It was my last full day in Israel, and to be honest, part of me wanted to spend it at the beach with a book. Instead, I found myself on a bus heading north out of Tel Aviv, winding up Mount Carmel, and parking at the edge of the 77 forested acres that make up the Yemin Orde Youth Village. All I knew about the place came from its website: It served as home to more than 500 immigrant teens from all over the world, most coming from backgrounds of trauma and poverty.
By the end of the day, I was so glad I decided to go.
I spent the afternoon touring the village, alongside about 25 other Bay Area residents. (My trip to Israel was part of the East Bay Community Trip, a journey more than 100 Jews from throughout the East Bay — including members of more than a dozen congregations, as well as staff from JCCs and the Jewish Community Federation of the East Bay — took from April 10 to 19.)
First, we met with Susan Weijel, Yemin Orde’s outreach director, to hear about the 50-year-old organization’s educational philosophy.
Cultivating an atmosphere of safety, she told us, is central to the place. Teens living here hailed from Ethiopia, Iran, India, the former Soviet Union and Sudan; most often, the thing they have in common is an unsettled childhood in which they became used to fending for themselves. About 20 percent are orphaned. They arrive by way of social services and absorption centers throughout Israel, and live in homes named for Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Weisel and other social justice activists. Residents have a full schedule of classes, music and art therapy, sports and games, and Jewish studies. A new herd of goats lives at an on-campus ecological center.
Also key: showing residents that they can go on to great accomplishments, no matter what their past may have held. Which is part of why it was so meaningful for the community when Yemin Orde graduate Shimon Solomon was elected to the Knesset in January.
At lunch in the cafeteria, I talked with 17-year-old Degsum, who had come from Ethiopia at age 14. He would be graduating soon, and going into the Mechina, Yemin Orde’s pre-military training program, the only one of its kind in Israel designed for immigrants. Degsum was apprehensive about leaving the youth village behind, but said he was looking forward to the physical aspects of the training. Besides, he would have a few of his close friends from the village with him for support.
After we talked (his English was excellent; I’m useless with Hebrew), and the group toured the village, I found myself doing a very American thing. I kept trying to put his experience, and the philosophies embraced here, into relatable context — to find a U.S. equivalent.
My mind sputtered. As a California native, the prevailing attitudes toward immigration I’ve grown up around could not be more different from those espoused by this organization — which, notably, receives between 60 and 70 percent of its funding from the Israeli government. The U.S. government’s policies on Mexican immigration have rarely if ever lined up with my own politics, but I don’t know if I’d ever considered that there were places where arguments over something like the Dream Act would simply be out of the question.
“We want to convey to [the teens] that the State of Israel needs them,” said Weijel. And what does the U.S. tell disadvantaged teenage refugees from other countries? Mostly: Stay out.
One of our guides at Yemin Orde, an Ethiopian Israeli woman, talked about her first year in Israel as a teen — how she hated her heritage and bleached her hair to try to fit in. She touched very, very lightly on Israeli attitudes toward the Ethiopian immigrant population — which, depending on whom you ask there, can range from passively tolerant to fraught with xenophobia.
To say there’s a lot I still don’t understand about race relations in Israel would be the understatement of the year. I do realize the country isn’t exactly a multicultural utopia where all are welcomed with open arms and everyone always gets along. But I left Yemin Orde that day with a jumble of thoughts, alongside the feeling that this was one place where some things were going very right.
Like I said: I’m glad I skipped the beach.
Emma Silvers lives in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].