandlots for soccer and a nearby forest where the youth played steal-the-flag and sang songs around a bonfire became his second home.  Dagan spent a portion of nearly every day there, attending committee meetings and organizing groups to do chores.  

Upon graduation from high school in 1990, Dagan headed with other members of the youth organization for the Israeli Army, electing to stay together in a Nahal unit that combined military duties with those of helping to build communities in rural parts of the country.  His unit, or Garin, was assigned to help build up Kibbutz Yezrael  in the Yezrael Valley, near Afula.  As a military unit, they were assigned to a variety of duties, among them policing in the Palestinian areas and fighting in Lebanon.

Dagan said he had different sets of emotions in the two areas.  Lebanon, where his unit responded to attacks from the Hezbollah, was a clear-cut situation in which "we knew who was the good guy and who was the bad guy."  However, he added, he felt less moral certainty about his duties in the Palestinian territories. "Chasing teenagers, searching houses, blockading roads was a situation that we did not want to be in," he said.  

While serving 44 months in the Army, Dagan was designated by his unit for communal duties with the youth movement in Rishon Letzion, a position enabling him to broaden his experience in youth work. He went on to become a regional director for the youth movement on the coast between Haifa and Tel Aviv—an assignment in which he met a young camper who many years later would become his wife.

In the interim, however, Dagan spent a year at Kibbutz Ein Gedi at the Dead Sea, where he directed a center catering to tourists. Later, like many Israelis upon completion of their Army duties, he went on an extended trip around the world.  Upon his return, he buckled down to studies, completing a bachelor's degree program in political science and geography at Haifa University in three years.  Before graduating in 1998,  he served first as a youth counselor at Moshav Kerem Maharal, and later as director of  Hof Ha Carmel's  youth programs for all the kibbutzim and moshavim in that section of the country.  

With such experience to recommend him, he was selected by Hanoar Hatzioni (Zionist Youth) to serve as a shaliach in Belgium, where he divided his time between Antwerp and Brussels.  In Antwerp, where most people speak Flemish, Dagan did not face any handicap—so extensively are Jewish school children trained in Hebrew.  "It was easy to communicate with them," he said.  Brussels, to get by.  

Back in Israel in 2000, his next endeavor was to work at the Neve Yosef community center of Haifa, which he described as being akin to a combination of such San Diego institutions as the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center and the Agency for Jewish Education.

He helped coordinate a program in which 100 students from Haifa University and the Technion tutored ten times as many underachieving pupils, some of them considered "at risk"  because of such problems as domestic abuse or broken families. During that period, Dagan became friendly with a volunteer from San Diego, Avi Knight, who was living at an absorption center.  One day, Dagan sought directions from the gate to Knight's quarters from a young woman who looked familiar.  When he stole a glance in the office at papers listing Amit Beiserman's name, he realized that years before she had been one of the youths he had supervised 10 years before.  Now, he learned, she was a counselor, with a particular affinity for Ethiopian Jewish youth.  Amit also remembered him. Their friendly encounter led to dating, then to  marriage in 2004, and  now they have a son, Ofek, who is six months old 

Perhaps it was beshert  that a couple inadvertently brought together by a San Diegan should be sent to San Diego by the Jewish Agency for Israel.  Dagan  began his assignment here last November and commutes to the United Jewish Federation offices from an apartment in the University Towne Center area.

Young Americans have the opportunity through the Operation Birthright of taking free familiarization trips to Israel, but Dagan says his country would like youngsters to take the relationship a step further by signing up for subsidized study programs that would last several months at a time.  He disseminates information for 120 financially subsidized programs falling into four categories.  One is for students to spend a few months in Israel between their high school and college years.  Another offers college studies at any of the major Israeli universities.  A third is intended for post-graduate study in subject areas ranging from the arts to Judaism, to social justice.  This program often involves internships. The fourth category, he said, are yeshiva programs for both young men and young women in the different religious streams of Judaism.

Dagan came from what many people refer to as a "secular" family, but in fact their life style, while not revolving around the synagogue, incorporate various aspects of Judaism.  For example, they keep kosher; attend synagogue services during festival holidays, occasionally attend study sessions.  On the other hand, they travel on the Shabbat—sightseeing over the weekends being a cherished family activity.

The shaliach notes that Americans have a high assimilation rate indicated both by the large number of intermarriages and the low rate of affiliation or involvement with Jewish institutions.  Involving people with Israel—enabling them to experience his country—can counteract that tendency, he asserts.   It is not that Israel is some kind of Jewish elixir, he goes on to explain.  Rather, in all its complexity, it is a window to the overall Jewish experience.

Besides for individual travelers, Dagan is a resource for group exchanges between San Diego and its UJF partnership region of Sha'ar Hanegev, the group of communities lying along the border with the Gaza Strip.  There are exchanges of teachers, communal workers and other professionals between the two areas.  An upcoming UJF community mission which will be in Israel for Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Ha'Atzma'ut (Independence Day) will also spend a day in Sha'ar Hanegev.

Dagan also will participate as a guide this summer for the Scott Stone Memorial Trip, which brings San Diego teenagers on  an orientation trip that takes them from the top of Israel to the bottom.  The assignment is a natural for Dagan: he has been working with youth for more than half  his life.