…Immigrant children (including those born in Israel to parents who moved here) are often more prone to delinquency, dropping out of school, and require a higher percentage of social services, said Yitzchak Kadman, chairman of the National Council for the Child.
Robbie Sassoon, executive director of Crossroads, a nonprofit that supports Anglo immigrants at risk, said the Anglo immigrant community is not immune from these challenges.

Outreach center finds and helps at-risk, English-speaking teens in Jerusalem

The Crossroads Center in Jerusalem was founded 10 years ago to help English speaking young people with trouble adapting to life in Israel. As breathtakingly beautiful as Jerusalem is, there are troubles below its surface for youngsters, especially for disaffected native English speakers who are not yet comfortable with the language and culture of Israel. Many of these English-speaking teens “are Israeli citizens, new
immigrants themselves, or the children of English-speaking immigrants.
Others come as tourists or students for the year, and have had their Israel experience turn into a nightmare,” explains social worker Caryn Green, founder of Crossroads. “Language and cultural barriers prevent them from accessing state-funded social services. Our teens need the help of professionals who understand their distress.”

As “Bob,” 19, put it: “When I was 16, I was living on the streets of Jerusalem. One day a social worker from Crossroads came up to me in the street and introduced herself. I started sessions. … She helped me get off alcohol and drugs and straighten out my life. She also helped me get my high school diploma. I owe Crossroads my
life.”

“I founded Crossroads to help a population not being served,” said Green at The Crossroads Center on Hachavetzelet Street in downtown Jerusalem, across from Zion Square. Many of the youngsters living on the streets of Jerusalem in crisis are “kids who don’t trust the system, don’t want to ask for help.” Some, said Green, left their families in Israel, some have been sent to Israel by their families in other nations with the hope that “magically things will get better if they changed place.” Some are young people “who at 18 or 19 make aliyah on their own” and then find it “difficult to survive,” said Green, herself originally from the U.S. To help these young people, ages 13 to 21, Crossroads’ social workers “do outreach” on the streets of Jerusalem each night “looking for teens at-risk that might not ask for help but desperately need someone to care. We form one-on-one relationships with these teens,” encouraging them to come to the center, “offering the specific services they need to help get back on track.” Whether the problems are alcohol, drugs, street violence, reuniting with estranged parents or getting back into high school, Crossroads seeks to help. “We provide,” as the organization’s brochure states, “services for an extremely vulnerable segment of the Israeli population.

These teens are not easy to reach and are alienated from Israeli society. Crossroads provides an alternative to being on the streets with social activities other than hanging out in bars, providing immediate aid if necessary and offering the services they need.” These include: A “drop-in center” for youth in distress; a social club that is a “safe alternative to the streets”; counseling and rehabilitation therapy; crisis intervention; enrichment activities — “from Internet access to music to photography”; and education, including courses and tutoring so youngsters can earn high school diplomas and prepare for college entrance exams. And there’s an employment center that features “comprehensive employment search and career assistance services” and a resource center providing “information on social services and educational opportunities, abuse prevention, drug treatment and more.” Older teens can even take online college courses on the computers at the center. The program touches the lives of more than 1,000 at-risk teens each year through outreach and word of mouth. The Crossroads Center occupies the second floor of a somewhat dingy building, but the feeling inside at Crossroads is one of safety, caring, respect and hope.

You can see it in the faces of the young people who seem glad to be there, glad to be with each other, glad to be able to trust the staff not to push them, glad to be listened to by friendly adults. The walls in every room are filled with current flyers, posters and even handwritten notes offering activities that might be of interest. The young people know they have many opportunities to make better lives for themselves, but the choice is up to them. It’s clear that the center provides hope, motivation, tools and direction to a better future. But when we visited, a year ago, the TV and stereo were broken and there was no money to fix or replace them. After an initial grant that enabled the Center to start up, it has been operating on a shoestring budget. Funding has been a major challenge.

Last year, Robbie Sassoon became the director of Crossroads; Green remains a member of the board. An Orthodox rabbi from the U.S. who holds a social work degree from Yeshiva University, Sassoon’s first and continuing objective has been to keep Crossroads strong. “Becoming director of Crossroads has been totally thrilling,” Sassoon says. “The work in the streets and in our center is constantly filled with potential, the potential to grow, connect and to change one’s life around. The most wonderful part has been the opportunity to meet and connect with the kids that frequent our center. To realize that these kids are sweet, creative, fun and truly interested in succeeding despite obstacles has been completely inspiring. “The staff, the programs, the center and the outreach on the streets are at the heart of what we do and I am determined to make sure it continues,” he states. The Crossroads Center is the sole intervention program in Jerusalem for at risk English speaking teens. Haaretz.com has just reported that in the future Sassoon “envisions sending staffers or opening small satellite branches in (other Israeli) cities with large Anglo communities.”

Karl Grossman is professor of
journalism at the State University of
New York/College at Old Westbury.
Janet Grossman, a retired teacher,
is a member of the board of directors
of Temple Adas Israel in Sag
Harbor.

‘Hands On Tzedakah’ takes would-be donors off the beaten track to see the underbelly of society.

Ronald L. Gallatin is a retired attorney, a CPA and a former managing director at Lehman Brothers credited with creating some of Wall Street’s most ingenious investment instruments. His wife, Meryl, is a prominent philanthropist in Florida charity circles. But when they visit Israel, they prefer hanging around soup kitchens and drug addict drop-in centers rather than fancy restaurants.

Over the past seven years, the Gallatins have given more than $2 million of their own money and raised more than $4m. from friends for a charity they set up “to fill in the cracks” left by social services in the US, Israel and Latin America.

They promise donors that 100 percent of funds will go to the causes listed on their www.handsontzedakah.org website for Hands On Tzedakah, so the Gallatins also absorb all the administrative costs of their charity, including one or more trips each year to Israel.

They use their own money to seed all the projects and then encourage their donors to identify one where their donation should be applied.

The Gallatins are just two clients of Arnie Draiman, a travel guide with a difference.

Draiman takes tourists off the beaten track to show millionaires and other would-be donors the underbelly of Israeli society, helping them target their charity where it will have the most effect.

“I want to teach them how to give their money away efficiently and effectively,” Draiman said.

He said there was an increasing interest among tourists to Israel in welfare and assistance projects – the flip-side of the sun-drenched beaches, nonstop nightlife and centuries-old religious culture projected by official government advertising.

“Our trips aren’t about museum hopping,” Meryl Gallatin told AOL News during a recent visit to Crossroads, a cash-strapped dropin center for at-risk youth in downtown Jerusalem. “We’re here to do due diligence on behalf of our donors. This is a different kind of tourism.”

Not all of Draiman’s tourists are millionaire philanthropists.

Parents bring their bar mitzva boys and bat mitzva girls to tour projects as a lesson in social responsibility.

Newly married couples, flush with their own happiness want to engage with people less fortunate than themselves. American religious and community leaders also come to Draiman to see the reality of Israeli society so they can better understand the country.

At first, some projects didn’t understand why they should host visitors who weren’t about to make a donation. Over time, they have adopted Draiman’s long-term view.

“I have countless examples of people who have visited a place and later gone back and included it in their wedding registry or a bar mitzva boy has included it in his bar mitzva project,” Draiman said.

He said the key to the attraction of his tours is the term “tzedaka” – which combines “righteousness,” “charity” and “justice.”

“I use the word in the broadest terms possible to include not only money but your time and your effort and anything that goes into making the world a better place to be,” Draiman said.

“A lot of it revolves around the money, the financial end, but it’s more than that.

Tzedaka is translated best as ‘righteous giving’ or ‘giving rightly.’” Draiman’s work has brought him into contact with people he labels “heroes” – ordinary individuals who help the people around them in an extraordinary way.

“If someone calls me up on the phone and says, ‘I’ve got this really great place I want you to hear about,’ I’ll listen.

But if you call me up and say, ’I want you to meet this incredible person,’ my ears really prick up,” he said.

Some of Draiman’s favorite heroes include Bracha Kapach, the wife of a Jerusalem rabbi who feeds more than 1,100 poor people every week and more than 20,000 at Pessah; the “chicken lady,” who provided a fresh chicken every week for several hundred poor families even when she was well into her 90s; and Avshalom Beni, who uses dogs and cats to provide therapy for Holocaust survivors and children with behavioral problems.

When Draiman introduces philanthropists like the Gallatins to these unsung heroes, lives can be changed on all sides.

One recent afternoon, the Gallatins arrived at Crossroads, a cause they have supported for several years, for their first meeting with its new director, Robbie Sassoon.

A skeptical Ron Gallatin grilled Sassoon about the center’s projects and finances with a ferocity that would not have been out of place in a Manhattan boardroom.

“We treat making the decision of how our donors’ money is spent as the highest level of fiduciary responsibility,” Ron Gallatin said. “Our donors give to HOT [Hands On Tzedakah] because they trust us to have meetings like this one and know that we are making sure that every one of their dollars goes directly to help someone in profound need. Our donors know that HOT has no expenses and that we do not permit our partners to charge any administrative charges on any project we support.

The donor is truly seeing his whole dollar helping the people he wants helped.”

After a half hour, the former Wall Street guru sat back, pronounced himself satisfied and proceeded to write out a check that was much larger than the one he had planned. Then they were off to their fourth meeting of the day, in a five-day trip that contained no tourist visits at all.

“This is not depressing,” Meryl Gallatin said. “It’s the feelgood of making a difference.

It’s being able to go back after seeing a success story.”

None of it, the Gallatins said, could be achieved with confidence without having someone like Draiman to advise them.

“Arnie comes with us on many of our site visits and interprets far more than the language. He helps us understand cultural nuances that can only be understood by someone living in Israel,” Meryl Gallatin said. “You cannot have absentee management.

We hold all of our Israeli partners to a very high standard of accountability and use Arnie to monitor them when we aren’t here.

What we are trying to do doesn’t work without someone like him on the ground.”

“I’m in their face, much more than if they filled out a form once a year,” Draiman agreed.

“There are Anglo communities all over Israel and we know that they’re dealing with the same issues that our kids here are dealing with,” said Robbie Sassoon, who immigrated in 2008 and in May replaced Caryn Green at the helm of the center. “Some of the kids here are coming from communities outside Jerusalem. Maybe if there are others who aren’t coming to us, we can come to them.”

Located near the capital’s downtown Zion Square, Crossroads has assisted thousands of native English-speaking youths who were living on the street, struggling with drug abuse or other issues. Since Green founded the center ten years ago, it has grown from a two-person operation to a widely acclaimed institution with 10 employees and 30 volunteers.

Sassoon, 34, emphasized he will spend his first months on the job ensuring the center continues to operate smoothly before tackling additional projects. “Once we get to the point that I’m comfortable it’s time to think what the next step is,” he told Anglo File. “The question is really to think outside the box a little bit, in terms of how we can grow.” While his plans are still vague, he envisions sending staffers or opening small satellite branches in cities with large Anglo communities.

The New York native, who holds a social work degree from Yeshiva University, is also thinking about introducing new programs for Crossroads in Jerusalem. “We offer therapy there, we have a job center, we offer cooking and art activities and counsel the kids about what schools to go to – but we’re not running a summer program, we’re not running a camp,” he says. “Maybe we can start thinking about bigger programs. What about running a program for kids from abroad who are at risk and offering them our expertise?”

Before starting at Crossroads, Sassoon headed the English division of Jerusalem’s Lander Institute, which offers continuing education courses. A father of three, Sassoon is an ordained rabbi who sports a large knit skullcap and a neatly shaved beard. Initial concerns he had about being rejected by some teenagers – especially those who abandoned the religious lifestyle they were brought up with – have not materialized, he says.

“I think they’ve picked up already on the fact that I understand, to the extent that I can, where they’re coming from. When they see me on the streets and in the center they talk to me about anything and everything,” Sassoon says. “I was concerned, but overall the kids have totally embraced me with open arms. They’ve given me that chance.”

Green, who remains a member of the board of Crossroads, said Sassoon’s background is likely to benefit the center. “He has a whole new look at things, a fresh perspective,” she said. “Robbie knows a whole world of people that don’t know us yet and hopefully will get to know us. Because he has contacts in the Modern Orthodox world and [at-risk teenagers are] partially a Modern Orthodox problem, I think that could actually help.”

Looking back at her decade with Crossroads, Green, 40, told Anglo File the low points include weathering the financial crisis and having to attend the funerals of two teenagers who died after overdosing. However, she says the overwhelming majority of the teenagers who went through the center’s doors are now fully integrated members of society, many of them studying, serving in the army’s elite combat units, getting married and having kids and careers. “Out of the thousands of kids, I can maybe think of two that aren’t doing as well as they could,” the Texas native says.

Currently “resting and recuperating,” Green says she plans to travel to the U.S. and India this summer. Upon her return, she says she wants to write about her experiences at Crossroads, open a private practice and look for lecturing opportunities. “There’s a part of me that thought I’d never quit,” said Green, who lives on Moshav Aminadav, just outside Jerusalem. But the trials of running the day-to-day operations of a nonprofit organization eventually took a toll on her. She adds: “I will continue to miss it, probably every day.”

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.

By: Steve K. Walz

Date: Wednesday, April 02 2008

(JERUSALEM) – Coming to the Holy Land has never been a true panacea for hundreds of disenfranchised North American teenagers who have come for a year of learning at a local yeshivah or made aliyah. Cultural and language barriers can either exacerbate a pre-existing emotional trauma or trigger a new one.

No one truly knows how many English-speaking youngsters are falling through the cracks. But the growing numbers of emotionally challenged teenagers that congregate in Jerusalem’s Zion Square have provided a number of outreach organizations, including the Crossroads Center, with more work than they can handle.

Established in 2001, Crossroads lends an emotional and physical lifeline to a wide variety of what is called “youth-at-risk.”

“The fact of the matter is that the Jewish community in North America knows that there has been this issue about parents sending their problematic teenagers to Israel, and dumping the problem here, for the past 20 years. And it will continue to be an ongoing issue for the next 20 years,” Caryn Green, founder and director of Crossroads told The Jewish Press.

Green who grew up in Tyler, Texas and earned her Master’s Degree in Social Work (MSW) from Yeshiva University, maintained that while the dumping of troubled teenagers in Israel is not a new phenomenon, the growing numbers of emotionally challenged newcomers is something to be concerned about.

“On any given night, you’ll see about 500-600 teenagers congregating in Zion Square. On average, our outreach professionals interact with at least 100 of them during the evening hours, while at least another 30-50 kids drop by our center during the daytime hours.

“The issues for both the yeshiva kids and new immigrants are complex,” Green revealed. “It’s easy to say that some of these kids have a problem with religion. However, religion isn’t the issue sometimes. Some kids are just troubled, period. It’s sometimes hard for North American Jewry to acknowledge that their community has ‘normal’ problems just like every other community, whether it’s poverty, neglect, abuse or youth-at-risk.

“Some parents think that sending their kids to Israel or making aliyah will solve their problems. But one cannot just wish these problems away.”

Both at-risk groups – yeshiva kids and new immigrants – share “identity” problems, but Green claims that the growth of aliyah from North America during the past six years has “opened up a new can of worms.” Says Green, “Nefesh B’Nefesh undoubtedly has made it much easier for both singles and families to make the move to Israel from a financial and physical point of view.

“When I came on aliyah before Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN), no one offered me that kind of assistance. But while most families have been able to make a successful transition, there are a number of families with troubled teenagers, as well as singles who’ve come on aliyah who are dealing with a variety of issues.

Youngsters partake in a Crossroads program.

“Many teenagers are trying to adjust to a new reality without a support system. There are also entire families who either ran away from problems in North America or thought the grass was greener on the other side.”

Inevitably, all of the teenagers make their way to Zion Square because they’ve heard about the crowd that hangs out there. The teenagers might have very different problems but because these youngsters come from the same cultural background they are able to understand each other’s pain, as they all speak the same language.

While Green acknowledged that there’s a much higher percentage of yeshiva kids at risk, the staff at Crossroads (which includes trained social workers, teachers and group facilitators) is able to provide a variety of services that enable almost everyone to deal with their problems.

“I would say about 55 percent of youth-at-risk are teenage boys.” Green stated. “In reality, boys and girls deal with their problems differently, with girls being able to hold themselves together a bit better.

“Young ladies are able to hide some of their problems internally, which will manifest themselves in eating disorders. Young boys tend to be more violent and don’t care how they look or smell when they are emotionally troubled. Young ladies, no matter how troubled they are, will try and look presentable and take better care of themselves.

“Crossroads helps these youngsters sort out their problems by talking with our staff. In the case of single new immigrants, we help find the right place to live, get them into an ulpan course, help them adjust to the army or assist in finding them a job. When someone comes without a support group or friends, they sometimes find that they have nothing to do during the daytime.”

Crossroads offers three types of assistance-therapeutic social activities, counseling and educational opportunities. In addition, the Crossroads Youth Center, which is located directly across from Zion Square, opens its doors every afternoon, and there youngsters have access to computers, a library and recreation center.

The evening Moadon (club) draws dozens of teenagers three times a week for workshops that include cooking, art, music and photography. Crossroads is there for them, providing an upbeat haven, where the floundering can embrace their problems and channel their energies in the right direction.

For more information about Crossroads, email

director@crossroadsjerusalem.org

Copyright ©2011 JewishPress.com.

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.