By Talia Schmidt, other
Think about the biggest change you’ve initiated in your life. Did it involve a career move? Was your family affected by the outcome? Did it require a vast amount of bravery? For 16-year-olds Valery Ignatenko, Dasha Kovalevskaya and Nickolay Peikov, the decision to begin a new life, thousands of miles from home, was that biggest change.
The three joined a program called Na’aleh, from the Hebrew word aliyah. Teenagers from around the world come to study and live in Israel for the three-year course.
Ignatenko, who was born and raised in the Ukrainian town of Lvov, heard about the program from Sohnut, the Jewish Agency. Sohnut, which has aliyah, youth and settlement departments, offers Jewish seminars for students in their hometowns, sometimes consisting of the entire Jewish education young people have ever had.
Sohnut receives money from donors all over the world, which goes to youth programs in Israel and to help families make aliyah. The organization is essential to teens in terms of getting them to Israel, and provides 85 percent of the funding for Na’aleh in Israel.
“The hardest part of adjusting to this new lifestyle is leaving family behind,” says Ignatenko. She admits in some ways it is like going from everything to nothing, though the biggest difference from her old lifestyle is her newly gained sense of independence.
“I can do whenever, wherever. Back home, we could only stay out at the discoth’ques until midnight or so. Now, if we choose to, we can stay out until 3 a.m.,” she smiles.
“If I become ill, I am the sole person who takes care of me. I have to decipher wrong vs. right for myself. No one is telling me what to do.”
Kovalevskaya feels similarly in that now, unlike at home in the Ukrainian town of Kirovograd, she knows she is on her own.
“It was my decision. It’s really good for me,” she comments. “It can be good to be without family. I’m free.”
Peikov says the program has really changed him as a person. He says he feels more like an 18 year-old man than a 16 year-old boy. “I’m here alone, without my parents. I have a lot of free time. I’m in control of my own spending money. It’s difficult. I’m definitely changing,” he notes.
The man in charge of the Na’aleh teens at one of the sites, Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israel, is Moshe Falkof.
“The original concept was to bring teens to Israel before their parents,” he says. “It’s easier for parents to come if they know their kids are in a good place.
“The target population was the old Soviet Union. Since 1989 about a million Jews have come to Israel.” Falkof continues. “We’re also absorbing from other big countries like Argentina and France. It really depends on the situations for Jews. Argentina suffered some economic problems so Jews made aliyah. When France suffered anti-Semitism instances, Jews made aliyah.”
Na’aleh has been adopted all over the state of Israel. There are about 600 other kids on various kibbutzim, youth villages and religious schools.
“The idea is to absorb them into Israel culture so they fit in just like any other Israeli. We follow a certain process,” Falkof says. Ketura’s three Na’aleh advisers, Moshe Falkof, Regina Rosenthal and Shoshi Hertz all hold vital roles in the program, which is run like a boarding school. Falkof is responsible for the financial aspect of the program, but he also travels north once a week to attend meetings with other Na’aleh group leaders to reflect, compare and share stories.
Rosenthal, the housemother, cares for the kids. She is the woman they come to when in need of someone to talk to. She gives advice, is ready to tackle any illness, and is, above all, a friend.
Hertz is the students’ homeroom teacher. Sometimes it is hard to see the homeroom teacher at school all day, then to come home, see her at dinner and see her at evening activities, the kids say.
The teens live two to a room, in groups of four. When asked how they manage living with a permanent roommate, the girls are quickest to answer. Whenever you throw two girls in a room together, says Ignatenko, you’re going to have “drama, quarreling, love and hate relationships.”
They are, after all, spending 24 hours a day for three years together! But they do develop incredibly close relationships.
“The first month it was pretty easy,” recalls Peikov on adjusting. “It felt like camp. We went on excursions, I was in a new country with new people. I later understood it’s part of life: adjusting, taking risks, making [lifelong] friends,” says Peikov.
School is also much different for the teens. They study at nearby Kibbutz Yotvata, a 10-minute bus ride away, where they are undertaking many more subjects than the average high school student. Ignatenko’s schedule consists of Hebrew, mathematics, physical education, computers, Jewish traditions, English, theater, psychology and Hebrew literature. She enjoys studying English and theater the most, but says she could live without math and psychology.
Peikov says he loves the fact that he gets to choose his own classes. His favorite, he says, is architecture. Although he is an enthusiastic learner, he says that it is complicated to learn any subject and to follow what the teacher is doing, as well as take directions in a different language.
“The language barrier is there,” he says.
On the weekends, the teens take pleasure in listening to music, volunteering or visiting friends in various Israeli cities. They’re all very eager for the summer after 11th grade, when they get to visit Poland as a conclusion to their Holocaust unit in school. Not only do they study the history but they prepare emotionally, as well.
“The more they identify with the Jewish history, the more they’ll fit in wherever they go,” says Falkof. Falkof says the toughest part for him is being on call 24 hours a day, but it is well worth it.
“I get tremendous satisfaction from working with these teens. The relationships that develop are just amazing. They really learn you have to work at friendships, trust and strong connections,” he emphasizes. “Then there’s the excitement of watching them grow. There’s physical growth but there’s also personal achievements. It’s about how each one learns to deal with problems first when they come into the program, and then again maybe facing the same problem two-and-a-half years later, but this time having matured, and tackling the problem differently.”