Israeli folk dancing helps bring Jews together.

That's one of the factors that motivated Daniela Tam and her committee of dancers and dance teachers to organize the Israeli Dance Festival DC, which will take place on Wednesday at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

"It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from, what your religious beliefs are or your politics, Israeli folk dancing is a unifying factor for the community," says Tam, 34.

"It's part of our [Jewish] national culture that feels the same everywhere, goes through the same inside channels for everybody."

Four Washington-area Israeli dance troupes -- Akevot, HoraDC, Kinor Dance Company and Yesodot -- will each perform two choreographed dance pieces, says Tam, HoraDC's artistic director. One dance will be based on traditional Israeli folk dance and the other on a particular ethnic style -- for example, chasidic, Ladino or mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jewish).

Thirty-six fifth- and sixth-graders from the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital also will take part in the festival. The kids study Israeli folk dance once a week, says Tam, who teaches the class.

Lehakat Dor, a troupe from Buenos Aires, Argentina, also will perform.

The idea for the festival came about due to a convergence of many small things, the Rockville resident says.

Lehakat Dor is on its way to Canada to perform and will stop in Washington for personal reasons, she says. That fact, plus the existence of those local Israeli folk dance performance groups and many sessions around the region where people come to dance for fun galvanized Tam into action.

In South America, where she grew up, these kinds of festivals are common, she says. In Israel, where she lived for seven years before coming here, Tam directed performing troupes of dancers.

"There were so many people dancing [in the Washington area], and this group was coming from South America, and yet nothing was being done," she says. "So, we had an excuse to get something started."

Or, revived, in a sense. A Washington Israeli Folk Dance Festival took place annually in the 1970s and '80s. Shirley Waxman of Potomac, then-director of the Israeli dance and folklore department at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, ran the festival, which was held at different venues throughout the community.

"It was a fabulous experience," notes Waxman, who says the festival ended when she left the JCCGW.

Judy Kerbel of Rockville, a member of Tam's committee, which, she says, "came together on our own," is determined that the festival will return on a yearly basis.

Tam concurs. "There are annual Israeli folk dance festivals in New York, Boston, Miami and elsewhere, but not here," she says. "We hope this will become an annual event as well."

The festival will take place at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School on May 12 at 8 p.m. Advance tickets at $10, $8 for students, can be purchased by contacting kinneretr@gmail.com; tickets at the door are $12, $8 for students.