"This is Not The Best Place"

It's been a full day - leaving Tel Aviv, exploring Caesarea and discussing so much there, lunch at Aroma Cafe, seeing Haifa and driving to Kibbutz Kfar Blum, wedged into the northeastern corner of Israel between The Golan Heights and Lebanon. The bus conversation is as stimulating and educational as the sites we stop to see.  Today on the bus we covered: Housing and Land ownership in Israel, Adapting Biblical Laws to Modern Israel (with a focus on Jubilee and Sabbatical Year Laws), Israeli organized crime families, the Israeli Social Protest movement, Energy policies and natural gas, the fragile eco-system of the Hula Valley and attempts to restore balance there, Ikea, and a thousand other topics.

The best part of the day was Yemin Orde Youth Village, a place that (ironically) tells each of its resident students, "This is not the best place to be."  It is a residential educational, counseling and training campus located on a hilltop outside Haifa.  They house and serve about 500 students, mostly high school aged but some younger, who come mainly from immigrant families.  The bulk of the population are from Ethiopan, Russian and FSU families with very serious challenges. The place was founded and operates on the principle that no Jewish child should be abandoned, left to suffer or be deprived the opportunity for a good, safe, productive life.  They give their residents hope, skills and the understanding that they can and should change the world to make it better.  They focus on Tikkun Ha-Lev (repairing the hearts of the child) and Tikkun Olan (teaching the children to repair the world).  The story of Bat-El, one of the counselors who gave us a tour, is a gripping story about Zionism and the will of the Jewish State to protect Jewish people no matter how far or foreign they are, give them a home and help them to thrive. It's a story about family struggles, aliyah, Jewish identity, unlikely friendship and love, personal rediscovery and the important, powerful role that the American Jewish community can play in developing Judaism everywhere. Sounds ridiculously overstated? Too Broadway? You can't make this stuff up. It was truly incredible.

See more photos from the Northern Leg of our Adventure here.