Asaf Mendelovice, left, and Elie Klein, who traded places this summer through the P2K program, check out the Kefiada blog.
Photo by Elaine Durbach
August 14, 2008
Though they had never met, Elie Klein of Warren, 19, and Asaf Mendelovice of Arad, Israel, 22, traded places this summer. Elie went to work at the Kefiada summer camp in Arad, and Asaf came to work at the JCC of Central New Jersey’s Camp Yachad in Scotch Plains.
Their swap was arranged through the “Living Bridge” initiative of Partnership 2000, which links the Jewish Federation of Central NJ and five other NJ and Delaware federations with the Israeli communities of Arad and Tamar. The Kefiada camp is for immigrant children in Arad, and is staffed with young Israelis and visiting Americans.
Last week, not long after Elie’s return, he and Asaf met at the federation offices in Scotch Plains. Given that neither appeared to be the kind to waste words, they seemed at first to have little in common.
But then they began to play the universal game of Jewish geography.
“Did you meet…?” and “Have you come across…?” And then came the “Oh, she’s awesome!” and “Hey, they’re amazing!”
Amy Cooper, the federation’s associate executive vice president and the person overseeing its P2K connection, smiled more and more broadly as she listened to them. “This is exactly what the Living Bridge is about,” she said. “Let’s see how else we can make it work.”
As it happens, Elie’s supervisor at the Kefiada camp was Ofra Nathan Bezalel, the Living Bridge coordinator, whom Asaf knows well. She clearly holds a very warm place in both guys’ hearts. Other friends of Asaf’s were among the Israeli counselors Elie met staying at the immigrant absorption center in Arad and working at the camp.
At this end, Asaf has been working and partying with people Elie has known for years.
Perhaps the best part of the experience for Asaf has been with his Scotch Plains host family, Angelique and Jeffrey Strauss, whose two sons have also been working as counselors at Camp Yachad. “We have become like family,” Asaf said.
On his last day at the Kefiada camp in Arad, New Jerseyan Elie Klein poses with some of his young charges.
Having heard from friends about the P2K programs in Arad, Asaf applied to the federation’s partner agency, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which oversees the selection of counselors for two-month stints at Jewish camps in the United States — the cluster’s Ivriada program. He said he had just completed his army service and wanted to visit the United States before starting to work and to study graphic design.
Elie was recruited by the federation for the Kefiada program, one of six people chosen from New Jersey and Delaware. He had been to Israel seven times already, “but I was looking for an excuse to go again.”
For both, the programs covered almost all costs — from the return airfare to lodging and food. The American youths, housed at the immigrant absorption center, aren’t paid, but they get enough pocket money to cover food and incidental costs. The Israelis receive a modest salary and are housed with local host families.
This is Asaf’s second trip to the States. The first time was when he was in sixth grade, when his class won a trip to Disney World. This time might have been more mundane, but he has been loving it.
His first month was spent doing Israeli-style activities with little kids — some as young as four, but in the second month of camp he has been accompanying the nine-year-olds in a travel camp, going somewhere different every day.
Elie, a second-year engineering student at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, also worked with nine-year-olds and others up to 11. There the similarity ends. While the kids in Scotch Plains have a plethora of equipment and activities, the 26 kids in Elie’s group — many of them recent Ethiopian immigrants — were in one air-conditioned classroom. They had very little structured entertainment other than a couple of crafts — like making wax candles, some origami, and making chocolates.
‘No language barrier’
Elie’s biggest challenge was providing a half-hour English lesson at the start of each day. His campers, he said, “knew about 30 words of English. He called his mom, Marilyn Klein, for tips drawn from her years of teaching preschool kids in Plainfield. In the end, he loved it. “Four days after I got home, I told my friends I want to go back. I really miss the kids,” he said.
Sharing accommodations at the absorption center, Elie also bonded with the other counselors, the five from New Jersey and Delaware, and nine Israelis and even the Ethiopians staying at the center, though they spoke almost no English and little Hebrew. He said, “We played basketball and soccer, and they were surprisingly good. And when you’re playing, there’s no language barrier.”
He liked Arad, for its calmness and quiet, and even for the extremely dry air. Going for early morning runs, he found he could easily do two miles more than in New Jersey. Asaf nodded when he heard that. “It’s so green and humid here,” he said. “The first month I couldn’t breathe. Now I’m okay.”
Halfway through his stay, Asaf got a food package from his mother. It was a total surprise. Federation women’s campaign president Sharon Rockman had visited Arad with a mission and met a woman who knew the Mendelovice family and put her in touch with Asaf’s mother. Elie encountered the mission group in Arad and enjoyed meeting the Americans, one of whom turned out to live just down the street from his family.
Elie said that during his experience and on weekend trips to Jerusalem and Eilat and other parts of the country, his passion for Israel deepened and he can’t wait to go back to Israel. In Jerusalem, the “amazing” Ofra took the counselors for a walk along the wall of the Old City, and he got to lead a walk, in pitch dark, through the city’s ancient water tunnels.
He said he plans to return next year, to an ulpan to learn more Hebrew and, if possible, to do a special army program and maybe settle there.
Asaf is due to head back to Israel in early September, but he is already talking about possibly returning to Camp Yachad next year. “The kids are crazy,” he said, with obvious approval. “This has been my best summer ever.”
Cooper urged him to stay in touch, and to speak with the P2K people in Arad. “I’m thinking of more ways that we can make this connection work for you,” she said.
To read more about the Kefiada program and Elie’s impressions of it, visit aradtamarpartnership2000.blogspot.com.
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