Introducing Israel’s 21st Century Pioneers

A small, growing number of young idealists are moving to the shattered south. They believe Israel’s future hinges on modeling a society of inclusion and tolerance.

Answering an inner call: Roee Azizi has seen his vision take shape in the past year.

Within days after the barbaric Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, Roee Azizi, 28, and serving in the Israeli reserves, decided to change his life.

Raised in a traditional Masorti family with Iranian lineage, he remembers feeling that Israel was experiencing a crisis so profound that it demanded a radically positive response. He soon texted friends that on his first break from the reserves, he would leave his job as head of Jerusalem Model, a group of young social entrepreneurs working to improve the city, leave his family and friends, and move to the “otef,” the Gaza “envelope” of communities decimated by the Hamas attack.

“I knew no one there, I had no place to live, no income,” Azizi told me during a recent visit to New York, “but I had a strong inner feeling and clear message.” It was that his generation could and would leverage the tragedy into what he calls “a moral mitzvah” by showing solidarity with those who returned to the area. He planned to help create an inclusive, caring and meaningful way of life that could be a model for the society at large.

Azizi found a place to live in Sderot, the Israeli city best-known as a continuous target of Hamas rockets for decades, and posted his story on Facebook, encouraging young people to take up the challenge and follow his example. He offered to help them move, find jobs and places to live, and be involved in building community together. “Yes, I felt it was a sacrifice,” Azizi said, but he believed that after so much deep political unrest and bitterness, “people have to understand that we need each other.”

He chose to name the group “Hinenu” – “here we are,” echoing the singular response, “hineni,” “here I am,” that Abraham, Moses and other biblical heroes uttered when God spoke to them.

“I felt ‘hinenu’ described this inner feeling that I had to be the first to open a path, and I was confident many young people would feel the same,” Azizi told me. Those words may appear as brash, but to the contrary, Azizi comes across – and is described by those who know him best – as a kind, gracious leader.

Azizi had hoped that dozens of people would respond to his call last spring for those interested in learning more about his plans. Instead, he was surprised that about 200 people expressed interest; his post went viral and attracted media coverage. The attention led to Zoom informational meetings, in-person meet-ups, and soon people began moving to the area. And they keep coming.

This Sunday, April 27, a year after Azizi’s Facebook post, the burgeoning Hinenu community of more than 150 people will mark its first anniversary with a day whose content underscores its combination of fellowship and positive social change. It will include a bonfire celebration as well as discussions, evaluation of the first year and planning for the future, including possible expansion in the north of the country.

‘Ninety-nine percent heaven and one percent hell’

Shalhevet Fox was one of the first to arrive on the scene when the one-man launch began to take shape. A 26-year-old nurse in Jerusalem, she was deeply affected by the death of her 22-year-old cousin, Ben Zussman, who fell in battle in December 2023. The letter he left for his family, expressing immense pride in serving his country and urging his loved ones not to “sink into sadness,” was read by millions. Fox felt a need to “take action” and, after reading Azizi’s Facebook post, which she first considered “meshuga,” she met him and soon “came to figure out how to inspire myself” by helping others.

“Roee is a natural leader and I’m a good organizer,” Fox explained, “so I was happy to work on logistics and send out fliers” to get the word out about Hinenu. She became increasingly active as co-founder of the project, and last May moved to Sderot, though she had never been there before the war. “I fell in love with it – the warm people, great neighbors, the walkable city, the falafel, and the energy of the young people who are coming.”

Many of Sderot’s population of about 32,000 people returned to the city this past year. Finding an apartment can be a challenge, but Hinenu volunteers keep people up to date on prospects. Most of the newcomers are in their mid-20s to mid-30s, professionals in fields like medicine, social work, the military and education, and most are single. But their religious and political views and backgrounds vary widely. What they have in common, Fox observed, is “a lack of trust in the government, and a common love – and deep concern – for the country.”

Fox found work as a nurse in a nearby hospital, where she sees a lot of cases of trauma among all ages. She describes her work with Hinenu as “a full-time volunteer,” one of six members of a makeshift board that meets every other week with Azizi, the only paid staffer, to “create points of contact, group dynamics and practical ways to help people find jobs and places to live.” The Hinenu WhatsApp includes more than 1,000 people, with varying degrees of involvement. Hinenu sponsors group meals, beit midrash study sessions, lectures and social events, and takes pride in including Ashkenazim, Sephardim, members of the LGBTQ community and people with disabilities.

Fox acknowledges that life is “never easy” in the area, with fear of rocket and artillery attacks a constant that people learn to live with as best as possible. “It’s 99 percent heaven and one percent hell,” she says, adding that her family worries about her but has visited and appreciates her commitment to the belief that young, idealistic energy can foster societal change.

Others I spoke with shared how they came to the radical decision of leaving homes and jobs to settle in a vulnerable area they had little personal knowledge of before October 7.

From city life to the farm: Yael Steiner picking fruit on the farm.

Yael Steiner was born in and lived in Jerusalem, working for five years as a guide at The Western Wall. She did her national service in several schools, including in Ofakim, and studied to become a social worker. But after the war began, during a day off in the south with her boyfriend, she learned of local farmers seeking help with their crops. “I did it for a day, met some amazing volunteers, and decided I wanted to do this.”

She ended up spending seven months, along with several other volunteers, working to help save the farm of a member of the Bibas family, whose two youngest members, Kfir and Ariel, were the youngest hostage victims in Gaza. Feeling lonely after the other volunteers left, Steiner watched a Zoom with Roee Azizi talking about Hinenu, and she felt, “I have a chance to be part of a meaningful society. Sometimes now I feel like one of the original chalutzim (pioneers).”

Steiner divides her time between working a couple of days a week at the farm, taking part in Hinenu social and beit midrash study sessions, and guiding groups who want to learn more about the Bibas family. She told me she wants American Jews to know how moved she and other Israelis are by the missions, volunteer programs and other forms of loving support from the U.S.

‘A fundamental day’: Yishai Ben Dov and Gal Zerkavod plan to live in the south ‘for the long term.’

In the fall of 2023, after four years in Jerusalem, Gal Zerkavod and her husband, Yishai Ben Dov, both 28, closed out their apartment in preparation for an extensive trip to Thailand. A day after the war broke out, Yishai was called up on reserves, and Gal stayed with her parents. “The next day Yishai called me from up north and told me we should move to the otef,” Gal recalled. “We had thought of living near Jerusalem after our trip to the East, but October 7 was a fundamental day for him because of what happened, and I agreed.”

The couple learned of Hinenu from friends and Facebook, and moved to Sderot last July. She is a nurse at a hospital in Ashkelon and though he commutes an hour and a half each day to his job in Tel Aviv, they are very happy with the move. “We plan to live in this area for the long term,” said Gal, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child. She is still concerned about security but feels that “since all eyes are on this area, we feel it’s safer than before.”

Time For The Next Generation To Lead

It’s not only young people who are enthusiastic about Hinenu and its founder.

Col. (ret.) Roni Yannay, 63, is a former head of the special operations division of military intelligence, executive of a global Israeli telecommunications firm, and a leading consultant on strategy, leadership and organizational growth. He has become a key advocate of Azizi’s work, calling him “unique” in establishing a “second Zionist revolution, this one internal … a modern pioneerism that touches on the most pressing issues of what Israel is experiencing.”

“My generation and those before me founded the state,” Yannay explained, “but didn’t resolve the question of whether the Jewish people can live together in a sovereign state… The first pioneers conquered the land; the next generation has to conquer society. The issue is not land,” he asserted, “it’s the fracture within.” Yannay says that by leaving their homes and moving to the south, Azizi and his compatriots “exemplify the crisis of meaning and identity in modern life. They represent a larger group, a concerned group that wants to make change.”

He calls Azizi “a true leader. My role is to assist him in any way I can.” He advises the group and often accompanies Azizi to meetings with various civic leaders and potential supporters.

Common ground: Hinenu participants have varied backgrounds but share a commitment to social change.

On the eve of Hinenu’s first anniversary, I checked back with Azizi to ask about his plans for the future. He said his goal for the upcoming year is “to turn the group from an initiative to a movement in terms of our capabilities and national recognition among young adults, and to be able to ‘recruit’ hundreds of them for pioneering missions.”

Hinenu is still not known to most Israelis, but is gaining recognition among its target cohort, and Azizi would like to reach out to young diaspora Jews as well.

Plans to create a branch of Hinenu in the north, still reeling from more than a year of complete shutdown, are moving ahead, but slowly. “We’re in touch with a few regional councils that asked for our help, and we'll see how it progresses. I'm hoping to raise more funds to make that happen.”

Azizi reiterated his belief that “the historic Zionist mission of my generation is to take responsibility” and show that young people can create societal bridges that include all Israelis. ‘We want to be future agents not only of change,” he said, “but of hope.”

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A senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Yossi Klein Halevi has won numerous awards as journalist and book author. He and Donniel Hartman, the president of the Institute, can be heard discussing the latest political and social trends in Israel each week on their popular podcast, “For Heaven’s Sake.”

Halevi’s 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Book of the Year Award. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, was a New York Times bestseller. He writes for leading op-ed pages in the U.S., including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a former contributing editor to the New Republic.

His 2001 book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, will be reissued in 2019 by HarperCollins.

His first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, tells the story of his teenage years as a follower of the militant rightwing rabbi Meir Kahane, and his subsequent disillusionment with Jewish radicalism. The New York Times called it “a book of burning importance.”

Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Hartman Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity and Israel.

Born in Brooklyn, Yossi moved to Israel in 1982, and lives in Jerusalem with wife, Sarah, who helps run a center for Jewish meditation. They have three children.