Gary Wexler, Founder and President of Passion Marketing, spent twenty years as a creative director and copywriter for major advertising agencies, ranging from Chiat/Day to McCann-Erickson, producing award-winning work for clients such as Coca Cola and Apple Computer. Ten years ago, bringing with him the knowledge of ad agency practice, he moved into the world of issues and causes, establishing Passion Marketing. He has since worked with over 400 Nonprofit/NGO clients ranging from the Ford Foundation to Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Person’s Foundation, the United Way and multiple Jewish Federations.

What I love about Israel is the embrace of its people.

In January, I had the privilege of working with 35 poverty activists in Tel Aviv representing the diversity of its communities and the economic struggles they face. These activists were not hired social workers, but emerging leaders from the grassroots—or should I say more appropriate for Tel Aviv—from the sand particles. These were not the Tel Avivis who hang out at the hip eateries dotting the center of the Rothschild median in the midst of the Bauhaus revival, but the ones who toil every day in the massive shikunim thrown up in the 50s and 60s for a growing population of olim. When I arrived at the community center where the work was to begin, the neighborhood looked like the Israel that was left behind. Against the backdrop of the soaring office buildings and sparking lights on the other side of the highway, sat this section, where ongoing rows of dilapidated apartments and porches were adorned with laundry lines and clothing flapping in the twilight breeze along side worn out Persian carpets airing out as they were draped over railings. This was the look of the Israel of my college days from the early 1970s, which I mistakenly assumed had been gobbled up by the Ayalon and the city’s ultra-chic remake entangled with its sky scraper boom.

In this setting, enter the activists. There was a Yeminite man of 70, whose community lived in its tiny houses since they left the ma’abarot in the early 60s. The houses were now being appropriated by the city for a luxury development and the community was being destroyed. There was a brassy red haired lady–an activist of the Siberian community—whose members were losing their government subsidies. There were representatives of the gay community who needed educational funding, single mothers who could barely eek out an existence. The list went on.

I listened to their issues and was overwhelmed, thinking there was little I could do to teach them how to market their causes to the government. Then, I looked around the room and realized this was another face of the ingathering of the exiles—even almost 60 years later. I told them they had to work together as a coalition or they would never accomplish their goals. As the discussion took flight, they had to understand the commonalities between them. As they articulated their issues of economics and living in Tel Aviv, the Siberian woman stood up and said, “We have another commonality. We’re all Jews. We all came to this country for a reason.” The Yeminite man retorted, “What has Zionism brought me? I’m losing my house” The others shouted back. The Yemenite man then stood again, reversing himself, citing the importance of being in Israel. The conversation took a Jewish turn. I was now not just a facilitator, but a bona-fide member of the interchange.

At 9pm, I stood and told the crowd I had to leave. “Where are you going. We’re just getting started,” one of them said. I answered meekly, “I have a plane at midnight back to Los Angeles.”

“You’re leaving the country after you led us into this discussion?,” someone shouted out. Then there was a murmur in the room.

One of the women got up and went to the sandwich table and began wrapping several sandwiches in napkins. A few others joined her. I assumed they were taking them home. They put them in a bag and gave them to me. “For the plane. It’s a long ride to America,” one of them said as she handed me the bag. Then they all arose and came forward to send me off with hugs and kisses, like a departing member of the family.

Only in Israel.

The 60 Bloggers project is co-production of Jewlicious.com and the Let My People Sing Festival. It is published daily for 60 days to celebrate Israel’s 60 birthday.