Social worker Caryn Green sums up 10 years of working with at-risk teens as founding director of Crossroads.

Caryn Green is a veteran when it comes to the tough and often gritty realities faced by the capital’s at-risk English-speaking youth. But after 10 years of tireless work on behalf of that demographic, Green is stepping down as the director of Crossroads, the Jerusalem outreach center she founded in 2001.

The Tyler, Texas, native who made aliya in 1997 with a master’s degree in social work has certainly left her mark. The center she has overseen for almost a decade has assisted more than 10,000 disenfranchised youths since its inception and has taken hundreds of teens off Jerusalem’s streets. Still, after dealing with countless cases of drug abuse and violence, red tape and even terrorism, Green is stepping aside as Crossroads’ director. She will remain on the center’s board but will hand the reins over to a new head of staff.

“With someone else coming in, Crossroads will only benefit,” Green said recently as we spoke in her office in the center, which is located opposite Kikar Zion.

“I’m choosing to leave at a time when Crossroads is at an amazing place,” she says.

Acknowledging that the 10 years she’s invested in the now-thriving center weren’t always smooth, Green is modest in her critiques but renders them nonetheless.

“In many ways, it’s been an uphill battle the whole time,” she says. “Like any nonprofit organization, it’s hard to get funding, and then it’s hard to keep funding. There’s also all the politics of working in Jerusalem. But overall, this program is the best thing that has ever happened in my life – it was a dream come true. But at the same time, when you dream of doing something like this and then you do it, you become so attached to it that the emotional burden can become too much,” she admits.

“Crossroads has a long way to go,” she adds, “and there are things that the founder can’t necessarily do – things that are hard to let go of, for example, but things that need to be done.”

GREEN’S STORY with Crossroads began in 2000, when, like many olim, she struggled at first to find work in her field.

“It took me three months to find a job,” she says. “At first, I worked in a psychiatric hospital in the Jerusalem Hills. I worked in the children’s ward, which was a shocking way to come into the world of social work and familiarize [oneself] with the social welfare [system] of this country. But I got to know how the system works, and I very much see it as my basic training in this country. Some people do the army; I worked at a mental hospital. It really taught me how to deal with advocating for patients, which is a big part of what social work is all about,” she explains.

And she learned a lot. “It was hard, and at times I hated it – it’s really difficult to look into the eyes of a six-year-old who is psychotic.”

Nonetheless, after more than a year at the hospital, Green felt she had earned her stripes and took a job with a social outreach program.

“I worked there for eight months on the streets. That was where I began to visualize what would later become Crossroads,” she says. “Walking the streets and dealing with so many teens, I realized that there was so much more we could do and that, if it were up to me, we would do these things.”

One of those things was the development of a center – a place of refuge for all the people Green was encountering downtown.

“I had this dream,” she says. “If you don’t have a home base to help kids who are homeless, it’s chaos. I never believed that we should try to take them off the streets completely because there’s no way to compete with what the streets offer them. But a center does offer them a time-out, a drink of water, a breath of air, and we can continue to do our outreach work on the streets in addition to that.”

So Green dreamed – but not for long.

“Sure enough, the money came in,” she recalls. A private foundation that wanted to remain anonymous gave them the seed money to get started, and that ended up being enough to keep the organization going for four years.

“They found us,” Green says. “They decided that they wanted to make this happen, and I didn’t have to vie for the money, which was amazing. Somebody basically said, ‘Here’s the money, make your dream come true.’”

So suddenly Green had a center.

“They gave me everything I wanted, and by having a center we were finally able to offer people a place to go.”

Green found the building where Crossroads is located – the second floor of the complex is rented by Crossroads from the Jewish Agency – and began doing renovations.

It opened in January 2001. “It’s no coincidence that we chose a downtown location. We’re across the street from ‘Crack Square,’ which is also called ‘American Square,’ where the Anglos tend to gather. It made sense to put ourselves in an area that’s not hard for them to get to.”

But once the center began to function, there were early adjustments and decisions that had to be made.

Originally they had wanted to have a doctor come in once a week to do check-ups, but that turned out to be unrealistic, as there weren’t enough kids to warrant it at the time.

They also talked about having a shower or a place to sleep, but the steering committee didn’t agree to that.

“We thought about giving out food, but that started to seem more like a shelter or a soup kitchen and we didn’t want that reputation, either. So we compromised and decided that we would keep food in the freezer for people in an emergency and offer snacks at night in our club room,” she says.

Educationally, there were a lot of gaps as well. “Initially we didn’t understand how much education would be part of the program. A lot of what we do is deal with these kids, who are 14, 15 or 16 years old and are not in school. So finding them the right school and getting them to stay in school is a big component. We also offer testing which, for example, means helping the American kids get their GED so they can get a high-school diploma. That diploma is so important – it allows them to believe in themselves enough to move towards their future.”

BUT JUST as Green and her staff were rolling up their sleeves and beginning to deal with the risks and dangers of street life, the streets themselves became much more dangerous. The second intifada, which had begun a few months before Crossroads’ inception, began to spread to Jerusalem, and suicide bombings ravaged the city, claiming dozens of civilian lives.

“The second intifada was literally happening around us,” Green recalls. “Our center’s location put us at the forefront of many of the attacks, and our staff was part of an emergency response team. As soon as there was a pigua [attack] anywhere in the center of town, we had a protocol at the center. We would go out and round up teenagers – specifically English speakers – and take them to the hospital or help them in any other number of ways. I was personally at the scene of eight attacks,” she says.

“We also tried to safeguard the kids,” Green continues. “We tried to stop them from running out to the bombing scenes and looking at the aftermath of the attack, which they often wanted to do. We also offered open telephone lines because whenever an attack would happen, the cell lines would immediately crash, but we had land lines that worked. So people could come in and use the phones to contact family or friends. I have to admit, it was a pretty crazy time,” she says.

“And the craziest part, at least for me, was that our kids didn’t stop coming downtown, and kids didn’t stop coming to Israel for the year. Their attitude was often that ‘Our lives are crappy as is, so what difference does it make if there are bombs going off around us?’ It didn’t affect them. They stayed inside the pubs more, maybe, but other than that the numbers were the same,” she says.

“When you’re in crisis, it actually doesn’t matter what’s gong on around you,” Green explains. “When you’re suicidal, it doesn’t matter that someone else is actually being suicidal. The kids were dealing with their immediate worries, and because they were so immediate, the bigger picture of what might happen on the streets wasn’t as impactful as you might think.”

As staff members, one of the things they had to worry about during that time was going out to the streets to do outreach work. “I didn’t want my staff to witness an attack, much less be wounded in one, and that affected our abilities as far as reaching the kids,” she says.

Nonetheless, Green had a professional survey done at that time. It revealed that with all the attacks happening, all the fear and confusion, Crossroads treated or had begun treating 1,000 teenagers within its first six months.

Although the period of the second intifada presented numerous challenges for Green and her staff, the most difficult challenges remained with the teenagers themselves.

“Over the last 10 years, I think the most difficult thing that we’ve had to deal with was that one of our kids, who was a regular and whom we knew well, passed away from a drug overdose,” says Green. “That was about four years ago, and as far as I know it was an accidental overdose – he just didn’t wake up in the morning. The funeral was a horrible experience. We were dealing with it emotionally for six months to a year afterwards, and even today some of the kids still bring it up in discussions with me.”

But there have also been success stories, Green is quick to add. “A couple of kids who were some of the biggest drug dealers in town are, after working with us, not only clean but also working full time, married with children and often help others get through their hard times.”

She also cites the examples of kids who had barely graduated high school, and at age 22 finished all their post-high-school testing and are now going to college to study engineering.

AS FOR the external changes Green has seen since she began working to clean up Jerusalem’s streets, a big one has been the age of the youth Crossroads had begun treating.

“We’re getting the kids at a much younger age now,” she says. “Today, if we can get to 14- or 15-year-olds, then by the time they’re 18, they’re doing okay.“When I first started, these kids were already 18,” she explains. “They were hardened and had been using drugs for a long time. The younger you get them, the better chance you have of helping them.”

However, Green says that because they are getting to them at a younger age, the gang-like mentality of downtown is gone, which presents its own challenges. That mentality used to come with certain rules, she elaborates. For example, the rule of the street was that dealers couldn’t sell drugs to a 13- or 14-year-old girl, and if they did, they would get beaten up. The gang mentality is, in a way, a sort of safety net. They had rules that they lived by, which was a way to keep themselves as safe as they could.

But because today there is not the same group – essentially because Crossroads intervened and helped them get back on their feet – kids are no longer living on the streets for three years. But that safety net is also gone, and younger kids are getting involved in drinking and using drugs.

The police have also caught on, says Green. “They have changed the way of arresting this group. They’re much more successful at picking kids up, but the police are also quite rough with the kids and pick up minors – sometimes for possession of small amounts of hashish, personal use – and turn them into snitches. Then that same kid can make drug deals and use as much as he or she wants because they are working for the police. It’s a problem,” she laments.

Green also laments the evolving trends in drug use among minors downtown.

“Pharmaceuticals have become more popular,” she says. “The drugs have changed. Pot is always going to be there, as well as hash or Ecstasy, or acid if they can get it. But the pharmaceuticals are much more dangerous because the kids don’t think they are. They underestimate the drugs, when in fact they are far more addictive and can literally kill you.”

Green stresses, however, that her success in combating such drug abuse, along with a slew of other issues, lies in the approach she uses.

“The thing that’s different about what I do is that I go to them where they are instead of putting on them the things that society does. I see inside of them that spark that maybe their parents or the schools don’t see. Behavior doesn’t define who a person is. People behave badly all the time. For teenagers to put this behavior behind them, someone needs to believe in them. And that’s what Crossroads does. We see people as people, and we give them respect,” she says.

“People ask me, ‘Why do they talk to you?’ And I say, ‘Because I talk to them,’” Green continues. “I try to steer them towards ways of helping them cope and eventually to a healthier path that will lead them to where they want to be. I try to help them believe that they can have a future beyond tomorrow.”

Many of the issues Green has had to deal with involve the kids’ status as new immigrants or children of new immigrants in what can often be a confusing new country.

Sixty percent of the kids at Crossroads are children of new immigrants – i.e., one or both of their parents are originally from an English-speaking country. The other 40% are kids who are on one-year programs here or have come to Israel because they have nothing else. But all of them speak English at home. It’s the language they understand and connect to emotionally.

“Our goal for those who are Israeli citizens is to help them integrate into Israeli society, not take them out of it,” says Green. “Our job is to first help them deal with themselves, stabilize emotionally, and then look at the community and figure out where they fit in.”

Crossroads now assists between 1,000 and 2,000 teens every year, either in conversations on the street or in a more in-depth manner at the center.

It’s all word of mouth, Green says of her outreach efforts. “We have never advertised. Kids bring kids, and there are always new kids coming in, even if it’s just to use the Internet,” she says.

“But here kids also ask to be in therapy,” Green continues, “which is unheard of anywhere else in the world. They tell me all the time that this is like a home to them. But at the end of the day it’s still four walls, and it’s restrictive. When we go to the streets, we visit them on their turf, we connect with them, we know who hit who and who broke up with who – we’re all part of the same story.

“These kids don’t need to be told, ‘It’s okay, you’ll get over it,’” Green adds. “They need to be told that wherever you are, that’s legitimate. Let’s try to figure out how to make the best of it and stop the suffering. As long as you’re an adult who comes into their lives and shows them respect, they’re craving that connection so it really isn’t that hard.”

GREEN’S DEPARTURE from Crossroads is accompanied by the creation of a new fund, Caryn’s Kids, for which all proceeds go to Crossroads. A benefit held at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel recently saw the launch of the fund. Details can be found at www.crossroadsjerusalem.org.

“The fund will enable Crossroads to continue providing the programs and services that have been part of my heart for so long,” she says.

In the meantime, Green plans to take some time off and do some traveling.

“I’d like to write about my experiences at the center,” she says.

She also plans to publish the therapy method she created that has become the basis of the therapeutic work at Crossroads.

“After that, I’d like to take on some private clients and do lectures, maybe do clinical supervision. That’s the most I’ve planned so far,” she says. “I’m looking forward to looking at the world in a different light and seeing what other opportunities are out there for me.”

By Danna Harman | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, September 22, 2008 edition

Jerusalem - At 14 he had dropped out of school and was spending his days dealing and doing drugs on London’s streets. A year later, packed off to Israel by his newly religious and worried parents to join his brother and sister, he was at a yeshiva in Jerusalem, being taught right from wrong by the rabbis.

It looked like progress – but in fact nothing had changed. He was still addicted and lost.

“The plan was to come to Israel, get away from my debts and drug mates, and then kick the habit. But that doesn’t happen easily,” he says today, a sober 22-year-old with a dark velvet kippa pinned to his slicked back hair and a world of experience behind him.

What saved him was getting arrested and sent to jail, he says, and what helped him start fresh was Caryn Green and Crossroads.

“I knew Caryn for years. She would hang out in town, separate me from fights, and ask if I needed some help or wanted to come by the center,” recalls Josh, who asked that his last name not be used. “And I would always wink and say, ‘OK, I will.” But he never did.

Then Josh was thrown in jail. Green heard about it. “She said, ‘OK, now you need my help,’ ” he recounts. “And I did.”

From Tyler to Jerusalem

A social worker from a Zionist family in Tyler, Texas, who moved to Israel 11 years ago, Ms. Green started the Crossroads program to cater to a previously underserved niche group here – English-speaking teenagers in trouble. There are hundreds of such kids in need.

Some of these youngsters moved here as children, but never fitted in. Others, like Josh, came alone to try and turn their lives around and failed. A few are tourists passing through.

Many come from religious backgrounds, where the stigmas against drug and behavior problems can be especially strong. “The religious community is a rigid system with rules that are clear and don’t have much flexibility,” explains Green. “You are supposed to look, dress, and act a certain way. And if you don’t – if you stray from the path – it’s like they don’t know what to do with you.”

Add into this mix the linguistic and cultural divide English-speakers encounter in a Hebrew-speaking country, and you get a whole population that has a hard time even knowing how to ask for help. “But when they walk in here, it’s different,” says Green. “I say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ I speak their language.”

What started seven years ago as a one-woman outreach project, has become a respected clinical intervention program. Crossroads today, led by Green, has five social workers, two dozen volunteers, a cozy drop-in center, a budget of $235,000 a year – all from private donations – and a small but growing list of success stories.

Between 700 and 1,000 teenagers pass through its doors every year. They hang out in the evenings watching TV or using the Internet; they get matched up with case workers; and get help with everything from finding a job, getting back to school, back in touch with their families, and staying sober.

“My philosophy is, if you see a spark in a kid you can make it into a fire – and I see it in each and every kid,” says Green. “So we do whatever we can to build those sparks into fires, and help the kids onto healthier, more normative paths.”

Lost in Israel

Every year, according to the Jewish Agency, thousands of Jewish kids come to study in Israel – often during a gap year between high school and college. For many, it’s the experience of a lifetime.

But amongst these kids are those who are attracted by programs heavily subsidized by either the state or private Jewish institutions, both eager to bring young Jews to Israel. And for this group, being far away from their families can often aggravate existing problems.

Some kids end up gravitating toward downtown Jerusalem, to a central area dubbed “crack square,” where they mix with a crowd of drop-out Israeli English-speakers, get high, and get into trouble with the police.

And so it was in Josh’s case. Within a few months he had left the yeshiva and was dealing drugs, making, he says, thousands of shekels a week. He spoke to his parents on a regular basis, he says, but they had no idea what was going on. “I would make myself respectable for as long as it took to talk them,” he explains. “I didn’t want to burden them.”

After three years, he was caught selling drugs to an undercover agent. He was facing four years in jail. The next day, Green showed up at the detention center.

With the help of a Crossroads case worker and a sympathetic judge, Josh’s sentence was reduced, and he was released to an intensive eight-month rehab program.

These days, Josh lives in a rented apartment, has a dog, a few new friends, and a more honest relationship with his family. He goes to Narcotics Anonymous meetings and has a steady job working nights as a debt collector.

“Sure, I sometimes miss my old life,” he admits. “I used to make in half an evening what I now make in a month. And I have no social life now.” But, he adds, “I am alive. So, clearly it could be worse.” Even thought he officially “graduated” from Crossroads, he still stops by the center. “I needed company on this journey,” he says.

A childhood friendship has brought some of America’s top comedians to Israel in order to benefit a group working to help at-risk children of English-speaking immigrants.

Thanking the crowd for causing the first sold-out show of the tour, Crossroads founder and director Caryn Green extolled the work that the organization does with at-risk English-speaking youth in Israel. “We seek them out, offer them a drug-free environment, help them find housing and jobs and graduate high school,” she said.

A handful of young people in the audience were helped by the program, including drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

Green introduced Avi Liberman, with whom she grew up with in Texas; she made Aliyah (immigrated to Israel) and he moved to California. Liberman warmed up the crowd with comedic observations of a lapsed Orthodox Jew on entering a Reform synagogue (“This place is NICE! I’ve been praying in a dump! Is that a Jacuzzi on the bima? It is!”) and Jewish day school sports leagues (“They really instill kids with a false sense of athletic ability – if we played gentiles, we’d get slaughtered!”).

Gary Gulman, the other Jewish entertainer of the four-member tour, humbly dismissed any notion that the comedians were somehow doing an exceptional thing by touring Israel. “What a great guy I am – I came to another country for free…I’m just sorry I didn’t pay attention during Hebrew school.”

The two non-Jewish comedians – Dwight Slade and Craig Robinson (‘Daryl’ on ‘The Office’) couldn’t help breaking out of their comedy routines to comment on experiences they had while touring the country. “I took a Schrute to Tel Aviv,” Robinson said, confusing the word for a shared cab (sheirut) with the name of one of the lead characters on his TV show. He also talked about visiting the City of David in eastern Jerusalem.

“Of course you guys are gonna be all critical of Avi and I and prefer the non-Jewish performers,” said Gulman to the crowd. “That’s what we do.”

The packed house laughed at all four, however. The tour continues Thursday night in the Gush Etzion town of Efrat’s community center, at 8:30 PM.

Many kids of English-speaking immigrants get into trouble in Jerusalem–just hang around Zion Square at the beginning of the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall after dark any night of the week and you’ll see them floating aimlessly, doing all the things that troubled teenagers do the world over.

Caryn Green, a young American-born social worker, has made it her mission to reach out to help the kids and provide a safe alternative to the drugs and violence of street life. Six years ago she founded Crossroads, a program that provides counseling, case management, a resource center and a way for the kids to take the GED and get on with life.

Funding has never come easy for projects that deal with problems the community would rather not acknowledge, so Green started to look around for innovative ways to raise money for her kids.

Five years ago [in 2002], she recruited Avi Liberman, an old high school buddy and professional comedian, to come over to raise the spirits of then-beleaguered Jerusalemites and to raise money for Crossroads.

This week, her friend Avi brought three professional American comedians (known as “standupistim” in Hebrew) over to perform at the fifth annual Crossroads Comedy Benefit.

At the Jerusalem show, it was standing room only as a few hundred American immigrants piled into the Yellow Submarine club eager to laugh both at themselves and the comedians who put on an outstanding show.

The two Jewish stand-up artists, both veterans of Comedy Central and HBO comedy specials, were so obviously comfortable and appreciative of playing before an all-Jewish audience who got all their jokes about Jewish holidays and their Jewish upbringing, while the show’s two non-Jews, Dwight Slade and Craig Robinson (Darryl in The Office TV series) shared their hilarious impressions of the little pieces of Israel they’ve seen during their brief visit.

Both Slade and Robinson couldn’t get over the fact that it’s not so unusual here to find families with 10 or 12 kids and bantered with audience members who came from such large families. All four performers showed off the Hebrew they’d learned, with Robinson even making a successful rolling “chet” as he told the audience about the beautiful “Chana” he had met on a sherut to Tel Aviv.

The comedians who had never been in Israel before kept on proclaiming their awe at being in the Holy Land: “Today I stood in Jerusalem at the spot where Jesus spoke,” said Robinson, “…right next to Coffee Bean on Jaffa Road!”

Nothing wrong with a bit of comic relief for a good cause on a day when a look at an Israeli newspaper could make you want to weep.

For four American comedians, the decision to fly to Israel to perform their stand-up routines was no joke. Gary Gulman of Dane Cook’s Tourgasm, Craig Robinson of NBC’s The Office, and professional comics Dwight Slade and Avi Liberman have now joined comedic forces to benefit Jerusalem’s Crossroads Center, an intervention program and community center targeting at-risk English-speaking teens.

Liberman, who was born in Israel, conceived the tour (now called Crossroads Comedy) during a visit to Jerusalem six years ago when childhood friend and Crossroads director Caryn Green jokingly suggested that he perform for the teens served by the center. Violence from the second intifada was at its peak at the time, and it occurred to Liberman that a group of American comedians would be able to provide a safe night out for Israel’s harried English-speaking families.

With the help of a Los Angeles promoter, Liberman rallied his colleagues and returned to Israel a year later with three of his peers, a small stipend, and his big idea. After their first show in Ra’anana, when a young girl approached Liberman to thank him for giving her a reason to laugh for the first time in more than a year, he knew he had to continue his mission. Now in its fifth year, the Crossroads Comedy tour will add a second round of shows beginning in December.

Liberman makes an effort to bring a range of comics here, not only to appeal to a wide audience, but also to create prominent emissaries of Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

The Jerusalem Post spoke to Robinson, who recently appeared in the hit film Knocked Up, while he was exploring the flea market in Old Jaffa. So far, the trip has been an eye-opening experience for the comic. Though he had not seriously considered coming to Israel before receiving Liberman’s invitation to perform, his short stay has already transformed him into a devoted shwarma fan and a Zionist with plans for a return trip. “After being here,” said Robinson, “I will be a Zionist now. I am for Israel, and for the life of Israel.”

The Crossroads Center, which serves 30 to 60 young people daily, was started by Green, a social worker and American immigrant, who observed the dangers faced by at-risk English-speaking teens in Jerusalem who are often homeless and drug-addicted. Although there is an existing network of social services that cater to young people, Anglos are often prevented from receiving the help they need because of language barriers. Crossroads gives these teens a viable alternative to life on the streets, providing outreach to troubled young people, a drop-in center that provides both recreation and support, a crisis center with counseling and rehabilitation, educational services, and various support groups.

Thanks to an anonymous donation to cover expenses, the entirety of every NIS 100 ticket will go to Crossroads this year.

The remainder of the Crossroads tour can be seen at the following locations: Ra’anana’s Yad L’banim on June 26 (tickets: 09-761-0549), Jerusalem’s Yellow Submarine on June 27 (tickets: 02-624-6265), and Efrat’s Cultural Center on June 28 (tickets: 02-624-6265).

Doors open at 8 p.m.

When I was 16 years old, I participated in a Jewish Federation of Greater Washington program called Ambassadors for Tolerance. The program brought together student leaders from different denominational youth groups. I was representing Bnei Akiva, an international modern Orthodox Zionistic youth movement.

For the first time, I sat and met with representatives of Reform and Conservative youth movements. They were people different from me in life practices, but as we began our discussions, it became apparent that there was one big thing that united us all–Judaism.

Ten years later, I am proud to say that I continue to be actively engaged in this conversation.

In September, I began my studies at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, a co-ed, nondenominational institute of Jewish Studies located in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot. I came to learn text in a serious and comprehensive way. At a time in my life where I am looking to begin planting roots in a community, I chose Pardes because it allowed me to get at the heart of my studies in an open and diverse framework. Diversity was a necessity for me as I began my year.

This year, I had the privilege and honor to serve as the Irving Weinstein Memorial Leadership Fellow at Pardes. Irving strongly embodied the ideas of unity and the celebration of diversity within Judaism. Instead of letting our differences divide us, he believed that our passions for a common tradition should unite us. For me, Pardes has been an example of this unity.

My learning here has been enhanced by the different opinions my teachers and fellow students bring to the table. It is here that a traditional perspective of text can meet new ideas allowing for the possibility of multiple truths and contradictions within Torah. These differences allow for more vibrant conversation and engaging classes.

As the Weinstein Fellow, I have also striven to foster community and give back to it. This has led me to take on leadership roles both within and outside the walls of Pardes. Within Pardes, I have worked closely with faculty members helping shape special programming. These relationships have provided me with mentors and role models as individuals who live genuine Torah values through action and speech.

Furthermore, for the past nine months, I have been volunteering as a weekly counselor for an organization called Crossroads, a center for at-risk teens here in Jerusalem. Crossroads acts as a place of connections. Teens can come together and build a support network regardless of their differences that may exist outside the center. My volunteering time has allowed me to engage with and give to a population often neglected.

They have taught me how critical community is at the very core. Community is built around its members, mutual respect and responsibility. As members of the Jewish community we have the responsibility to ensure this respect takes place.

My time at Pardes, sadly, has come to an end. I have grown in my learning, I have fostered friendships that will last a lifetime, and I have had a wonderful experience of living life in Jerusalem. Yet, it has been the Weinstein Fellowship that has prepared me to be a better leader in the Jewish community. I leave here conscious of the continual importance of creating a space where all Jews are welcomed and empowered.

It is this framework of communication, openness and mutual respect that allows us to remain one Jewish people. I hope you will join me.

I commend Larry Derfner for his article “Lost Generation” (Up Front, May 11), which no doubt has heightened public awareness regarding a traditionally overlooked segment of Israeli society: at-risk youth. I also applaud his mention of Elem, one organization reaching out to street kids.

However, I was surprised that he should cite Elem as “the main private organization” in Jerusalem to help this population. In fact, many worthy groups reach out to street kids.

One is the Crossroads Center, located directly across from Kikar Zion, whose staff works alongside, and often in tandem with, Elem representatives. Crossroads targets a specific subset of this population: English-speaking teens—tourists and students abroad, and Israeli citizens—who comprise a growing and troubled population.

While Elem workers remain in Zion Square throughout the night, Crossroads Center social workers and volunteers operate out of Crack Square, which Derfner presents as a hub of street life. Rather than wait for teens to approach them, Crossroads staff members circulate throughout downtown three to four nights each week, actively seeking out teens in bars and alleys. They provide immediate assistance when necessary and inform youth of the long-term assistance Crossroads has to offer.

As a result of our at-night, on-the-streets action, Anglo youth regularly leave the streets to come to the Crossroads Center. There—at rates of 15-60 per day, 150-200 per week, and over 700 per year—they have access to a variety of tools and services with which they can turn their lives around.

Crossroads, Elem, and many other organizations are working to strengthen and empower teens on the streets. All deserve recognition.

Zahava Blumenthal
Development Officer
The Crossroads Center
Jerusalem

There was a significant omission in Larry Derfner’s “Lost Generation” (Cover story, May 11). Nowhere did he mention the high number of adolescents who turn to drugs, alcohol and the streets as a result of sexual abuse (see Paul Slier’s In Jerusalem interview with me on October 30, 2005).

Most sources agree that 100% of female addicts are victims of abuse. For men, the conservative estimate is 70%, although one Tel Aviv agency informed me that 100% of the 1000 or so addicts they worked with, male and female, were victims. There is a reluctance to face this fact even among the fine people who work with these youths.

One 21-year-old I spoke with told me that he had been on the streets since he was 14, but at no time did he tell anyone he was a victim of abuse; nor was he ever asked. Yet in many cases facing the past is the key to the future.

Worth noting is the important work being done by Crossroads and its director, Caryn Green. Crossroads is specifically geared to the Anglo population, and it would be useful for your readership to be aware of its activities.

Shalom Atlas
Religious Men’s Hotline
Jerusalem

It is a chilly, late Thursday night in downtown Jerusalem, and the mood among the teenage runaways hanging out there isn’t as weightless as usual. Recently there has been a run of tragedies. Between mid-February and early March, three young street people in the capital died – an 18-year-old hanged himself on the eve of being drafted, a 21-year-old deliberately electrocuted himself, and a 24-year-old was beaten to death in a fight. All three had run away from home and been on and off the streets for years, all had problems with drugs, alcohol and/or mental health.

In Kikar Zion, where the Rehov Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall ends at Jaffa Road, it’s hard to tell in the thick crowd of teenagers who’s a runaway and who’s just a scruffily-dressed, hopped-up high school kid running around with friends. A police car is parked in the square; the officers aren’t doing much besides watching the passersby.

A van run by Elem, the main private organization helping “youth in distress,” is parked nearby, and has set out a table with coffee and pastries, hoping to draw youngsters in trouble to come talk to the volunteers, who will try to steer them to get the help they need. The volunteers and the van will be there until dawn.

Just off Jaffa Road, on Rehov Yoel Salomon, is “Crack Square,” where many English-speaking runaways, often yeshiva dropouts, like to congregate. Down the narrow streets of Nahalat Shiva, past the masses of young people gathered outside the pubs, in a clearing surrounded by old stone buildings facing Rehov Hillel, is “Moon Square.” This is the hangout favored by teenagers who live in abandoned local buildings, or “squats,” and who stay drunk on cheap vodka.

In Kikar Zion, a woman wearing a long dark coat staggers through the noisy crowd toward the Elem van. A pair of volunteers go up to her and she collapses in their arms. She is 20, living on her own, suffering from a combination of alcoholism and severe mental problems. She left home when she was about 15. I ask a source who knows the woman’s history if it was her mental and alcohol problems that drove her into the street, or if it was the other way around. The source replies that the root of all her problems was her upbringing at home, and leaves it at that.

Among the runaways are young haredi boys who can’t live with the restrictions of haredi life, and whose parents cannot accept this. “Tonight we had a haredi boy who was 14 who showed up at the van,” says Or Har-Even, who runs Elem’s night detail in downtown Jerusalem. He adds that the volunteers urged the kid to go home in the meantime, and to contact them if he wanted to talk some more. But within an hour the boy, his white shirttails hanging out of his black trousers, shows up in Moon Square in the company of another Elem volunteer. It’s about one in the morning. Har-Even talks privately with the volunteer, then calls Atnahta, a Jerusalem hostel for teenage runaways, to see if it can take the boy in for the night, which, because he is under 18, will first require his parents’ approval.

About a dozen teenagers are sitting, standing or lying around the stone benches in Moon Square. A couple of empty vodka bottles and a few bags filled with clothes and other belongings lie on the ground. A boy is walking around on his hands. Another pees in the bushes. From an upstairs window, someone is doing loud bird calls; inside is an abandoned apartment, a squat. The runaways don’t tell strangers the locations of these squats because police are eager to raid them.

“Eitan” is an outgoing boy of 19 with devilish good looks who’s been sleeping for the last few months in his mother’s home because, he says, “it’s convenient. I have my own entrance from the yard, nobody bothers me.” (The real names and identifying characteristics of the runaways are not divulged.) But this could change anytime; when he’s not sleeping, Eitan is roaming the city and hanging out in the squats with his old friends. He left home at 14, he says, because “I hated my mother and I hated the world,” and since then has lived in squats, or in a series of juvenile institutions, and supported himself by begging, stealing and selling drugs.

A typical day in the squats, says Eitan, would begin in late morning, when the 10 or so young transients sleeping there would start to get up. “We’d have coffee, sit around and talk for about an hour,” he says, “then we’d go to Galgal [Elem’s local drop-in center for young street people] to have a shower and something to eat, then we’d go out and start drinking.”

Today Eitan lives for two things: vodka and being with his latest girlfriend. His only fear is being caught once again by the police and being jailed, this time as an adult. Fidgety and easily distracted – “I have ADHD,” he says with a grin – he declares he has everything he needs and is hopelessly addicted to alcohol and the freedom of street life. “I don’t want to quit drinking,” he says.

A drunken teenage friend standing next to him smiles in agreement. Without spelling it out, Eitan indicates that he tried to quit drinking more than once, but the withdrawal symptoms were too much for him.

Leaving Moon Square and walking down Rehov Hillel, Har-Even sees one of the regulars who’d been sitting on the benches, an alcoholic boy who once offered to show him the locations of several downtown Jerusalem squats, something that could make Elem’s job much easier.

“How about showing me now?” Har-Even asks the boy.

“Now isn’t the time,” the runaway answers, crossing to the other side of the street. “Everybody’s either in jail or dead.”

THERE ARE at least 30,000 teenage runaways in the country – about one out of 25 of all adolescents, says Zion Gabbai, director of Elem. They range from kids who leave home periodically for up to a week at a time – the majority – to those who haven’t been home in years. Nearly all of them abuse drugs and/or alcohol, he says. At least one in four, mainly girls but also boys, occasionally trades sex to an adult for a place to sleep and food, while about 1,000 are outright prostitutes, working for escort services or finding clients on their own, frequently on the Internet.

Not all the runaways go missing from home; many have fled boarding schools or juvenile institutions. The “hard cases” who sleep in squats, stairwells, parks and under bridges also number about 1,000, Gabbai says, basing his estimates on the young people Elem contacts at its vans, which are stationed in 17 cities, and on night patrols. Runaways who don’t sleep rough usually pool their money to rent cheap apartments.

In the decade that Elem has been operating the vans, the number of teenage runaways has about tripled, he says, citing several reasons, mainly increased economic pressure on parents, which causes a psychological strain that trickles down to the children.

“In the last 10 years,” says Gabbai, “there’s been a big rise in poverty and cuts in social services, welfare and education. Also there’s been a large immigration, and a lot of the immigrants are still struggling. Many parents are working longer hours or evening shifts just to make ends meet, and many middle-class parents are spending more time at work so they can get ahead. There’s also a loss of authority among parents – many of them have become too free, too permissive with their kids, they don’t know how to set limits.”

Over the last decade, not only has the size of the teenage runaway population changed, so has the profile. “If in the past, 90-95% of them were from poor families, now only about two-thirds are. You see a lot of runaways on the street who are dressed well; the problem is they’ve got nobody at home who knows how to look after them,” Gabbai says.

Vodka, which can be bought for NIS 10 a liter, is a great economic equalizer among street kids. When it comes to drugs, those who are hard-up go for cheap highs like airplane glue, paint thinner or freon. Those with some disposable income can buy the “middle-class” drugs – marijuana, hashish and Ecstasy. The privileged can afford to indulge in cocaine or crack cocaine.

The high season for running away from home is summer, when there’s no school or, for many youths, any daily schedule at all. Neither are there cold temperatures to keep them inside. Like ordinary youths, they head for the beaches and make their way down to Eilat.

In the last five or six years, but especially in the last year or two, another demographic change among the runaways has become apparent: they’re getting a lot younger. “It used to be that you wouldn’t see any kids on the street under 15, but now sometimes you see them 10, 11, 12 years old, mainly in the big cities. You’ll see an 11-year-old kid asking for a sandwich, and he’s being looked after by an older brother, who’s maybe 16, because their parents are never home,” says Gabbai.

Iu Tel Aviv, Gabbai says, groups of runaways can usually be found at night on the top floor of Dizengoff Center, lounging around the tables at McDonald’s. “They look for leftovers,” he says. But their main gathering place is Kikar Dizengoff, where they join a somewhat older crowd of street people, and where the graffiti and clothing fashion give them a group identity as “punkistim” and “anarchistim.”

AS IN JERUSALEM’S Kikar Zion, it’s not easy telling the runaways from the wild-looking but still-domesticated teenagers sitting around the Dizengoff Center McDonald’s. I go up to a couple of girls who, on closer look, seem too fresh-faced and “straight-looking” to be runaways, and they confirm tha t they’re not. Both 17, they come here to get together with teenagers they meet at parties and pubs.

“A lot of the kids say they don’t live at home, but they really do. They’re just posers, kids who want to rebel,” says one girl. I ask if they want to rebel. “There’s nothing to rebel against,” answers the first girl. “Been there, done that,” smiles the second.

Later, I approach a group consisting of two teenage male “freaks,” a garishly made-up brunette and a pretty, well-groomed blonde. For street kids, they’re surprisingly attentive and respectful. They tell me the only one of them not living at home is the blonde, who nods her head.

“I know, I don’t look like I live on the street,” says Hani. Her hair is clean, straight and in place with a pair of sunglasses perched on top, and she’s wearing tight jeans and platform sandals. She is 16, but says the pubs sell her booze at night because she looks 18.

She left her parents’ moshav about three months ago, she says, not because of any trouble with her parents – “They love me and would do anything for me; they still help me financially,” Hani says – but because she couldn’t take the boredom of moshav life and wanted to live in Tel Aviv. Now she says she rents an apartment with a few friends and works for a relative in the fashion business.

“If my parents lived in Tel Aviv, I’d live at home, no problem,” she says, adding that she talks to them all the time and they don’t pressure her to come home and go back to school. But as long as they’re on the moshav, she’s not moving back home. “I have everything I need here,” she says.

But as the interview goes on, Hani’s story becomes darker. “I went through a trauma, I tried to commit suicide, all sorts of things happened to me,” she says. With the street kids she finds “acceptance.” “Nobody here had an easy life,” she points out.

As she throws her gleaming white handbag over her shoulder and heads down the stairs of Dizengoff Center, I can’t decide if she’s a poser, or if she’s telling the truth, or if the truth is worse than she’s telling.

In Kikar Dizengoff, the Agam fountain is spurting water. Around the fountain and on the benches are graffiti, nearly all in English with some Russian and Hebrew, that read: VIVA LA ANARCHY… FUCK SOCIETY… FUCK POLICE… PUNX UNITE… ISRAHELL.

About a dozen older, rough-looking transients are gathered around the benches. One of them keeps bouncing up and down. A whiny teenage boy is begging for “NIS 10 so I can buy something to eat.” In the middle of these fellows is a sad-faced, silent girl with rainbow-dyed hair and badly-torn, patterned stockings. She sits slumped on the bench, except when she straightens up, takes a little plastic toy bottle out of her bag and starts blowing bubbles into the glowing night sky.

Agreeing to come over to a vacant bench and talk, Noa says of the transients, “These aren’t my friends.” Noa, 17, has been manic depressive since “age zero,” she says, spending a few years in a mental hospital until her release several months ago, which was against her mother’s wishes. Once out she headed for Tel Aviv, wandering the streets, meeting some runaways in the square and going to live with them in a succession of squats.

“I wanted to be free,” she says. “For me it was really good, walking around the streets all day. It calmed me down. I slept a lot. I like to sleep a lot.”

She went home about a month ago, she says, because her mother threatened to cut off her money for medication, which she needs to be able to function. Even though she’s on her medication at the moment, she says, “I’m out of balance.” Given her listlessness and quiet, I ask if she’s feeling low. “No, I’m on a high,” she says. “My thoughts are moving too fast.”

Noa plans to stay at home with her mom until she’s 18, then leave and try to make it as a rock ‘n’ roll singer. For tonight, she plans to hang around the square and go home around midnight. I ask if she wants to talk to someone who might be able to help her, and she replies, “Why? I already have a psychologist and a psychiatrist.”

As she goes back to sit among the other runaways and transients, I ask if it’s safe for her in Kikar Dizengoff. Smiling widely, she says, “There’s no danger here.”

FOR ALL the bleakness and tragedy in the lives of teenage runaways, there are several “first-aid” services like the Elem vans, as well as hot lines, hostels, halfway houses and other agencies they can turn to and get off the streets. Then, once they’re physically and mentally ready, they can return home to their families, or, if that’s not possible, go live with foster parents or in boarding schools.

In Tel Aviv, some 300 teenage runaways a year pass through Makom Aher and its three affiliated hostels, including Beit Dror, which is for homosexuals. (All privately-run services for runaway teenagers are overseen by the Welfare and Social Services Ministry’s Youth Authority.) Alon Barmi, the hostels’ director, says its rehabilitation program focuses on psychological counseling for both the runaways and their parents, as well as bringing order into the youngsters’ lives with a strict, busy, daily schedule. The result, he says, is that in a matter of months, more than 90% of them go back to their parents or to the custody of other responsible adults.

Naturally, there are teenagers who end up back on the street. “A few months ago we had a boy at Beit Dror who’d worked for a long time as a prostitute,” Barmi recalls. “He was 18, his parents were divorced and neither one of them knew how to be a parent. They couldn’t handle that he was gay, and they weren’t interested in being part of his rehabilitation. The boy was with us for about three months until he decided to leave and go back to prostitution.”

But among runaways who go into such rehab programs, that unfortunate boy was the exception. A notable Beit Dror success story is Maya, 19, who says she left home three years ago when her parents became Orthodox. “I didn’t believe in it and I didn’t like the lifestyle,” she says, so she ran away to the Tel Aviv streets for a couple of years, then turned her fortunes around at Beit Dror.

“Until then I never had people who would listen to me, not even my parents,” she says, noting that while she talks to her parents regularly, she doesn’t tell them she’s a lesbian. Maya is now studying at college to be a youth “mentor,” or counselor, and will soon be working as one at Makom Aher.

Unlike Beit Dror, with its vividly painted walls and steep, circular staircase, Makom Aher is a sterile-looking place, clean, tidy and beige. In one of the rooms, Shani, an earnest-looking girl of 17, says she ran away from home two years ago when the fights with her parents over her errant behavior became intolerable. On the streets in Tel Aviv she used marijuana, hashish, LSD and vodka.

“There were a few nights I slept in stairwells,” she says. Finally a personal “trauma” landed her in a succession of closed institutions, including a mental hospital, until she arrived at Makom Aher last year. I ask if she wants to say what the trauma was; she shakes her head no. “But it’s all right now,” she says.

Shani is now waitressing and studying for her matriculation exams. When she turns 18, she wants to do national service, at Makom Aher if possible, then travel to India, then study special education “to help kids with problems.” She says she’s mended the rift with her parents, but when I ask if she wants to go home, she answers no.

“I have my own life now,” she says. I ask if her parents want her to come home. “No,” she replies with a fleeting, nervous smile. “They know it wouldn’t work out.”

TO MOST PEOPLE, teenage runaways are invisible. They look like other strange-looking young people, they hang out where hordes of other teenagers hang out, they spend the nights in places nobody sees. They are an underground community. Even when Jerusalem loses two of them to suicide and another to murder inside of two weeks, the news doesn’t percolate to the surface of Israeli society. Underneath, among the runaways, though, the deaths have registered.

In Kikar Zion, towards 2 a.m., Elem volunteers drive the woman who collapsed in their arms back to her home. The 14-year-old haredi boy has been taken to the Atnahta hostel, but when the counselors call his parents, they insist that he be brought home immediately. The boy, however, refuses, so his parents agree to let him stay the night. “Let everybody in the family sleep it off, we’ll see how things stand tomorrow,” says Har-Even, head of Elem’s night detail.

In Moon Square, Har-Even, a tall, soft-spoken man with a neatly-trimmed beard, throws his arm around Eitan, the voluble, handsome young alcoholic, and asks how he’s doing with his girlfriend. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” says Eitan.

He seems in a good mood. When he’s gotten through telling me his life story, I ask him his plans for the future.

“You mean what am I going to do? I’m going to die,” he says.

Everybody’s going to die, I point out.

“Yeah, but I’m going to die pretty soon. In about four or five years,” he says matter-of-factly.

He maintains that he’s not afraid, and seems like he’s telling the truth. Glancing at the young drunks around him, Eitan adds, “When you abuse your body with alcohol like this – we don’t live very long out here.”

Later, as we’re walking back up Nahalat Shiva, I ask Har-Even if this 19-year-old boy can still be saved. “It’s complicated with him,” he says. “The problem is that he’s already been to so many rehab institutions, and it hasn’t worked. But there’s a chance he’ll become tired of this way of life, which is really hard on a person, and he’ll decide to quit drinking because it’s easier than going on this way.”

The other possibility, of course, is that Eitan will fulfill his prophecy and drink himself to a very early death.

Har-Even agrees that it’s a depressing scene. I ask him if there’s any hope in a place like Moon Square. Making his way through the crowd in the middle of a cold night, he says, “If there wasn’t any hope, I wouldn’t be there.”

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