20 BOSTON CELEBRATES ISRAEL
Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters
joins the community in celebrating
Israel’s 63rd Anniversary
We are proud to support
our sister agency in Haifa,
Achim v’Achayoth Bogrim
(Big Brothers Big Sisters of Haifa)
Do Good.
A l i t Feel
t l e Good.
c a n gStart
o a Something
l o n g w a yBIG.
Allen M. Sheldon,
Carolynn HarveyD.
H. Levy, Chair ·• Harvey D.Lowell,
Lowell, Ph.D., President/CEO
www.jbbbs.org ·• info@jbbbs.org
www.jbbbs.org info@jbbbs.org· (617) 965-7055
• (617)965-7055
The Staff and Governing Board
of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston
Celebrate Israel
Jonathan Samen, Chair, JCCGB Governing Board
Mark Sokoll, President/CEO
Our doors and our hearts are open to everyone
Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston
333 Nahanton Street, Newton, MA 02459
617-558-6522 • jccgb.org
MAY 6, 2011 THE JEWISH ADVOCATE
Dana Bornstein is volunteering at a children’s village in the Galilee.
Suddenly, I now have
11 brothers and sisters
By Dana Bornstein
I’ve become a Big Sister.
For the last four months I have
been volunteering at Kfar Yeladim,
the Children’s Village, in Karmiel, a
small city in the Galilee.
I’m here for the year on Nativ, a
college leadership gap-year pro-
gram run by the United Syna-
gogue of Conservative Judaism
and a part of Masa Israel’s network
of Israel programs. I began my
nine months in Israel studying at
the Hebrew University in Jeru-
salem. For the second half of the
year, I chose to live in Karmiel to
work with disadvantaged youth.
Founded more than 30 years
ago, Kfar Yeladim is a large gated
community of 17 houses, each
home to 11 children from broken
Ph.D., President/CEO
or disadvantaged families. Some
of these kids know no other home
than this village, or as we call it,
“the Kfar.”
In each home there is a “house-
mother” and a “housefather”;
nearly all of them have their own
children, whom they are also rais-
ing in the Kfar. Other than its own
schools, the Kfar has everything
the families could possibly need: a
grocery store, computer rooms,
sports fields, music rooms, home-
work tutors, psychologists, play-
grounds, and even buses to take
the children around Karmiel.
I work with houseparents who
have lived in the Kfar for 12 years
and raised their own three chil-
dren there. They are paid next to
nothing. They rely on secondhand
clothes, grocery store money
points, donations from others and
whatever they can earn from odd
jobs. But despite their hardships,
the Kfar families have come to
cherish the simple gifts that life
has to offer.
While my house parents speak
English, the children – who range
in age from 7 to 16 – hardly speak
a word of it. But this language bar-
rier has given me the opportunity
to connect with them on so many
other levels: through computer
games, English homework tutor-
ing, soccer, playground games, TV
programs and even cooking.
Though they don’t always need my
help, the kids make sure to include
me in their everyday lives.
In my experience at the Kfar my
eyes have been opened to the shel-
tered and fortunate life I have lived
for the past 19 years. One day I
brought my new camera, phone
and iPod to the house. The kids
were astonished that I own so
many of the cool and expensive
gadgets that they are only able to
admire from a distance. It was hard
for the kids to understand how
one person could own so many
valuable things.
When I asked my housemother
why she chose to move to the Kfar,
she responded by asking me why I
wouldn’t want to help children
who could potentially go down
the wrong path. She asked me
what I would do if I had the
chance to save one more child
from abuse or neglect. The fami-
lies at the Kfar have made me
wonder why we stand idly by
knowing that there are children in
Israel, America and the rest of the
world who need this kind of
chance at a normal family life.
I have become especially close
with my housemother. She has
gone through so much raising
three of her own children and 11
foster children with whom she
shares her love. If I become half
the woman she is, I’ll be truly
blessed.
Working at the Kfar has truly il-
lustrated the meaning of the Niger-
ian proverb, “It takes a village to
raise a child.”
Seeing smiles on the kids’ faces
when I come over to spend time
with them and getting a hug on
Thursday before I leave for the
weekend make me so thankful
that I decided to take a gap year in
Israel.
Dana Bornstein, 19, graduat-
ed from Stoughton High School
and will attend UMass.-Amherst
this fall.