Who are you?
My name is Jason Kleban, a 37-year-old Jewish American living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am a software engineer working for the past decade for a startup developing a science education product called Inq-ITS, a board member of the Boston Synagogue located in Boston’s West End, and an active member of Boston Friends of Standing Together providing international support to the Standing Together peace activist group made up of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Why do you give to PPI?
In the aftermath of the October 7th attack, I was moved to embrace my Jewish identity far more than I had up to that point in my life, and I also started to spend a lot of effort trying to identify people and organizations to support that, to my mind, embraced both the Jewish and Palestinian identities as deserving of empathy and peaceful coexistence in Israel/Palestine. Partners for Progressive Israel is one of those organizations. I feel that I am able to contribute positively towards a future vision of Israeli/Palestinian peace through supporting PPI, Standing Together, and other organizations allied in the struggle to lift both people out of an endless cycle of violence and oppression.
What PPI programs do you most enjoy?
I greatly enjoy the regular webinars featuring Jews, Muslims, Israelis, and Palestinians on the forefront of the struggle for peace, equality, and universal justice in Israel/Palestine, the Middle East, and around the world. The speakers always embrace empathy for one another as they share their varying perspectives clearly and professionally. I have learned so much over the past couple of years from PPI webinars as I work to understand and appreciate the nuances of the Israeli/Palestinian dynamic that do not see the light of day in many other spaces that support one identity over the other.
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