Hospitality App

Often when we travel to both Israel and the United States, we visit “places” and not “people.”  This results in us failing to develop meaningful personal relationships that would facilitate better understanding between our communities as people.  The misconceptions of what it means to be a Jew in North America, what it means to be a Jew in Israel and how we relate to each other were reflected in the recent Pew study.  We are concerned.  We want to respond to that issue and bridge the space between us.

Our Wexner “Stronger Together” Summit Working Group proposes to create an internet platform for Israelis and North American Jews to make those connections.  Our vision is that our users will utilize the platform to facilitate face-to-face meetings between Israelis and American Jews in each other’s local and authentic home spaces.  It will be kind of like J-date, but without the romantic pressure!  Or perhaps like Uber.  In other words, a user would communicate “we are in your town, and would like to meet for coffee — who’s available?” We hope to build this platform to connect in a non-threatening way over a meal or coffee when traveling to each other’s countries.  The platform (such as an application or website) is based on the Jewish value of hachnasat orchim, hospitality. 

In researching the viability of such a platform, we are looking to you, our fellow Wexner alumni (Israelis and North Americans), for your thoughts. 

We are asking all of you in the Wexner Network to fill out this very short survey by clicking here.

Based on your responses to this survey, we hope to pilot the hospitality platform within the Wexner community first and then build from there.  In other words, we need your help! 

Building relationships one by one is the key to strengthening us as a multinational community.  It is what Jewish Peoplehood is all about.  We thank you in advance!