Participant Spotlight: Erin West

Hey y’all, I’m Erin West from the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina. I vacillate wildly between being a granola hippie and a medium-maintenance millennial, often both at the same time. I do, however, maintain an unwavering love for dogs (with mine at the top of that list) and a personal mission to have even the tiniest positive effect on the world around me.

I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in May 2016 and here in Israel I am volunteering with Holland Center for children with special needs, Porter Elderly Center, and the Clinic for Asylum Seekers. The volunteer opportunities at Tikkun Olam vary widely across the non-profit sphere. As such I was able to select placements that fulfill me personally, gain experience in my desired field, and to give my time and energy in a way that benefits the communities I am serving.

I found Tikkun Olam through BINA’s Taglit (Birthright) extension program, where I was able to volunteer with Tel Aviv’s asylum-seeking community. I wanted to engage with the people of Israel and learn about the complexities of society and politics. In general, to learn about Israel beyond the rose-colored glasses of Birthright or the fear-mongering of American media. After the brief volunteer and educational program I participated in, I realized BINA was the kind of organization that asks and listens in order to provide a service which is actually needed. After establishing that and finding Tikkun Olam, it was just figuring out the details! Now, after 2.5 months, I know I made the right decision.

Participant Spotlight: Rachel Fried

My name is Rachel Fried. I am a tree-hugging vegetarian from Fredericksburg, VA. I have a Masters in Health Administration from Tulane University. I chose the Tikkun Olam in Tel-Aviv-Jaffa program to make the best use of my degree and further my career, while deepening my connection to tikkun olam and Israel. I am interning at Public Clinic Terem TLV, located in the Tel-Aviv Central Bus Station, which provides non emergency healthcare to those outside the national healthcare system, mainly asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan. I am also volunteering at an after school program for at-risk children in South Tel Aviv - Bialik Rogozin School For Immigrant Children. Tikkun Olam in Tel-Aviv Jaffa believes it is important to volunteer in the communities where we live, so once a week my roommates I and are volunteering with Nofim School in Kiryat Shalom, where we will be teaching English through theater and drama games. Over the next 10 months, I am looking forward to learning Hebrew, exploring Israeli culture, and traveling around this beautiful country. I can already tell this will be a year of immense personal and professional growth for me.

Tikkun Olam at the Knesset!

Check out current Coexistence Track participant Elliot Glassenberg speaking to a Knesset committee on the fight against Homophobia! Elliot's part begins at the 45 minute mark.

Jewish Perspective on Asylum Seekers

Katie, one of our 10 month Coexistence track participants, recently had the following to say about asylum seekers in Israel:

Unlike many of the people in our program, I don’t work directly with African refugees. I can’t call them my students, my neighbors or my friends. My experiences have largely come from observation, conversation with my fellow participants, and my commute to and from the Secular Yeshiva. Watching young, unemployed African men crouched on the side of Har Tsyion, waiting for day labor contracts to come their way, raises a plethora of issues, but first and foremost, it raises the issue of what a Jewish State should be.

As a Jewish national home, does Israel have the room and resources to provide for the thousands of Africans who have fled conflict and settled throughout the country? The Talmud teaches that “Jews are the compassionate children of compassionate parents. One who is merciless toward his fellow creatures is no descendant of our father Abraham.” Does deporting young Sudanese refugees back to uncertain and possibly dangerous situations or interning them in a holding facility in the Negev fit in with this Talmudic understanding of a core Jewish value?

I could share with you terrifying anecdotes about the labor exploitation, xenophobia, and deportation of asylum seekers. This is a country that absorbed more than a million Russian olim within the span of a decade. Can it not provide paperwork and justice to a few thousand with no home to return to? Disentangling the issue of undocumented asylum seekers from the heated rhetoric oftentimes used to discuss it is a necessary step in order to truly begin to seek justice for the young men on the side of the road.