Itai Divinsky, JEWISHcolorado’s shaliach since August, 2019, materializes over Zoom from his makeshift home office — totally unaware that one of his girls is sneaking a curious peak behind him.
A bearded, T-shirted, upbeat 36-year-old, Divinsky threads joyful positivity into his sober assessment of being Colorado’s Israel emissary during a pandemic.
When JEWISHcolorado closed its offices in late March due to COVID-19, he packed his belongings and rushed home. “We moved one of the beds in the bedroom off to the side and put up a folding table for a desk.
“It seems like I really haven’t gotten up from this chair since,” he laughs.
Divinsky switches his Zoom background — an increasingly popular diversion for platform users — and puts up a screen shot of Sheizas, Ramat HaNegev’s religious-secular community.
This where he lived with his wife Mor and their three daughters Ella, six, Netta, four, and Nitzan, two, before relocating to Denver. “You can see the living quarters are old-school pioneering style; prefabricated 600-ft. homes on the side of a sandy hill,” he grins.
Divinsky works up to seven hours a day from his home office hosting or developing Zoom programs and then spends time on emails and creating content for Yom Hazikaron and other Israeli holidays.
The one thing he does not do is meet face-to-face with teens and adults — a 360-degree turn for this convivial, relationship-driven man.
“Engagement is the word that describes almost everything I do, and this inherently involves being with people,” he says. “The shaliach’s work is all about meeting Jews where they are.”
Divinsky says that the full impact of the coronavirus didn’t hit him until mid-March, during preparations for a major event at the HEA.
An Israeli and Arab active in “Roots,” an organization that fosters dialogue between Israeli settlers and Palestinians, were scheduled to present a program March 17. Over 100 people had registered.
“A week before event, they sent an email saying they had to cancel due to COVID.
“That’s when coronavirus began for me; then JEWISHcolorado sent us home.”
At the very least, a pandemic demands flexibility and adaptation. Divinsky is skilled at both.
“This has been very new to me,” he says of Zoom and other connective devices that Denverites assume accompanied him from tech-heavy Israel. “I had never heard of Zoom in Israel,”he smiles.
“JEWISHcolorado often ran meetings over Zoom, so I learned how to do it. But it was never a central tool for me.”
Divinsky is a realistic optimist. While he can joke with the best of them, he’s acutely perceptive to COVID-19.
“We moved all of our lives on a screen.”
He was initially hesitant about implementing online content because he had no idea what might appeal to Denver’s Jewish community — but after a few days, his imagination took wing.
The reaction “has been very good,” Divinsky says. “People are not only joining and participating on Zoom, but we also are having very meaningful discussions.”
He points to one of his most recent formats, situated in the Netflix universe, as an example.
“I did an Israel Netflix Club, based on the same concept as a book club, centering on the six-part drama ‘The Spy’ about ill-fated Mossad agent Eli Cohen and starring Sacha Baron Cohen.
“We held it once in Denver and now the Boulder JCC is offering it.”
Zoom, one of the dominant platforms for Jewish educational and synagogue programs during COVID-19, as well as funeral services and shiva calls, has its share of skeptics.
While some lament that Zoom is a poor substitute for the real experience, Divinsky views the platform as more than a substitute.
“I have discovered that people are eager to talk, to voice their opinions and discuss their feelings,’ he says.
“They don’t want to be at home all day looking at talking heads.
“I want to be relevant to people’s lives, and this means creating a space where we can really communicate with each other.”
Divinsky refuses to allow participants to use the chat function, which enables them to write comments and step outside the conversation.
“I tell them, ‘I want to hear your voice.’ I’m talking to my three children all day and I love it. But when I get an opportunity to speak to adults I feel we need to hear one another. No chat!”
Coronavirus cancelled last month’s Holocaust Remembrance Day memorials. Still, online options allowed Denver Jews to gather with each other.
“Have you heard of Zikaron Basalon?” Divinsky asks. “It’s a grassroots organization founded in Israel three years ago. Last year, Basalon held 25,000 sessions with 500 participants in over 60 countries.”
The host invites a small group of friends on Holocaust Remembrance Day to hear testimony, listen to poems or stories and discuss the relevance of the Holocaust.
“We held about 10 sessions in Colorado this year and they were incredibly moving,” Divinsky says. “I found that people wanted to share their personal stories, their views and emotions.”
Divinsky’s parents made aliyah from Argentina and met in Israel. Itai, a sabra, grew up northeast of Tel Aviv and was accepted into a prestigious boarding school at age 15.
“The school emphasized environmental studies,” he says. “I trekked and hiked all over the area with my girlfriend (and now my wife) Mor, who was raised in Kadesh Barnea.
“It was clear from the get-go that we would remain in Ramat HaNegev,” which is JEWISHcolorado’s partnership community.
The couple studied geography at Ben Gurion University. During their last year, they heard about Sheizas, Ramat HaNegev’s new program integrating religious and secular families.
Visitors from Colorado visit Sheizas during their stay in the region, and Divinsky was impressed.
In 2016, already heavily involved in the JEWISHcolorado partnership, Divinsky was selected to attend the annual young leadership mission to Colorado from Ramat HaNegev.
The experience was his first gateway into the world of American Jewish life.
“I’d been in the US before, when my family took me to Disneyland, Miami, stuff like that,” he says. “But this was the first time I actually met American Jews and learned about what’s going on here — which is so different from Israel.
“First, I was impressed by the diversity of American Jewish life in Colorado,” Divinsky says. “There is no one type of Judaism. There are many, and they co-exist peacefully side by side.”
In Israel, where “you wake up and know you’re Jewish and you don’t really have to do anything else, I noticed that American Jews make big efforts to be Jewish and live Jewishly.”
Divinsky says that this introspective searching “makes Israelis like me look at ourselves, our priorities, and the energy we put into our Judaism.”
Upon his return to Ramat HaNegev, he brought Denver’s Rabbi Susan Miller Rheins and two other female rabbinical leaders to talk about “Feminist Female Rabbis” on his own turf.
The Jewish Agency sent Divinsky, accompanied by his family, to begin his tenure as JEWISHcolorado’s new Israel emissary in late summer, 2019.
Without exception, Colorado’s shlichim have sipped strong, steaming coffee during their in-person interviews with the IJN.
Divinsky laughs and points to the lower left of the screen.
“My coffee’s right here. You just can’t see it this time.”
Israel is praised for enacting tough measures to help contain COVID-19’s spread. While Divinsky agrees, he’d rather focus on how the pandemic is uniting the Jewish world.
“The numbers look great,” he says. “Most Israelis feel that the quick reaction to the pandemic was very good and saved many lives. Later on, however, the questioning and criticism grew.
“But even if a government is doing amazing work, there will be criticism. That’s the way it is, especially in a country of Jews where everyone thinks they know better.”
“I try to show all sides of whatever issue we’re talking about,” he says. “Whether I’m talking to kids or adults, I try to bring complexity into the picture instead of avoiding it. People want the truth.”
Divinsky believes that COVID-19, instead of carving a wedge between global Jewish communities, is bringing them closer together than ever before.
“This is the first time in our history that Jews all over the world are experiencing the same crisis at the same time,” he says.
“Yes, we’ve always had crises — the Inquisition, the Holocaust, bombings in Argentina, where my family comes from; wars in Israel. Every Jewish community has known its share of trauma.
“But COVID-19 is the first time that everyone is undergoing the same threat at the same time — and I believe this has the potential to bring us closer.”
Recently, Divinsky contacted a fellow shaliach and held a virtual conference with members of the Jewish community in Madrid, Spain, which is still reeling from coronavirus-inflicted chaos and loss.
But hardly anyone talked about deaths or masks or health shortages.
When Divinsky helped put together the Zoom conference with Madrid, he naturally assumed topics would revolve around the pandemic.
“I was surprised that everyone just wanted to know about the Jewish community ‘on the other side.’
“That was one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation.”
He plans to arrange additional Zoom conferences with members of the Argentinean, South African and Australian Jewish communities.
“We will learn about what COVID has done to their countries and the Jewish community in particular — and they will also learn about us,” Divinsky says.
“We have an excuse to talk to each other now. Let’s use it.”
Andrea Jacobs may be reached at andrea@ijn.com
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