Go West, Young Techies

This article was originally published as the cover story of the June 14, 2013 issue of JWeekly.

A dozen and a half young Israelis in their 20s and 30s live together in a big house in Menlo Park. They go grocery shopping and cook dinner together. The bathrooms are shared. This might sound like a bunch of college students trying to save on rent, or the cast of a new season of the “Big Brother” reality TV show. But it’s neither.

These young people are some of Israel’s top young entrepreneurs, and they are in Silicon Valley to take part in a program run by UpWest Labs.

Begun in January 2012 by a group of seasoned Israeli-American high-tech leaders, UpWest Labs is an accelerator that brings teams from early-stage Israeli startups to Palo Alto for an intensive, three-month experience meant to expose them to the U.S. market and help them move their companies to the next level.

“It’s about accelerating the time to market for these companies’ products, and about leveling the playing field for Israeli startups,” said Shuly Galili, who used to lead the California Israel Chamber of Commerce, and now runs UpWest Labs with partners Gil Ben-Artzy, a former Yahoo vice president, angel investor Liron Petrushka and operations expert Yael Winer.

“Israelis are strong on technological research and development,” Galili added, “but they don’t usually have good access to the main market for their products — the U.S. — nor do they have the required connections to U.S. funders.”

Whereas young Israelis a generation ago went to Los Angeles in search of entry-level jobs in the entertainment business, or to New York to work for moving companies or in electronics stores, now they flock to the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley and Manhattan’s Silicon Alley as founders of high-tech startups.

UpWest Labs team members (from left) Liron Petrushka, Yael Winer, Shuly Galili and Gil Ben-Artzy photo/maki oshiro

Thanks to the excellent computer coding skills young Israelis gain in the army and in top-notch engineering programs at the country’s universities, as well as a can-do Israeli attitude, it is not surprising that Tel Aviv is often tabbed the No. 2 high-tech area in the world; with some 700 startups, it is second only to Silicon Valley in startups per capita.

But operating in Tel Aviv’s Silicon Wadi is not enough.

Better-known Israeli Internet companies have shifted some if not all of their operations to the United States. Waze, a mobile mapping company that uses crowdsourcing (contributions from a large group of people, especially an online community) to supply real-time traffic information, is now headquartered in Palo Alto. Waze has been all over the tech news in recent days, after being courted by Google, Apple and Facebook. Google beat out the others and acquired the company this week for a reported $1.1 billion.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

 

Stanford Students Reject Israel Divestment Measure

This piece was first published in The Times of Israel.

The failed Stanford divestment proposal targeted companies including Motorola and Caterpillar. (Photo credit: CC BY/the_beat via Flickr.com)

SAN FRANCISCO — Stanford University’s student senate rejected a bill calling for selective divestment from Israel.

The Associated Students of Stanford University Undergraduate Senate rejected the proposal, put forth by Students for Palestinian Equal Rights(SPER).

The bill originally would have committed the Senate to urge the university’s Board of Trustees to reconsider endowment investments in eight companies, including Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin and Motorola. Tuesday’s vote centered on a revised version that pared the list to two.

The failure of the SPER bill capped off several weeks of contentious debate on campus. SPER Co-President Omar Shakir, a law student, had alleged the companies listed in the proposal profit from Israel’s control of the West Bank and “commit human rights abuses and violations of international law.”

Groups on both sides received statements of support from prominent outside voices. On SPER’s side were a pair of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Northern Irish peace activist Mairead Maguire and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. “The Color Purple” author Alice Walker had also called for the measure to be implemented.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

Kehillah Names Next Head of School

This piece was first published in JWeekly.

Darren Kleinberg

Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto recently announced that Rabbi Darren Kleinberg has been selected to succeed Lillian Howard as the next head of school. Howard is leaving at the end of the school year after six years on the job.

Kleinberg is scheduled to begin on July 1 after moving from Arizona to the Bay Area with his wife and two daughters. The 36-year-old has worked in the Jewish community in the Phoenix area for eight years, including a stint as a teacher and department head at Jess Schwartz College Prep, a now defunct 86-student Jewish high school.

Since 2007, he has been the executive director of Valley Beit Midrash, a collaborative and pluralistic organization that brings all sorts of Jewish educational programming to the Phoenix area.

A native of London, Kleinberg was ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, an Orthodox rabbinical school in New York. He earned a master’s degree in religious studies from Arizona State in 2011 and is pursuing a Ph.D. in the same discipline at ASU.

Kleinberg, who defines himself as a non-denominational Jew, said he was attracted to Kehillah because of its pluralistic mission. “I’ve always been passionate about Jewish education at the high school level, and the idea of strengthening pluralism and bringing the community together around learning really excites me,” he said.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.