When Lisa Bess Wishman was approaching the end of her four-year term as director of the American Center of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, she thought that this was the end of her career in the foreign service and that she was about to retire. But no. The US State Department had other ideas and is sending her to Macedonia, where she will work for a year as a public affairs officer and then retire.
She is due to leave Jerusalem for Skopie on the day after Yom Kippur.
One of the great perks of being in the foreign service is that one gets to see and live in foreign countries that one might otherwise not visit – and it’s at the expense of the government.
There are two ways to do this. One is to marry a diplomat and the other is to become a diplomat oneself. Wishman did both, albeit not at the same time. Her former husband Mark Brandt is a diplomat, and after they had been married for a few years she decided that she wanted to be a diplomat herself. Their first posting after their marriage had been in Portland, Haiti, in 1991, where Wishman worked with USAID. Their second posting was in Zambia, where their daughter Jordan, now 27, had been conceived. Wishman went briefly back to the US to give birth and then returned to Zambia, where the family spent three years. Next was Senegal, West Africa, where Wishman organized a swimming team among the Americans who were there. Then in 1999, the family landed in Sweden, and subsequently enrolled their daughter in a Swedish Jewish day school. At that stage, Wishman had not yet thought about becoming a diplomat herself. She went to work for Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish studies in Stockholm, where she focused on Holocaust Education. She also worked closely with Kay Olsen, the wife of US ambassador to Sweden Lyndon Olson. Then, in 2001, came the trauma of 9/11, after which Wishman knew that what she wanted to do was to become an American diplomat and practice public diplomacy. She left her husband and Jordan in Sweden and went back to America for a year to be trained by the US State Department.
IN HER youth, Wishman never thought about being a diplomat. She didn’t even know what a diplomat was. But she grew up in an era of racial and political chaos, and the one thing she did know was that she wanted a career that would enable her to make a difference.
Born in New York, she moved with her family to South Carolina when she was 10 years old. Roughly a decade earlier in 1954, the US Supreme Court had declared that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and that schools must be integrated. It took a long time for that ruling to be implemented. It didn’t come about in South Carolina until 1963, when a request by black children to be admitted to white schools received an affirmative response in yet another court ruling. But that did not always mean that black children entered white schools. Sometimes it was the other way around – in that white children entered black schools. That’s what happened to Wishman in 1970 when she was in the sixth grade and a relative newcomer to South Carolina. She was taken out of her regular school, which was close to home, and bussed on a roundabout route to a much more distant part of the city to what had previously been a black high school but had been transformed into an integrated elementary school.
The war in Vietnam, with its high toll of American casualties, was still raging. Wishman did not understand what it was about, but as a little girl, she knew it was bad and that when she grew up she wanted to be part of something that would stop wars from happening.
Raised in a Conservative Jewish family, she first came to Israel in the summer of 1975 on a United Synagogue Youth pilgrimage tour when she was 15. She had never been abroad before, and the whole experience was magical.
She returned in 1984 as a young adult member of the World Union of Jewish Students, and stayed for a year. While in Israel at that time she worked with Ethiopian immigrants at the Immigrant Absorption Center in Arad.
While studying at Columbia University, she returned to Israel for a year in the summer of 1986, and worked as an intern for United Press International and together with the bureau chief got to interview Yitzhak Shamir. During that year, she also completed her master’s degree in International Affairs at Tel Aviv University’s Dayan Center.
As the daughter of a professional librarian, she also organized the library at the Conservative Synagogue in Jerusalem, working together with the late Rabbi Pesach Schindler.
SHE WAS not to know at the time, that when she would next return to Israel, it would be in a professional capacity. But in 2003, the family was posted to Tel Aviv. Brandt worked in senior general services, and Wishman in consular services.
In 2005, they moved to Ottawa, where Jordan celebrated her bat mitzvah, and after a couple of years in Ottawa, they were sent back to Washington where they spent five years. Though born a US citizen, it was the first time that Jordan had lived in America.
It was important for the couple to be in Washington as their parents on both sides were elderly and ailing, and needed them to be close at hand.
In 2013, they were once again on their way abroad – this time to Hanoi.
For reasons that Wishman does not care to explain, the marriage disintegrated while they were in Vietnam, and on completion of their term there, Brandt went back to the US, where he is still a diplomat, and Wishman came to Israel to take up the directorship of the American Center about whose role in public diplomacy and the dissemination of American values she is very passionate.
Asked which country she liked best, Wishman diplomatically replies that each has its own unique charm, though she admits that it was easier to cultivate a feeling of belonging and to integrate socially in some countries than in others.
As for public diplomacy which is her passion, she learned to be sensitive in discussing American topics with different groups of people. Her philosophy is “Adapt, adopt, reject – but do it from a place of knowledge.”
Her goal has been not to leave a place without people realizing that she made a difference. In order to make a difference, she knew that flexibility was an important attribute, and to remind herself of this on a constant basis, she keeps a green Semper Gumby on her desk. For those who may not be aware, the appellation is based on the Latin semper fidelis, which means always loyal. Gumby is an American created clay figure that can be bent in all directions – hence Semper Gumby, always flexible.
KNOWN IN its previous incarnation as the American Cultural Center, which attracted English speakers to its book and video cassette library, as well as to its connections to American television stations, the premises of the American Center – which has undergone a slight name change – have simultaneously undergone a massive transformation. Although there are still many books on display, the library as such no longer exists and the streamlined areas, with the large number of open laptops and big screens give the impression of being a hi-tech company, rather than a public diplomacy branch of the US Embassy. The change occurred shortly before Wishman’s arrival under the direction of her predecessor who she says brought the American Center into the 21st century.
This includes a multi-purpose room with a stage and fully professional sound and light equipment for performances.
Other than for small groups who have come for a specific purpose, the American Center has been closed throughout the coronavirus pandemic. When it resumes regular operations, it will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. for a variety of activities that promote American values, a knowledge of American history, respect for human dignity regardless of creed or color, American music and other avenues of American creativity and culture. For this purpose, there are numerous screens, printers and innovative educational devices such as a virtual reality trip to be present at the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence, listening to the Gettysburg Address or marching with Martin Luther King Jr.
The overall program is similar to that of American centers around the world, in line with an agreement that the State Department has with the Smithsonian Institute, much of it aimed at coexistence, gender equality, women’s empowerment, human rights, the eradication of violence and more.
IN PARTNERSHIP with numerous organizations, the American Center hosts joint leadership sessions for Jewish and Arab women, concerts of American music played by a mixed Jewish-Arab band or orchestra, entrepreneurship and creative, innovative, and technological educational games with organizations such as Kids4Peace, in which Arab and Jewish youth not only share ideas and projects, but have fun together, dancing and singing.
All these and other activities are based on the American model.
Wishman works with an eight-member staff – seven Israelis from English-speaking backgrounds and one Palestinian from east Jerusalem.
In addition to celebrating American holidays, the American Center in Jerusalem also celebrates, Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze holidays, and publishes information on its Facebook account in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
It also helps with English proficiency tests, in addition to which it assists would-be visitors to the US to navigate visa forms.
Because it is part of the US embassy, albeit in a building in another nearby street, security is very tight. Anyone entering has to pass through a metal detector just inside the doorway and has to give proof of their identity. For people who have pacemakers or metal prosthetics or for those who have difficulty walking up and down stairs, there is an elevator at the side of the entrance, which apparently was not part of the plan to bring the American Center into the 21st century. Slow, creaking and somewhat shaky, it is not only not symbolic of the 21st century, but not even the 20th century. Part of the reason for failure to streamline it may have something to do with some of the people who used it.
As we emerged from it into Keren Hayesod Street, Wishman exclaimed: “Would you believe that Ruth Bader Ginsburg rode this elevator?”