In celebration of my twentieth year at Wise, it was my wish that we would provide a means to support our young adults who seek to devote a few months or a year to meaningful efforts to mend our world. With the generous donations of many, we established the Wise Tikkun Olam Leadership Scholarship. Our first young adult scholarship went to Ava Zeidler, a long-time Wise member, graduate of our Religious School, teaching assistant, and an important member of our Wise Camp staff for years. Ava requested the scholarship for her to participate in the Young Judaea Year Course in Israel and volunteer in service to the country. This week’s kavanot feature Ava’s account of her experience in Israel and her reflection on the impact it had on her life. If you know of a high school graduate (and older) wishing to devote significant time to community service who would benefit from scholarship funds, please share this link with them.
— Rabbi Ron Stern
In February, after Israel began to open up, I started volunteering at Shevah Mofet School in the afternoons. This school had mostly non-jewish underprivileged refugee kids whose families escaped a harsh life in their countries. I would go to the school from 1–5 p.m. four days each week. I assisted the teacher in class, supervised, and played with the kids outside. Not too long after we settled in, COVID decided to catch up with us and a little more than half of my program tested positive. One day, I had just arrived at Shevah Mofet when I was told I needed to leave and get tested immediately. (Rabin Square was one main location where you can get easy testing done within minutes.) Though negative, we were put into a two week quarantine. After testing negative three times, I was left in the hostel with nine other participants who also tested negative. My closest friends were all sent to the positive housing.
The two weeks went by quickly and by that point and without knowing it I was back at my volunteering, playing and talking to the little kids. I must say, the beginning was a little rocky…the language barrier made it hard for me to interact and discipline the children when needed so I often felt like I was no help, but as the weeks went on I kept looking forward to going back to that school. (Fun fact: The kids from Israel who were part of TALAVI—Wise’s high school exchange program including students from Tel Aviv, Vilnius, and Los Angeles—back when I was a freshman came from this school. I felt like I had déjà vu until I figured that out!)
I learned many new things from the children at the school and found myself forming relationships with each one of them. My friend and fellow volunteer, Noah, and I decided to try to teach the kids the English alphabet. Noah brought his tablet and we would switch off sitting with the kids as they went through the letters. Surprisingly, some of their English was really good! The four months working there went by so fast. When we arrived for our last day, they threw a little goodbye party for us and all the kids wrote letters. It was very cute and sad at the same time!
— Ava Zeidler