As a volunteer with the Kefiada program, Rachel Casey, right, makes papier mache with kids and a counselor at a summer camp in Arad. Below, Casey and fellow volunteer Emily St. Lifer.
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August 18, 2009
Visiting a mall in Arad, Israel, after just one week of volunteering at a summer camp there in July, Rachel Casey saw three people she knew. A couple of weeks later, at a concert at the community center, she found herself recognizing a whole bunch of people.
It was that kind of connectedness that Rachel, a 19-year-old from Allenhurst, was in search of when she and her friend Emily St. Lifer of Colts Neck applied to serve as volunteers this summer with the Kefiada program.
The program, run by the Jewish Agency for Israel and local American federations, sends young Jews, between 19 and 26, to Israel to serve as summer camp counselors. Their task is to teach English to their young charges as part of the “Living Bridge” concept fostered by the Partnership 2000 program which links Israeli and American communities.
Casey had been to Israel a couple of years ago, with a United Synagogue Youth group, but this time was very different.
“When I went before, I saw the sights, but this time I was totally immersed in Israeli life. I felt really grounded there,” she said, speaking soon after her return.
Rachel and Emily chose to go to Arad, the Negev community paired with a cluster of New Jersey and Delaware federations, including Jewish Federation of Greater Monmouth County, through P2K.
As Rachel said, “It’s very hot and dry, and it’s small with not too much to do.” But she had met wonderful people from Arad when they came on a mission to Monmouth a few years back and stayed with her family.
Those friendships and the new ones the girls formed this summer, Rachel said, “are the whole point of this Living Bridge link between these two countries.”
Rachel, a junior at Binghamton University majoring in cinema, said it was an uphill battle teaching her boisterous nine-year-olds, “but they did hear me yell a lot in English.” She taught them basic words, like animal names and colors, but possibly what they welcomed most, she said, was hearing the actual meaning of the English movie lines they delighted in quoting.
As for her own language issues, Rachel took two semesters of Hebrew in college, and understood more than she was able to speak. “By the end I was definitely able to speak a bit better,” she said.
Asked if she plans to go back to Israel, she stated with absolute conviction, “I know I will.”
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