Tag Archives: israel

How an Israeli village rescues kids from the brink

(Originally appeared at the Jewish Advocate)

Chaim Peri has made it his life’s mission to keep kids from slipping through the cracks. Peri is director emeritus of Yemin Orde Youth Village, where he has worked for the past 30 years. Founded in 1953, the Mount Carmel community provides a home, a family and education to 500 at-risk immigrant children from more than 20 countries.

In the last few years, Peri has been expanding Yemin Orde from a single program to a nationwide educational initiative serving Israel’s marginalized communities. He stopped in Boston this month to promote his new book, “Teenaged Educated The Village Way,” and to meet with Friends of Yemin Orde, a nonprofit that raises money for the village and its graduates.

In an interview with The Advocate, Peri talked about education and social division in Israel.  The interview has been edited and condensed.

 

Q. You say “Israel is not a perfect country.” How are you addressing that?

A. There is a lot of poverty and there are too many people left in the gutters, and this is to me inconceivable, we didn’t go along for 2000 years to create a country just like any other country. My focus is on the thousands of at risk youth who are left in the gutter, and they could be the stars of Israel. We don’t give up on a Jewish child. The kids I work with are largely first-generation Israelis who the system has failed, high school dropouts.

 

Q. Ethiopians and Russians?

A. Exactly. They don’t know what the average Israeli knows  to succeed. We take kids who come from brokenness, and we give them years of wholeness, of cohesiveness. They walk out different menschen; we have a method of doing that. The African proverb, it takes a village, we take the village system of Israel, and we replant it in devastated schools, chaotic environments, in the margins of Israel.

 

Q. What are the margins of Israel?

A. First of all, first generation Israelis, people who are confused about their identity. If you come from Russia and your mother isn’t Jewish, but you’re eligible to be an Israeli because your father was Jewish, your grandfather was Jewish, whatever, and you’re told you’re not Jewish, you’re not kosher, you grow to hate Israel. You say what do you want from me? They want from them to get converted, but then these conversions are almost impossible.

 

Q. It’s much harder to get converted in Israel than here?

A. Yes, because a kid doesn’t convert out of conviction. He converts because he feels Jewish, because in Russia they told him “you are a Jew.” So what does Israel want from him? I mean these are marginal kids, sometimes they form gangs. They hate Israel, the religious people, because they don’t include them. Then there are those who are poverty stricken, and dysfunctional life is transferred from generation to generation. Then there are those who had a very significant protest [last summer], the middle class, who said, “We did everything the book says. We work hard, we have degrees, and we cannot raise a family.”

This is not why we went through so many sacrifices to have a Jewish state.

 

Q. What of the Russian Jews who may come from backgrounds not viewed as halachically Jewish?

A. They’re welcome at Yemin Orde. I am Modern Orthodox; we are shomer Shabbat and everything. We have Muslim kids in our programs, Muslim kids from Darfur, and they survived genocide. They ran to Egypt, were subject to human trade, ran for freedom to Israel, and in Israel they are jailed! It’s unheard of. It’s a very controversial point in Israel, people say if you embrace them, millions are going to pour in. You can’t block the borders, so what’s going to happen to the Jewish state? It is not my concern; I am not in charge of the border guards, I am in charge of education.

We  were attacked: How can you put Muslim kids in a shomer Shabbat school? I said, this is my Judaism.

 

Q. Who’s making these attacks?

A. People who are intimidated by it. I really believe if you are not generous to your guest residents, what you say is I did not make the transformation from a ghetto mentality to being the master of the land. The master of the land must be generous to those who come; if you are not generous, if you are suspicious, your mentality is of a besieged human being.

There is a problem with cohesiveness in Israel. Before the state was established, you had the revisionist wing, the labor wing, but there was the shared goal of Jewish sovereignty. Today, there are so many camps: having a small state, giving land back; having a big Israel. Left, right – there’s no coherence.

I don’t define myself as any camp, I am K’lal Israel. We don’t have to be based off divisions. Just be a Jew. Take terms like “light unto the nations” seriously. If Rwandans come to us to learn how to transform kids who are genocide survivors, this is “light unto the nations.” So Yemin Orde is like an educational laboratory, a grassroots movement of educators. If you look at countries like Finland and South Korea, places with [high] scholastic results, educators are respected. It used to be like that in Israel, but it’s fragmented now.

 

Q. It must be fragmented with the multiple school systems, too.

A. We are approaching Arab schools, and they are approaching us. They’re Israeli citizens, they’re 20 percent of our population, and we have to communicate with them. And we have to show that whatever we offer, we offer it to them too.

 

Q. How is Yemin Orde dealing with last December’s Mount Carmel fire?

 

A. Israel was not prepared. We lost 22 buildings in the fire, we were safely evacuated. For four months we were living in a military installation in Hagira. It was a trauma for kids who are homeless and then they lost everything. The good news is, first of all, we are raising the funds to rebuild the village. Second, we got a lot of attention in Israel. The ministry of education has come out with a statement to all the school systems in Israel, which says look beyond the fire, what this village Yemin Orde stands for, its spirit, its leadership.

Soldier’s battlefield question puts him on path to Hasidism

(Originally appeared in the Jewish Advocate)

Forty years ago, Shmarya Harel was in the Golan Heights fighting the Syrian army.
What he saw, Harel said, turned him away from secular Zionism and toward Hasidism.
“We are all emissaries of Hashem,” he told an audience at Beth Menachem Chabad in
Newton this month, “and Hashem is choosing for each person his route in life. Along
my life I see real miracles, as if Hashem takes me by the hand and pulls me on the path
to a good end.”
For Harel, that path has been particularly perilous. He was born in 1950 in Rehovot;
11 months later he contracted polio. His mother told him how an older Yemenite nurse
insisted that he not be placed in hospital quarantine. “People go into Kaplan [hospital]
with polio,” the nurse had said. “But nobody comes out.”
The infant spent weeks in a crib isolated from the outside world in one of the kibbutz
buildings. His mother would look in on him every day through a window. She would
see him pulling the posts of the crib, trying to stand. “One day,” Harel said, “she saw me
suddenly stand, and from then on the polio left me. That was the first miracle.”
The others came years later in the army, he said. After growing up on Kibbutz Na’an,
Harel went into the IDF in August 1969. His training officer was a young Benjamin
Netanyahu. Harel remembers the future prime minister as a good commander and a
tough trainer.
The recruits would run up and down the valleys near the Dead Sea. One day they ran out
of water in the middle of the day. Netanyahu found a cave with a small stream and used
a plastic bag as a funnel to fill their empty cans.
Around Yom Kippur in 1972, Harel was in Lebanon on a covert mission, rooting
out PLO cells. On the way back, his platoon was ambushed. Harel recalled his horror
as a rocket flew through one window of his armored vehicle and out the other side –
somehow missing the half dozen soldiers inside. Seconds later, the Israelis had the
terrorists on the run.
The Yom Kippur war in 1973 was a hard time for Harel. Partway through the war, he
was transferred from the Egyptian front to the Syrian front on the Golan Heights. As one
of the few active soldiers who had experience in wintery conditions, Harel often was
assigned to lead troops around Mount Hermon. He remembers the uncertainty the snow
would cause. Mere meters off course at the beginning of a trip could mean crossing the
Syrian border instead of arriving at an Israeli base.
At the same time, Harel found himself growing dissatisfied with secular Zionism. “In
Kibbutz Na’an, we studied the Tanakh, the promise to Abraham, but when we asked the
teachers who is Hashem, they told us ‘he doesn’t exist.’ Yom Kippur was a hard war,
3,500 dead, and when you’re giving your life for something and you ask what for, and
the answer is: It does not exist, it is not real; it’s hard. ”
After the war, Harel worked as a security guard for El Al for six months. That earned
him a free airline ticket, which he used to go to Boston. He studied Jewish mysticism
at Hebrew College. Chaim Prus, now the rabbi at Beth Menachem Chabad, became his
spiritual advisor. Within four years, Harel was studying at Yeshiva Tiferes Bachunim in
Morristown, N.J. He returned to Israel in 1979 as a Chabad emissary. “As someone who
wasn’t born into this lifestyle,” he said, “some days it’s easier than others. Some days
it’s a lot of work to observe all the mitzvot.”
Today, Harel works in education for the Chabad movement in Israel, using theories
that “engage all the senses, not just sight and sound,” he said.
While Harel views the social values of kibbutzim as compatible with Judaism, he said
Orthodox traditions have enabled him to lead a more complete life. “It’s better when a
person is connected to the Torah, to the idea of the land,” he said.

Fighting for Justice: Attorney Itzik Dessie advocates for Israel’s Ethiopian Jews

Itzik Dessie’s journey to becoming the first Ethiopian-born lawyer in Israel began nearly 28 years ago with a perilous 100-mile hike to Sudan.
Today, more than two decades later, Dessie is executive director of Tebeka, an Israeli
charity that provides legal aid to Ethiopians.He was in town last month on a fund-raising trip. Boston’s Jewish community was among the first in America to mobilize on behalf of the Ethiopian exodus to Israel.
As part of Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ Boston-Haifa part, the Jewish Community Relations Council runs a grass-roots campaign to empower Ethiopian Jews in Haifa.
Tebeka itself receives aid from the Boston-based Friends of Ethiopian Jews.
In a wide-ranging interview, Dessie talked about his own story, his fight to protect the rights of Ethiopian Jews and his community’s views of President Barack Obama. Here is an edited version.

Q. When I googled you, the first result was for a song on YouTube about
Ethiopians. Can you tell me about that?
A. I composed it last year, and performed it last year at Memorial Day. We had around 4,000 people who couldn’t arrive in Israel, and died of hunger or thirst in Sudan. For many people in the community, it was a very traumatic issue, and we don’t speak about it. I decided to write the song, so people might listen to the music, and come forward with the sadness and scars they had.

Q. What was your experience going from Ethiopia to Israel?
A. I left Ethiopia in January 1984. I was lucky in that it took about a month, and I was only in the Sudan for a week. I came into Sudan on a Saturday, and left the next Saturday. We were a group of 24 young Ethiopians. I was 13; the others were around 17 or older. It was around 100 miles on foot, hiding from robbers and the Ethiopian soldiers. When you arrive in Sudan, you have to hide your identity, any evidence that you are a Jew. Otherwise you are endangering your life.
We didn’t leave Ethiopia to have a better life in Israel. We weren’t wealthy in Ethiopia,but we were happy. The reason we left is because we believe Israel is the Holy Land; we had yearnings for generations to live there. People knew they were going to encounter hunger, dizziness.
Now there are around 150 Ethiopians a month trying to make it to Israel. They are mostly Falash Mura, who are Ethiopians who were forcibly converted to Christianity over the centuries who are trying to reclaim their Judaism.

Q. What’s the process for that?
A. Once they complete the conversion process, they are full citizens in Israel. People are waiting 10 years or more just to come to Israel, and the conversion process itself takes years. It becomes a humanitarian issue, in that there are children who left their parents and are living in Israel, parents who left their children and are living in Israel. It’s about reuniting families.

Q. I’d heard that Ethiopians suffer religious discrimination – their practices are
not seen as normative Judaism.
A. That is not an issue as much anymore. It was very insulting, saying who is and who is not a Jew. In our view, we have traditions going back over 2,000 years. But in 1985 we had a large demonstration in front of the prime minister’s office; after that, things changed. It may be with Haredim that they do not accept us, but I have Ashkenazim in my family, I have Mizrahim in my family.

Q. Speaking of protests, how did the Ethiopian community view or participate in
the recent tent city protests?
A. They gave it the name of middle-class protests, but if life is difficult for the middle class, it is very difficult for the poor. We do not so much live in Tel Aviv [where the protests were centered], but in cities near Tel Aviv – Ramla, Rehovot – we have a large presence, and we had our tents there. I hope these protests will change the government’s attitude toward easing life in Israel.

Q. How does discrimination or racism affect economic advancement?
A. In the army, for example, you may encounter the phenomenon of discrimination. In terms of who becomes the commanders and officers, when you look at how many Ethiopians are holding the position of officer or are stationed in elite units, there are some. Case by case you can say it isn’t discrimination; however, there are not Ethiopians at higher levels in the army. If you don’t see them there, something’s wrong.
Israel is a good country, in that we are equal before the law, and there are anti-
discriminatory laws. Like any community, there are problems, but in Israel the issue is to make sure that we are aware of our rights, and that the law is enforced. There are prohibitions against discrimination for color, background, ethnicity.

Q. Can you give an example of a case Tebeka took?
A. We had an Ethiopian college student who tried to get onto a bus, and the driver wouldn’t let her on. He made the statement that “you are an Ethiopian, you came here on foot, you can keep going on foot. I won’t let you on this bus.” We brought criminal charges against him, and he was convicted.
In another case, there were five Ethiopian children in a kindergarten in Arad, and in the middle of the year they were taken out of the school, because there were “too many students” in the kindergarten, but only the Ethiopians were taken out. We took that into court and the families were awarded around 300,000 shekels discrimination for this.

Q. As members of the African diaspora, how does the Ethiopian community view Obama?
A. We were very happy when he was elected. Some Israelis had fears that he would not be a friend to Israel, not be in favor of the Jewish people in the UN. But for the Ethiopian community, seeing a black man hold this position, not only leader of America but of the world, it makes us proud. If there were children who were saying, I can never get that far, Obama being elected was a historical moment – it changed that.
If you give a person chances, and they have the motivation, they can make it. I had good grades and performance in school, but my scores on the psychometry exam, which measures not only intelligence, but also cultural background, were low. My university overlooked that and said I could prove myself after I matriculated, so I benefited from affirmative action.
People ask how it feels to be the first Ethiopian lawyer, and it’s nice to be the first, but it’s unfortunate that we didn’t have the opportunity before then.
Now there are 80 Ethiopian lawyers in Israel, and every year there are 120 law students, so now that we have the opportunity, we are advancing.

For more on Tebeka, visit http://www.tebeka.org.il; for more on Friends of Ethiopian Jews,
visit friendsofethiopianjews.org.

Tzfat klezmer festival

(Originally appeared at New Voices magazine in two parts)

 

It’s really striking just seeing Tzfat– there’s nowhere else like it. It’s so old looking, city walls and stone arches, but then you see the bullet scars in a wall and you remember the whole city was evacuated just five years ago. Despite that, it’s peaceful. For all the talk about the divisions in Israel between the religious and secular, Tzfat is a welcoming place. It’s more traditional than say, Ramat Gan, but it’s not like anyone’s going to throw rocks at you—it’s laid back, deep without trying to be. I’d only been there once before, with my family when I was younger (We ate lunch at a Chasid’s house. I had to wear a kippah.). This time I was there as a backpacker, representing the assimilated Americans at the 2010 klezmer festival .

Getting to Tzfat was a trip in itself. Even at the airport security was asking me “Tzfat? Why Tzfat? A klezmer festival? How did you hear about the klezmer festival? Why a klezmer festival?” Made me wish I’d packed myshtreimel. At 21:00 Tuesday night Martín (“Mar-TEEN not Mar-tin”) and I were at the Akko bus terminal, frantically trying to figure out if the last bus had left. The only English spoken was first generation Russian immigrant English, and our Hebrew and Arabic being essentially nonexistent, we were worried. At 21:30 some young Orthodox girls sat down on the bench near us, looking more nervous than we did in their long dresses. “That’s a good sign though.” I said to Martín. “They must be going to Tzfat.”

At 22:00 the bus came. I’m from Boston, I ride the T pretty much every day of my life, but I’d never seen anything this crowded. I wondered if it would smell like sweat or cigarette smoke, or both. Weirdly, it smelled like neither. We paid the driver and went to the back of the bus. The crowd there was mostly secular teenagers, along with some hairy men who were pre-gaming the festival. The bus was incredibly cold, not quite see-your-breath cold, but definitely cold for a 115 pound American weakling. “It’s not that cold, man.” said Martín, gleefully eating a cheeseburger. “¿Sabes que? If you had a cheeseburger like me, you’d be nice and warm.” He laughed. Lucky gentile.

In Tzfat we were trying to find our hostel. “Shoshanah’s house?” the security guard said. “Didn’t she move? I think it’s closed.” At the address I’d written down there was a locked building. “Shoshanah?” the chainsmoking woman at the other hostel said. “You do not want Shoshanah. So dirty there…the beds have cockroaches inside. Here instead, I have better rooms. Hundred  shekel. Hundred fifty for both of you.” Eventually I reached her phone. “Where are you?” Shoshanah said. “I don’t know!” I said. “There was a footbridge?”

“Palmach.” said Martín, holding his cell phone to the street sign for light. “We’re on Palmach.” “We’re on Palmach.” I said. “I meet you at the bridge.” she said. “5, 10 minutes”

Fifteen minutes later we met Shoshanah. “That building is full.” she said. “You stay in my house.” We walked down some crooked side streets, past two or three synagogues, finally into an apartment building. It was a typical three bedroom flat, except every room except the kitchen now had as many mattresses as could fit. The room we got had eight of them. “This can’t be on the books.” I thought. I looked at the bed. No sign of cockroaches (score!). It was comfortable. It had a good pillow. Someone was poking my head.

“Yo parce.” said Martín. “You going to sleep all night?” I had been up since 6:00. “You’re in a country you can do anything when you’re 18 and you’re going to sleep?” “What time is it?” “Midnight dude, come on!” “One second.” I put on my v neck, cuffed my skinny jeans. “Yo, should I wear the stupid hat?” I said. “YES, Max, wear the stupid hat!” I put on my straw fedora (actually paper). Martín handed me a bottle. “Let’s hear some of your hava nargilah music.” he said. “Word.”

–

The sounds were piercing sometimes, shrill even, hitting high dissonant tones that were mocking any tacked-on western harmonies. This wasn’t strummy guitar music, or beery St. Patricks day music. This was realer than that. Klezmer straddles the line between Eastern and Western. Usually it has the harmonic chords and 4/4 feel of European music, but the minor keys and scales, not to mention the improvisation are straight up alien to the West. It’s weird to think that it’s so much older than Israel, it fits the country perfectly—especially Tzfat.

I was walking down the unpaved street, no cars, hearing a street clarinet player project himself, laying down pure personal expression like a B-Boy freestyle. It’s so rare to hear music like that, unrecorded but virtuoso. The rhythm was more like speech than a regular beat, actually deeply reminiscent of Torah chanting, more pulsing than counting. You couldn’t dance to it, but why would you want to?

It wasn’t just acoustic though. In the lower part of the city, there was an Israeli rock band with traditional influence, which meant klezmer with drums and basslines. I liked it, but it was background music for the night. Martin and I were chilling at the Tzfat equivalent of a hookah bar. This wasn’t a preppy hangout though. Some guys with like thirty nargilot had taken over an old ruin. They’d set up mattresses, pillows, and pseudo-Indian artwork. Now they were making a killing charging anywhere from 5 to twenty shkalim to rent a nargilah, depending on your Hebrew. We paid twenty, everyone else paid 5. Smoking, tasting lemons, feeling the bass from the stage, more content than I’d ever been, I felt like I was at home. “This is what you miss in America.” Martín said. “In the third world they’re relaxed enough that they have places like this.”

“Israel’s not third world.” I looked around. “Maybe it’s not first world but it’s not third world.”

“Whatever, Max. It’s not America.”

“L’chaim.” We clinked bottles.

When the sun was about to come up we were looking for somewhere to eat. All the street vendors had gone home. We ended up at a restaurant that had thankfully decided to extend its hours for the festival. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen took my money at the counter, handed me my fanta and my change, I honestly smiled when our fingers touched, she looked that good.
“Max you look so stupid right now.” Martín whispered when we were waiting for the shawarma.

“What? Shut up dude.”

“No, YOU shut up! You look like ODB about to OD.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m enjoying the moment.”

“What moment?”

“Shawarma girl.”

Writing now, I remember exactly what she looked like, long black hair, tight black jeans, face like the shekhina. “I’m going to offer her a green card.” I’d said to Martín. “You should!” he said. Believe me, I was seriously considering it.