When Avishag Rosh travels next month to her native Israel for her brother’s wedding, she’ll return to Milwaukee with a handful of necklaces with Star of David pendants.
They’re not for her personal jewelry collection but for her seventh-grade students at Hillel Academy.
For Rosh, 19, the fact that the girls asked for such necklaces says something about the impact she makes and can make as a National Service (Sherut Leumi) volunteer in Milwaukee.
“Our job is to get [our students] closer to Israel, to help them see that there is more to Israel than all the terrorist attacks,” said Rosh, who comes from the Northern Galilee community of Hatzor HaGalilit. And if Rosh and the two other National Service volunteers in Milwaukee — Shanny Edan and Efrat Roth — can help cultivate a personal connection to Israel, they’ll feel that they’ve done their job well.
Rosh, Edan and Roth are three of the five young Israelis who arrived in August for a year of community service in Milwaukee. The three are serving the second of their two-year stint as National Service volunteers, and are among 61 high school graduates serving abroad under the auspices of the Bat Ami organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Bnei Akiva religious Zionist youth movement.
Though Rosh, Edan and Roth are exempt from military service, they, like many Israeli religious women, feel compelled to contribute to their country.
“It’s my country,” said Roth, 18, from Petach Tikvah. “I feel that until I was 18 I just got everything, and now it’s time to give back.”
Both Rosh and Roth had planned to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces; Roth even completed the necessary tests to join a fighting unit, but eventually chose National Service because, she said, “I thought this was the best way I could donate to my country.”
Last year, the women volunteered within Israel, each in a different capacity but all providing social and community service. Rosh and Roth worked with youth in schools and community centers; Edan aided social workers in their work with dysfunctional families.
Coming to the States is a longtime dream for all three. But for Edan, 19, from the southern development town of Netivot, this is not her first time representing her country abroad. In 9th grade, she went to France through Netivot’s city government. In late 2001, she participated in a Partnership 2000 teen delegation to Philadelphia.
This year, the fifth year that Hillel has hosted such volunteers, the women spend their weekdays teaching groups and individuals at Hillel. “They add to the Israeli flavor of the school,” said Rabbi Yoel Turgeman, principal and head of Judaic studies. They also provide an invaluable, personal Israeli connection for the students, he said.
More than that, “they’re like a bridge between the teacher and student,” said Turgeman, who interviewed the women last spring in Israel. “Sometimes a child isn’t able to open his heart to teachers but is able to open to the National Service girls. Then the teachers can maintain their authority. It works, believe me.”
The women believe their contribution extends beyond their formal teaching: They also can act as role models. “It’s not just because we do things but because of who we are, because we love Israel. It’s in our soul, and you can see that,” said Rosh.
Rosh, Roth and Edan share an apartment and often work until late into the evening. They’re also involved in many community activities, including teaching at religious school and leading a local group of Bnei Akiva.
Person to person
Across the school building and farther south on the Karl Jewish Community Campus are two more young Israeli volunteers — Meital Saar and Reut Gazit.
Saar and Gazit, both 18, arrived in August to be “Shin Shiniot,” cultural ambassadors with JAFI’s Young Emissary Program. A well-understood acronym in Israel, Shin Shin refers to Shnat Sherut (year of service), a volunteer program for Israeli youth before or after their mandatory military service. Both young women will enlist in the IDF next year.
Five years ago, the first Shin Shin volunteer came to the U.S. This year there are 700 serving in communities throughout North America.
Both women come from Sovev Kinneret, Milwaukee’s Partnership 2000 region near the Sea of Galilee. P2K, a JAFI program, is supported by funds from the Annual Community Campaign of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
“For many years I knew I wanted to do a year of community service before the army; I just didn’t know where,” explained Saar, from Kibbutz Tel Katzir.
After visiting the U.S. last winter as a fellow in a program of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship in Israel, Saar began to think about serving here.
“It seemed there were many things I could do here. I have something to give to this place. And I like the idea that I’m a young emissary; this is my one chance to contribute this way,” said Saar, who, like Edan, visited the U.S. in 2001 as part of the P2K teen Mifgash (exchange) program.
Saar, who spends her mornings working at the Milwaukee Jewish Day School, said, “I have the feeling that if I talk with youth, they understand me much more than if an adult would come from Israel.”
And she doesn’t plan to waste this opportunity for connection. “I hope to give the school more Israel…. It’s very important to me to get people involved” rather than passively observing, she said. “The connection is then much more powerful.
Gazit, 18, from Tiberias, is equally earnest about her year here. In the mornings, she works with two-year-olds in the Early Childhood Program at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
“I hope to open people’s minds about Israel,” said Gazit. “The way many people look at Israel — they see only the bad things…. I don’t want violence to be the first association.”
“Even though I’m working with two-year-olds, I can see the spark in their parents’ eyes when they come to pick up their children. I’m making the connection; they are exposed to Israeli culture by knowing me.”
Both Saar and Gazit are housed by local families. During their year here they will contribute to the general community, for example, by helping to organize the November 2 community remembrance of the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and working with the Hillel Foundation-Milwaukee, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and Jewish Home and Care Center, among other agencies and schools.
And their influence is potentially limitless, explained Pnina Goldfarb, JCC assistant director and Early Childhood director, who interviewed and selected Saar and Gazit with the help of former shaliach Nir Barkin.
The goal, Goldfarb explained, is for the women to “build relationships with people in the community informally, through the people they meet and the places they work. They connect people with Israel in a truly partnership kind of way — person to person.”
The program, in its second year in Milwaukee, is a gift, explained Rabbi Philip Nadel, MJDS co-director and Jewish studies principal. “The relationship to Israel that we want to cultivate in our kids is so precious, and that’s so difficult to do from the other side of the world. So while we hope and may have the expectation that our kids will eventually visit Israel, in the meantime this is an opportunity to bring something of Israel to them.”
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