Israel

A Story About Values, About Israel, and Israeli Early Childhood Centers During the War

This week I went to help create early learning centers for displaced families in Israel with an incredible volunteer organization called Brothers and Sisters for Israel. While there, I shared a Zoom link and went live every hour for several minutes to provide educators from the United States and Canada with a sneak peek to see in real-time what has been happening these days in Israel, and how pop-up schools are being created.
 

The connection between Israel and our nation in the diaspora is very important to me and I feel privileged that my role in Remini continues to enable me to further these connections, as well as to create bridges. It adds a lot of value to what I do, and I feel it is a shlihoot (mission) of mine.
 

Stacey Gabriel, from Temple Beth Avodah in Newton, Massachusetts, joined one of the live sessions I did while creating the pop-up schools. I am honored to be asked to share about it in the ECE-RJ newsletter. I have so many stories to share related to what is happening with preschools in Israel during this time.
 

Before I begin, I want to highlight what I believe is at the core of what is happening in Israel right now, which is centered around the values of accountability, responsibility for one another, solidarity, taking initiative, creativity, and taking control of our destiny (one of the fundamental principles in a democratic culture). As I am writing this, I feel the tears starting to fall.
 

These values are being reflected throughout the country in so many ways. Here are just a few examples:

• I recently had a conversation with Hagit, a preschool teacher in one of the pop-up preschools for displaced families in Tel Aviv. Hagit shared with me that she left her job as a university education professor to be a preschool teacher at the pop-up school. I did not ask, but I am assuming she chose this path without a salary. 
• On the way to the funeral of a soldier who died, I observed residents of the city lined up from the house of the family to the cemetery, with Israeli flags to show solidarity, honor, and respect. 
• I spoke with Reut, a volunteer responsible for a certain area in Israel, where she is taking care of all the displaced families' needs in this area (each area has its own designated volunteer). One of her recent projects was to provide refrigerators and washing machines to them.
• Omri, a person of strength and someone close to me, left his wife and small child to fight in the reserves, after losing his brother only several weeks ago.
• Attending the Shiva of a family that lost a loved one with the understanding that it is a very small family, and they need to feel the love and support all around them.

As you can imagine I can go on and on and on and on….

Those values are also reflected strongly in the early childhood community through the creation of pop-up preschools for displaced families. These pop-up preschools would not be possible without the organization Brothers and Sisters for Israel, established on October 7th, 2023. They are an amazing group of volunteers who support and work to fill all the needs and gaps related to the war. Right now, displaced families face many challenges, one of which is the ability to receive early childhood services. Brothers and Sisters for Israel have created a division under their umbrella whose sole purpose is to create high-quality early childhood services for the displaced communities. This group includes incredible leaders (all volunteers), who have been working from the beginning of the war, to accomplish this goal. This group continues to receive many requests for needed pop-up preschools. I have been honored to join this group as a volunteer to help create these preschools. 
 

The following is a window into what it is like to create one of these pop-up preschools. Before establishing a new preschool, a lot of preparation work is done. This begins with understanding the space inside the hotels that the hotels can offer, and how to make them suitable for the children’s needs. For example, one hotel allocated several regular rooms. In each room, a different learning center was created, and the children would rotate between the different rooms. The next steps include designing what each classroom will look like (volunteer architects and pedagogists are doing this), and understanding what equipment must be ordered for each classroom, age group, etc.
 

Once this is all done, it is time to start doing the physical work of putting the preschools together. These creation days begin with sorting the equipment each preschool location will get and driving in the volunteers by minibus. Volunteers include people of all ages, ranging in age from early 20s through 80s. After the volunteers were assembled, we split up into different locations. Usually, multiple preschools are created at the same time. In each location, the architect who created the design is the head manager, and in each classroom, there is a “manager.” My job includes doing whatever is needed, e.g. carrying equipment, transferring equipment, organizing equipment, or putting together classroom equipment like desks and strollers for the dolls.
 

While volunteering, I get a better understanding of the situation. I have the opportunity to speak with the displaced families and understand where they are from, and where they are currently living. In many cases, an entire family gets one room, which is not easy. Some were moved as a community, and some as individuals. The most rewarding part is seeing their faces when the work is completed! This makes all the difference.

I want to conclude with a children's song that is taught here in early childhood centers and reflects exactly what I wrote about. We are all building Israel together.

My land of Israel is beautiful and flourishing.

Who built and who planted it?

We all did it together!

The song on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2cjj9IRfqg

Raz Wasserstein

Owner of Remini
 

Eli Ilan was a tour guide for many of us during our ECE-RJ trip to Israel in 2018. He recently wrote of a former participant on another trip, and how she had begun posting misinformation, even as the purpose of “…her college trip was geared towards exploring the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”  This misinformation shared more and more posts condemning Israel with absurd accusations.  Eli said, “It hit me hard. She's been here. She knows me and other Israelis. How can she think that way about us?

Here is his response to her, and his request, that “… my message needs to be shared with everyone. Everyone who feels blindsided.  it's time to wake up before it’s too late.”

Eli’s response is hard to read, but necessary for us all. It is in his words, and unedited.

“Hi *****, thanks for thinking of me. It breaks my heart to see the posts and stories showing support for the murderous terrorists of Hamas with abrupt lies (the equivalent of 2 nuclear bombs? What does that even mean?) and complete oversight of the horrific massacre brought upon hundreds of innocent Israelis on October 7. Not to mention the 240 kidnapped men, women, children, and infants!

The attacks in Gaza would cease if only Hamas cared about the innocent Palestinians in Gaza and let the hostages go. They do not do so. On the contrary - they shoot their civilians trying to head to the south of the Gaza strip where Israel (yes, Israel, the attacked side) has organized a safe place for them to go - with food, water, and shelter - because they want this war to keep going. Until when? Until the world, that doesn't realize what's truly happening (or doesn't want to realize, because it's the Jewish state… good old-fashioned antisemitism), will put pressure on Israel to ceasefire leaving the situation unresolved neither for Israelis nor innocent Palestinians, and of course painting a picture showing Israel as the aggressor, the bully that had to be constrained. Not anymore. For the people of Israel and the innocent people of Gaza.

 Nobody likes war but this one is inevitable. Hamas is the bully, and they are using the discourse of human rights to get the liberal West to condemn Israel while denying those rights to their people. The hypocrisy is painful. And it's devastating to see that this tactic works for them. Even with people who have been here, and met Israelis like myself... do you think we, the Israelis, myself included would stand for a merciless bloodhound the way it is presented on media/social media? That makes me so sad.

 Hamas has vowed to destroy the State of Israel. It is on their charter, look it up. They will stop at nothing until they obtain their goal. They took over the Gaza Strip after Israel completely withdrew from there in 2005 and invested all the money that went into the strip in digging tunnels under schools and hospitals to use as underground command centers and getting weapons. Their whole operation is geared toward the annihilation of Israel. How would you act if you had neighbors across the border, 2 miles away, who were set to destroy you and your people at all costs?

Israel is perceived as the representative of the West by the extreme Islamic bodies in the Middle East. They refer to us, Israel, as "the little devil", and to you, the US, as "the big devil" (look it up, very common phrases in the Middle Eastern local media). This is what the West doesn't get - that after Israel, comes Europe, the US, and anyone with a Western set of values like democracy, equality, and (real) human rights.

 Please pray for justice and for the world to wake up and come to its senses. Best of luck to us all. “

Eli Ilan

Tour Guide

Israel Experience

Dale Dides Coomperman

Director of Early Childhood Education

Congregation Albert Early Childhood Center

Albuqerque, NM