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Israeli Snapshots
Here is a picture telling an Israeli story, stemming from The Association for Volunteering, the pioneering force behind National Service, in its fifth decade of existence.
This is the story of two women who grew up in the same land, on the same soil. Both are Israeli citizens who came from different backgrounds, both found themselves under one roof, that of the Association, joining hands and committing to strengthening the social resilience of the state through National Service.
On the right, Tsofit Elitzur, currently (2022) 55 years old, a resident of Ma'ale Adumim, married with five children.
She was born in Jerusalem to a father who immigrated from Morocco and a mother from a Lithuanian Haredi family. In her youth, Tsofit studied at the "Horev" high school for girls, whose students belonged to the Religious Zionist stream. Upon graduating high school, she volunteered for two years of National Service within The Association for Volunteering, serving as a coordinator (komunit) for a branch of the semi-Haredi youth movement "Ezra." She completed her academic studies with a bachelor's degree in computer science, but quickly abandoned the field, integrating into management roles in special education. Simultaneously, she also served as a member of the Ma'ale Adumim City Council on behalf of the National Religious Party (Mafdal).
She began working at the Association in 1999 as a coordinator for volunteers in her city. Since then, and for 17 years, she was involved in marketing, recruitment, and management roles within the Association's systems. When she decided to retire for private pursuits, she did not part ways with her colleagues, continuing to assist as much as she could. Among other things, she is a member of the General Assembly of The Association for Volunteering, the forum that appoints the members of the Board of Directors.
While she was a volunteer coordinator, the Association began to establish the first channels for male and female volunteers from the Arab sector within the Association. This move sparked a difficult dispute among many employees who could not digest the idea that generated real interaction between Jewish and Arab girls and boys. Tsofit was also among the opponents, and in internal discussions of coordinators and management staff, she expressed a strong opinion against the idea.
Her opinion changed when she went down to the Negev for the first time, for a tour of the Association's experimental volunteering centers. In the Bedouin towns of Lakiya and Kuseife, she saw up close the Bedouin female volunteers, spoke with them, and was deeply impressed by the great strength that volunteering gave their souls, and by their burning desire to leave the village and integrate into society, like any Israeli woman. Their role model was the local coordinator, Hayat.
Hayat Habashi (in the picture: on the left). Currently (2022) 37 years old, married with three children. She was born in the village of Yafia in the Galilee to a Muslim family, and studied and was educated in the local high school. After graduating 12th grade, she moved on to academic studies: a bachelor's degree in behavioral sciences from Yezreel Valley College a teaching certificate from Beit Berl, and a master's degree in social work from Tel Aviv University. All these degrees did not help her open doors to employment. Nor did her experience as a student coordinator in the national "Project Perach" – a national program for social impactand, part-time jobs where she worked with special education children. And she, who only wanted to earn a respectable living, had to move with her family from the Galilee in the north to Be'er Sheva in the south, to finally get an available position from the Ministry of Education in the unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel..
In the framework of her work in special education, she met her current husband, Othman Abu Ajaj, one of the prominent activists in the education system in the diaspora. Othman enthusiastically supported the inclusion of young Bedouin women in National Service frameworks and committed to assisting The Association for Volunteering in establishing the Arab system in the southern region. He suggested that Hayat join the project. Hayat refused. The enlistment of Arab girls for National Service was considered "taboo" among her family members, her friends, in the village where she grew up, and in large parts of the sector to which she belongs. Her refusal dissipated while working with children with special needs, when she was helped by volunteers, her sisters from the same sector. Their assistance won her heart and changed her mind. She accepted Othman's request and began working as a volunteer coordinator in the diaspora. A few years later, she became the manager of the Southern District at the Association, which includes Arab volunteers from East Jerusalem.
The logo of The Association for Volunteering with the slogan (in Hebrew): "Creating Change, Building a Future"
The joint picture of Tsofit and Hayat reflects the face of The Association for Volunteering in its late fifth decade of activity. These two women, each in her own way, proved that it is possible to set aside political disputes and matters of religion and state, to ignore stereotypes and stigmas, and to unite for a common goal: building a society with compassion and justice, a society that provides equal opportunities for all its citizens, regardless of religion, gender, or health status.
Their encounter is a departure point from tribal insularity into a social space free of prejudices and fears. A space where one does not point fingers at others or brand them with a mark of Cain. A space whose boundaries are flexible and determined jointly by all who live in it. No one asks the other to "meet them halfway," to convert their religion, or to change their way of life. The embrace they share with each other is the embrace that their volunteers give to children with disabilities, to patients in hospitals, to the elderly in day clubs, to boys and girls in boarding schools, to anyone who needs their outstretched hands and doesn't care who extends the hand. Their friendship is the connection between different worlds in Israeli society, between different population groups, between benefactors and beneficiaries, between givers and receivers, between the open heart and the narrow mind.
The private and shared history of both of them together, and each one separately, closes the last chapter in the project presented here for the fiftieth anniversary of The Association for Volunteering's activity.
(At the end of this page, links to all chapters are concentrated)
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Thus ends, but is not completed, the story of the history of National Service in Israel, which is also the story of The Association for Volunteering. The project, published online in 7 chapters, is a summary based on the Association's history book published in 2022. The book spans hundreds of pages, written after extensive research that lasted several years, and includes testimonies, documents, and pictures from the history of National Service.
Tsofit and Hayat will, in the future, be a starting point for whoever tells the next chapters of its history. Their joint picture and what they represent is a distilled essence of the Association's vision, the trailblazer of the National Service framework, and its guiding force for over 50 years.
Such images were before the eyes of Yaron Lutz, the CEO of the Association, when he began to weave the vision. To illustrate them, he established brainstorming teams and integrating teams, and utilized external consultants specializing in assisting organizations, and gathered all employees for study days during which the vision was produced and became the Association's banner. The combination of all forces together yielded an organizational culture that leads social change in three circles:
In the first circle: National Service volunteers. Each and every one of them receives the quality support to realize their aspirations in contributing to society. This contribution will give them unit pride and personal satisfaction, and equip them with the appropriate tools to integrate into civil society – whether they are Jews or Arabs, religious or secular, Druze or Christians, a girl in distress or a boy with special needs.
(In the picture: Yaron Lutz, the CEO, with volunteers with special needs)
In the second circle: The Association's beneficiaries. Toddlers in kindergartens, students in schools, children in family homes and youth villages, patients in clinics and hospitals, road accident victims, elderly in day clubs, mothers in isolated settlements in Judea and Samaria, fathers struggling with daily life and livelihood, new immigrants, youth movements in large cities and peripheral localities.
(In the picture: National Service volunteers with kindergarten children in Kiryat Shmona.)
In the third circle: Israeli society and economy that will benefit from the interaction between the circles. Thousands of male and female volunteers join the workforce, raise families, earn a living, and contribute to the productive market, education systems, security services, and rescue forces. Each and every one of them who received equal opportunity is removed from the list of those in need of National Insurance and welfare services.
(In the picture: Association volunteers serving in the Israel Police)
The good, the benefactor, and the beneficiary, from the workshop of The Association for Volunteering, meet at any given moment during the Israeli day, composing a unique mosaic of National Service:
The rich man's daughter cares for the poor man's son, the immigrant from Ethiopia "does a shift" with an immigrant from the Commonwealth of Independent States, an instructor from a settlement in Samaria guides a Haredi Yeshiva student and a young Druze man undergoing technological training, a young person on the autism spectrum assists a visually impaired girl, a Christian Arab woman cares for a Muslim patient, and thousands more such connections occur daily, hour by hour, throughout Israel.
All together, and each one separately, they break down walls, remove stains of stigmas, and change social reality – one individual connects with another, one unit mixes with another, and a powerful human alloy is created that gives Israeli society more and more reinforcement on its way to consolidation and becoming a model society.
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ז
This is the final chapter in the story of the history of National Service in Israel, and the story of The Association for Volunteering, which leads it. 7 chapters of the story were published online, based on the Association's history book. Here is each chapter via a separate link:
The full story of National Service is based on the book : "The Association for Volunteering - Fifty Years of National Service" Written in Hebrew and published in Israel Published by The Association for Volunteering (NPO). 2022
. Research, writing, and editing:
Shlomi Rosenfeld
