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Eric's journal from the Israel – Jordan tour
 July 1 to July 10, 2008

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We arranged for wake-up calls at 3:30 a.m. for a 4:00 a.m. departure to Tel Aviv.  Upon our arrival we had a two-hour break at the hotel before leaving for our first performance of the day.

Cultural affairs assistant Manal Haddad met us at the hotel, and we headed 80 km north of Tel Aviv to Kfaqrkara where we performed at a school for Jr. High and High School students.  Since school was out of session, they bussed in children of the same ages from a neighboring village.

They were a great audience—well behaved and interested in us, the instruments and the music.  We had a question and answer period at the end of the show—something that has proved to be a valuable addition to our program.

After grabbing a bite to eat, we headed 30 km south to an orphanage called the Bet Elazraki Children’s Home.  This was an addition to the program we requested, as orphanages are among our favorite venues worldwide.  We have played for orphanages in Poland, Cuba, Turkmenistan, Algeria, Benin and Mauritania.

This home was founded in 1969 and is run by Yehuda Kohn, an affable activist with a definite philosophy about breaking the vicious cycle from which most of his kids come. Yehuda was born in Uruguay and immigrated to Israel in 1962. The Home cares for around 200 children, all of whom are referred to it through the Ministry of Social Welfare.  Not all the children are orphans—some are there because their parents lack the capacity to raise them due to violence in the family, drug or alcohol addictions, abuse, mental illness, abandonment, or a combination of the above.  Yehuda’s goal is for these children to graduate, adjust and contribute to society and raise their own children in a normal family setting and a loving home of their own.  He said that in order to break the multi-generational cycle of dysfunction he and his staff/volunteers focus on three things:

1) They stress a child’s strengths, not his weaknesses. This helps build confidence and pride.  The kids are also clean and well dressed so that they bring out the best in all the people with whom they interact—such as teachers.

2) They ensure stability.  He accompanies the children to their first day of school, attends their high school graduations, walks down the aisle with them when they are married, and is godfather to their children.  He also embraces their natural parents, because he knows that children love their parents no matter what and that if he doesn’t love the parents, as well, the children won’t love him.

3) They enhance emotional strength through music and the arts.

The children at the Bet home range in age from newborn to 24, and they clearly care about and watch after one another.  They were an amazing audience and at the end of our performance they all danced together to popular American music like YMCA.

We were asked to stay for supper and were treated to a delicious middle-eastern meal—as good as most of the restaurants we had frequented.
A number of young Jewish-American volunteers from New Jersey were among the staff, and they seemed to enjoy their work and environment.

Thursday, July 10—the final day

Efraim and Manal met us at the hotel at 8:00 a.m.  We headed for the Arab town of Rahat which is on the northern border of the Negev desert.  Today’s morning paper included an article about two Rahat Israeli Bedouin’s who had been charged with plotting terrorist attacks via the Internet with Al-Qaida members overseas and marking out civilian and military sites as targets.