Each year, The Jewish Agency for Israel sends more than a thousand Israeli emissaries—Shlichim—abroad to help strengthen Jewish identity and act as a living connection to Israel in Diaspora communities around the world. Shlichim are hand-selected to represent the best of Israel. Their credentials ensure that any Jewish institution, anywhere, has a staff member who can speak authentically about Issues of Zionism and act an Israeli role model to children and youth. It’s all part of The Jewish Agency’s greater mission: To connect Jewish people around the world.
Herut Gez and Miki Plotkin share this mission. The couple served as Community Shlichim in Houston, Texas, and in the process, fell in love. “We are interconnected,” explains Herut of the couple’s five-year relationship. As Shlichim, they manifested that connection outward, together.
A random meeting in an English class at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem might have been where their relationship began, but it was their shared passion that moved them forward. Both Herut and Miki served in the same community in Houston, forging friendships that would be hugely influential both in how they approach their faith as well as how they help others do the same.
“The community in Houston is a community in which all the streams work together, which enabled us to work together with everyone and get to know them,” Miki says.
And in turn, their time in Houston opened their eyes to new aspects of their religion and culture they’d never considered before, from the way holidays are celebrated in the Houston synagogues to how open the lines of communication are even in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
“For me, to see all the young professionals sitting together and thinking about the community, or a Chabad rabbi sitting together with a female rabbi discussing the community’s challenges, it’s something you don’t see in Israel,” says Herut. “You can’t even imagine it in Israel.”
After a two fulfilling years in Houston, Herut and Miki have come back home to Israel to build their lives together as new leaders in Israeli society, as Shlichim often become. The couple is planning a wedding and plan on bringing America’s sense of Jewish community to their Israeli neighbors. “We brought Israel to the Houston community for two years and now we will bring American Judaism to the State of Israel, to all the circles we are in, to friends and family,” she says.
