Crossroads Jerusalem

by Jordan Roth

For the past few years, successful American Jewish comedian Avi Liberman has organized comedy tours throughout Israel with other American comedians, simply to make Anglo crowds laugh – despite what might be at times an unfunny situation in the country.

Liberman returned to Israel this year with stand-ups Bruce Smirnoff, Dwayne Perkins, and Cathy Ladman to perform “Crossroads Comedy,” a show benefiting Crossroads, an organization for English-speaking youth at risk in Jerusalem.

Liberman and Bruce Smirnoff here discuss their trip to Israel, the comedy tour, and how Smirnoff thinks Israelis might touch their food a bit more than Americans.

Click here to listen.

by Michele Chabin

For some U.S. students in yeshivas, Jerusalem can be a tempting place; last week’s arrests are shining a light on a taboo subject.

Jerusalem — When the parents of North American yeshiva students learning in Israel for the year visit their children, they often frequent the restaurants in Nahalat Shiva, a picturesque neighborhood just a block away from Ben-Yehuda Street.

What few if any realize is that the neighborhood, with its gentrified century-old buildings and cobblestone alleyways, is also a hangout for visiting yeshiva kids and others in search of alcohol and drugs.

Last month an undercover Israeli police officer is said to have purchased drugs not far from there from four American young men spending the year at two local yeshivas. The four, who allegedly sold marijuana to Israeli and North American students from several yeshivas, were arrested last week.

The arrests and the unrelated death by overdose of a student at the Neve Tsion yeshiva, have sent shock waves — though perhaps not surprise — through Jerusalem-area yeshivas and seminaries.

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By Daphna Berman

In Jerusalem, troubled English-speaking teens hang out in groups of their own, separated from native Israelis. The Crossroads NPO helps get them off the streets.

‘Zoe’ was three when his parents moved from Manchester to Israel, 13 when he first smoked Marijuana, 14 by the time he moved out of his parent’s home in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, and 16 by the time he started using “hard drugs” – a sprinkling of mushrooms, Ecstasy, Acid, and Cocaine. “I tried Crack too, but that was just once on the streets of New York,” says the 22 year-old, smiling. Zoe says he’s been clean for a year, aside from smoking Marijuana occasionally on weekends. “I don’t deal or buy anymore,” he says casually, between drags of his Marlboro.

Zoe, a nickname he no longer goes by, is a poster child of sorts for Crossroads, the non-profit organization that got him off the streets. At sixteen, he had been sleeping in parks, at friends’ houses and occasionally in public squares, but then Crossroads’ Caryn Green found him. “If I hadn’t met Caryn, I don’t know what would have happened. Most of my friends are either dead or in jail,” Zoe says.

Green, a social worker by training, is the founder and director of Crossroads, a Jerusalem-based outreach organization for English-speaking troubled teens, many of whom are from religious backgrounds. The organization employs four social workers, two of whom work part time, and tries to connect with teenagers who are “having issues,” but don’t have an outlet for dealing with them. “We help them solve problems ranging from drug abuse, homelessness, a difficult family life, and problems at school,” Green says.

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