It’s hard to get an interview with Lisa Benson. She’s a fundraiser, Middle East policy spokesperson, PR professional and issues advocate who flies from appointment to appointment. I managed to catch up with her last month via phone as she was packing for another trip to Washington, D.C.
In a way, Benson’s physical travels mirror the path along which her life has led her over the past 25 years. She began her adult life as a liberal, idealistic college student studying archaeology and Latin at City University of New York (CUNY) in Albany. Raised by a politically conservative Italian father and a Jewish mother in Long Island, Benson was “bit hard by the political bug” while at CUNY. After college she attended Rockefeller College of Public Policy and began an internship in the state capitol in Albany. In her early years, Benson embraced the traditional slate of liberal causes, including abortion rights while serving as the executive director for NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) in upstate New York. As a student, Benson was also involved in the women’s movement, and its legacy of equal rights for women remains an integral part of her personal philosophy.
Benson did not grow up with a strong sense of Jewish identity, but today describes herself as a “born-again Jew.” “My mother’s parents were Bolsheviks, and I wasn’t raised with any sense of religion,” she explains. “When I married, I promised my husband I would learn and do Jewish things. Now his family says I’m the most religious one in the family.” After her marriage, Benson served as a financial executive for the Jewish Federation of Palm Springs, Calif. Later she took a job fundraising for the Weizmann Institute of Science and traveled to Israel for the first time.
When her family moved to Arizona, she got a job coordinating singles events for the Jewish Community Center in Phoenix. She also found a strong, nurturing community in Congregation Beth El and Rabbi Rick Sherwin. “It was my marriage and husband and congregation in Beth El and my traveling to Israel that made me what I am,” she says. “Now there’s no separation between my Jewish identity and my secular identity.” As Benson’s professional and religious lives merged, her commitment to Judaism, and particularly to Israel, deepened.
Benson clings to her Jewishness with the fierceness of a newly minted convert. “I found my Jewishness late in life and I’m not letting it go,” she declares. “I know I was driven to it for a purpose and Hashem has a purpose for me. No matter what I’ve ever done in life, I’ve always felt a passionate conviction. My dad taught me to speak up and speak out. God has been so good to me in so many ways, and I’m so honored to be part of such a brilliant, cultured, well-read, wonderful people.”
Benson’s career might have remained that of a successful Jewish professional working primarily within the Jewish community, had it not been for the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “After 911, I was contacted by journalist and author Steven Emerson, to help raise money within the Jewish community to fund his Investigative Project on Terrorism, which monitors terrorist activities within the Muslim community in this country,” she explains.
In order to speak intelligently on these complex security issues, Benson had to undergo a crash course in international security, terrorism and Muslim extremism. “I’ve found it very difficult, getting what is essentially a postgraduate education in these issues,” Benson acknowledges. She has since worked with Richard Miniter, an investigative journalist for The New York Times, as a consultant for his American Media Institute, and has raised money for Secure America Now, which mobilizes security experts to advocate for antiterrorist policies.
Benson’s political evolution reflects a famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill: “Anyone who isn’t a liberal at 20 has no heart, and anyone who isn’t a conservative at 40 has no head.”
Benson points out that she didn’t intend to make a career change into national security. “My years of experience fundraising in the Jewish community made my journey into the anti-jihad movement a necessity, born out of a need for my expertise in the post-911 world,” she explains. “In all these years of fundraising to uncover, expose and dismantle terror cells around the country, I’ve been learning from the best analysts in the country.” Benson has expanded her fundraising work to include public speaking about national security, Israel and terrorism; in 2010, she began working with several candidates running for political office on pro-Israel position papers.
Although she believes passionately in the work she’s doing, Benson is the first to acknowledge the difficulties and the loneliness of her current career path. “When I speak on national security issues, I speak publicly, using my own name. I’ve received death threats. I’ve also lost friends and family over my work and some of the public positions I’ve taken, and I know I can be a polarizing person,” she says. “But we have to be vigilant. If we lose Israel, my kids have nowhere to go. Making people understand that Israel is on the front lines of civilization is the most important lesson I can give my children.”
Recently, Benson had the opportunity to use her skills in service of a more personal project. “I was flying somewhere and I met Lorraine Tallman,” Benson recalls. “She lost her 9-year-old daughter Amanda to leukemia; Amanda died because there was a shortage of her cancer medication.” Tallman wanted to start a nonprofit, Amanda’s Rainbow Angels, in honor of her daughter, but didn’t know how to go about getting it off the ground. “She wants to bring dignity to the harshness of childhood cancer by educating nurses and doctors about how to work with kids,” Benson explains. “Normally I charge $12,000 for this kind of work, but I’m doing it for free; it’s my mitzvah project.”
Amanda’s Rainbow Angels has a community fundraising dinner planned for the spring of 2013, along with several other projects scheduled to launch next year. Benson is reveling in this opportunity to take a break from the charged political arena in which she operates. “It gives me such joy to take my 30 years of experience and put it into a project that’s not national security or Israel, but pure tikkun olam,” Benson explains. “If I can heal one heart, I can save the world.”
