Jerusalem - World ORT

The Jerusalem Center for Independent Living Workshop. Don't be fooled by this picture which may appear to be a messy room. It is actually the place where a neighborhood volunteer comes twice a week to create devices for people with disabilities. He basically invents devices using recycled items to solve problems for individual members. For example, he invented a device to help people with limited physical range to flush a toilet without reaching around.

Asnat Weinfeld is the Art Therapist from World ORT Kadima Mada at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. She works with children of all ages while they are in the hospital for a procedure, an illness, or surgery. She is in a preparation therapy room where children go right before their procedure or surgery. With the use of mood lights, music and other forms of art therapy, she gets the children to relax.

Art Therapy. Here, Asnat shows me how using plastic human figures of a doctor and a patient, helps the children open up about their upcoming procedure or surgery. They talk about their fears or sometimes, ask questions about what to expect before, during and after their procedure or surgery.

Tel Aviv

Kabbalat Shabbat at the Egalitarian section of the Kotel with 100 members of the LGBTQ JFNA Mission. Very beautiful service.

Ali Abu Awwad Co-Founder, along with Rabbi Hannah Schlesinger, of Shorashim, an NGO promoting dialogue and trust between Palestinians and Israelis as a path to peace. Both men spoke to a group of us from the mission in Judea-Samarea, or otherwise known as The West Bank.

A lovely outdoor lunch and private meeting with the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin.

Sha'ar HaNegev & Tel Aviv

A visit to the World Ort Kadima Mada-Kadoorie School in the Lower Galil. Kadoorie is renowned for being open to young students from all countries, cultures and religions. These students are refugees from Eritrea who told their personal stories of fleeing their country through the Sudanese desert to the Sinai desert to finally Israel. Many were caught, incarcerated and sometimes severely abused.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the opening of the new wing at Beit Hatfutsot, The Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv.

At the opening of the new wing at Beit Hatfutsot, the Museum of the Jewish People. Senator Lieberman is the Honorary Chair of the museum. He and his wife Hadassah flew in from the States to be here.

Shelters like this are everywhere when you live on a kibbutz in the Gaza envelope. Many are decorated with different murals so they are not such an eye sore. On the kibbutzim very close to Gaza, you have only seconds when an alert is given to get into safety.

Sha'ar HaNegev

Every student at the amazing Sha'ar Hanegev high school has to be within a 10 or 15 seconds sprint of one of the shelters while outdoors. And yet it was one of  the most beautiful campuses I've ever seen.  The newly built school and is comprised completely of "secure" buildings able to withstand mortar attacks. Imagine operating one of Israel's top high schools under these conditions. And it is partly made possible through the efforts of our Federation!

The well built in 1913 at Kibbutz Ruhama for its growing community as well as the Allied Forces.

The jail used in Ruhama during the War of Independence.