by Rachel Ozick Rosenberg and editorial staff

Israel: rubbernecking is elevated to an art form, unsolicited advice is ubiquitous, and everyone, but everyone is primed for an argument. Yet, the kibitzing, invasiveness and intensity of a small, crowded country can have an upside. The kibitzing may translate into empathy, the invasiveness to hospitality and the intensity can be chutzpadik social initiative.

On an ordinary day strolling through the Jerusalem Rose Gardens, Helen Gottstein came face to face with a reality that has been shunted to the realm of “don’t we have enough to deal with” by the majority of Israelis. She found herself opposite a family of six refugees who had recently escaped from Darfur. Helen saw no other option but to open her home to them. With every couch and cushion of her small home now in use, she is presently scouting out a permanent home, visas, and proper healthcare for her guests. Helen was surprised to find a thriving cadre of like-minded individuals; the Committee for the Advancement of Refugees in Darfur, acting as an umbrella group for the organizations which had already mobilized to help the refugees.

While opening one’s home to a family of six may not be the norm amongst Israelis, volunteering is part of the civic culture, and idealism, while well hidden by some, is embedded in the gut of Israeliness. Beth Malki, originally of Waco Texas, raised her three children on Kibbutz Magal. “Whatever else I can say, I know I did the best by my children. On the one hand, the community makes demands of them. On the other, even as children it is clear to them that a healthy community requires individual involvement. For instance, we have a sizeable petting zoo, and the kids are entirely in charge of its functioning — that means waking up early and getting down and dirty; the animals don’t care if you were out partying last night. If there is a communal celebration, it is obvious that someone has to work to make it happen. The festivities aren’t run by an amorphous big brother. The children here understand and appreciate “community,” and as adults I know they will have the ability to create one.”

When she is not rescuing Sudanese refugees, Helen, a mother of three, who made aliyah 19 years

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.“ Apple Computers

ago from Australia, volunteers through her Reform synagogue, Kol Haneshama. She tutors English in a synagogue program called KEEP (Kids Educational English Program), which provides extra help to students from struggling families or children living in battered women’s shelters. She is involved in a Jewish-Palestinian Children’s theater group, and runs a program teaching English to people who have left the Haredi, Ultra-Orthodox, community, and are bereft of the secular skills needed to advance in a modern society.

Helen maintains that her commitment to Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) derives from her Jewish identity. “It affects everything I do — being a mother, a woman, my political perspective, the country I choose to live in…”

Whether it is that we are still a new State with an ethos of pioneering and idealism, or that for the Jewish people, community involvement is a long held tradition, or because the Israeli government has made it mandatory to some extent - volunteering is pervasive.

Community Values as Curriculum

As in every Israeli high school, Shulamit Zimmerman’s Jerusalem school requires community service as part of its curriculum. Students choose from a wide range of options and must fulfill a minimum of usually 60 yearly hours. In tenth grade, Shulamit and a friend began volunteering four hours a week assisting a new immigrant family with a special needs child.

Hooked on the concept, Shulamit now volunteers on her own seven hours a week with Magen David Adom, and her friend continues to volunteer with the same family.

Be Prepared

Knots, firesigns and youthful fervor. Well over a quarter of a million Israeli kids, Jewish and Arab, are active in youth movements. Their participation can be limited to one afternoon a week, or it can turn into a way of life as high school students take on responsibilities as counselors, educators and organizers. Gary Kaplan was one of those for whom his Noar HaOved VeHalomed youth movement headquarters in Kfar Saba became a second home. The words Zionism, peace, social justice and democracy are more than mere slogans for Gary. “Israel was built by people my age. They made the impossible happen, and we can do the same.”

His father David laughs, “For the last part of high school, he was forever dashing off at any ungodly hour in his blue shirt and red ribbon, “for urgent discussions.” Along with thousands of other idealistic youth, Gary spent a year after high school, before his three-year mandatory army service, volunteering in a framework known as Shnat Sherut -service year. Still starry-eyed and handsome, but now a mature 21-year-old soon to complete his army service, Gary remains committed as ever to the ideals he adhered to in high school. He, along with a group of others, and like many groups around the country, are planning to settle in a struggling urban neighborhood after the army. They will live in a communal framework – one form of an urban kibbutz – and continue to volunteer with troubled youth after work hours.

Social Entrepreneurs

Be it Ruti, a doctor, who created a network of women who visit hospitals to cradle and coddle abandoned infants, giving them the hours of nurturing which the nursing staff can’t provide (Hibuk Rishon); Avi, who after taking early retirement, established an organization for citizen empowerment (Ahrayut); the now Mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupoliansky who established Yad Sarah, offering free medical accessories (wheel chairs, crutches, etc) for anyone who needs them; Ariel, a young graduate student who devotes all his extra energies to bringing together Zionists of all flavors to make Israel a “light unto the nations” (Creative Zionism, PICZ); or Tali, an architect with three children, who toils late into the night with the cultural and youth committees on her moshav — Israel is filled with idealists who have the energy and wherewithal to bring their ideas to fruition.

Any whole is only the sum of its parts, and while some feel the spirit of volunteerism more than others, and sometimes one has to scratch the surface to find the prize, Israel still has the guts of a new nation, and the communal good remains a cogent ideal.