Happy Hannukkah! Hope this winter season finds you well, whether you are snuggled by the fireplace watching the snow through the window, or whether you are walking around in a light sweater in the sun by the sea, as I have done lately.
The past two weeks have been the hardest and most stressful I've had yet in the Mechina. I mentioned last post that my committee has been in charge for the last month of putting together a huge event called "Lighting up Jaffa." We received the skeleton of the day from how it has been in past years: go to all of the places where we volunteer and do an activity, and then end with some kind of "peak event." The rest was up to us.
We started planning. We divided ourselves into teams - I was one of two on the main team for the evening event, and also one of the two main managers of the whole project. We started having meetings, figuring out how the event would look, where we would have it, how much funding we were receiving from the reform movement and the branch of the municipality of Tel Aviv that deals specifically with Jaffa. We had started working on the event before the army week, but we really entered crazy time afterwards. Every day I was in and out of meetings, and in between lessons and volunteering (and at crisis points during lessons) I was on the phone with supply companies, transportation companies, the municipality, the scouts, flyer companies, etc. I learned so many important things, like how money and payments work on the corporate level, how to make orders and fix them - not without some major hiccups along the way. One was that I placed an order for flyers without realizing that the company only takes direct payment - cash, check, credit card, or bank transfer, while our funders can only pay with delayed payments. We ended up having to have every person in the Mechina donate 3 dollars to pay for it on the spot, and then the municipality of Tel Aviv will fund something for us and hopefully give us the money back. We also had our budget for supplies slashed after we already made our lists, so I had to take a bus to Holon (about 25 minutes away) to the supply center and spend five hours hand picking our supplies to match our new budget. Then we still didn't have enough so we had to recruit 600 shekels from a different funder to make up the missing items. But we managed to pass over those speed bumps - with a lot of stress and make everything work.
The most interesting and frustrating speed bump on the way was actually a political one. Early on in the event planning process we decided to cooperate with the scouts and do the evening event with them in their space. The Mechina has really good connections with the scouts - they did the Spring Purim event with them last year and this year opened up an afterschool activities center as one of our volunteer opportunities - once a week many Mechina members lead art classes, cooking classes, soccer clubs, etc. for scouts members for free. So the scouts like our organization and were really happy to work with us for the event. My team was in contact with the Yaffo scouts sector's two main coordinators and everything was going swimmingly.
Then we wanted to make a flyer for the evening, and we had to make it fast so we could print it in time to hand out to all of the kids we volunteer with, as well as all of the scouts. I sat down with a friend of mine in the Mechina to make the flyer, and then we sent it to the scouts to approve and attach their logo. They replied that evening saying that though they truly appreciate how reliable and efficient we are, the flyer was all wrong. They said the background was not related to the event, and they wanted a more Hannukah-y background (though we had decided to make the event as neutral as possible and base it on light and darkness instead of specifically about the holiday so non-Jews would feel welcome). But the most surprising and irritating thing was that they said that since they are a Jewish youth movement, they cannot have their logo on a flyer with Arabic on it.
This infuriated me and the rest of our committee. First of all, there was the practical reason we put Arabic on the poster and toned down the Hannukah aspect - we work with Arab kids whose families don't always read Hebrew and we wanted them to feel just as welcome. But beyond that was the ideological question. So what if they are a Jewish movement? There are many Arabs who live in Israel and we can't ignore them just because we are a Jewish state - and there are actually a few Arab members in their branch! And Arabic is not "Muslim" - it's just another language. Especially in a place as complicated as Yaffo we can't ignore the racial complications, even if it is a Jewish youth movement.
I consulted with our volunteer work coordinator who said that though she is so happy we are outraged by this, there are a lot of political battles that we can't change, and further we shouldn't get involved on that level. But she told me to try to fight for what we believe in a cooperative way to come to a compromise. So I called the scouts back and said that we have to have the Arabic writing so that we can invite all of the people we work with. We ended up printing two flyers - one for the scouts that was more Hannukah-y and one that was more general and had both languages (image above). It was an interesting conflict and I hope that at some point the scouts get approached about this policy - maybe we'll send them a letter now that the event is over.
But, after all of the stress the event came, after many points along the way where we were sure we'd have to cancel. We had recruited outside volunteers, built a schedule for the whole day for every participant. The moment of truth finally arrived.
And it was amazing!!
Seriously, it was such a meaningful day for all of us. I personally started off in an old people's home that is neglected by the municipality of Tel Aviv, where we decorated the place to bring it some light and cheer. Afterwards we went to the nursery school where I work and made crowns with candles on them for all of the kids. Then we went to an Arab elementary school that we don't work with directly (though some of the kids I think belong to after school clubs where other Mechina members volunteer) to do art projects with the whole school, grade by grade. It was so fun to work with the kids and teach them about the three different holidays - Christmas, Hannukah, and the Muslim holiday Idal Adkha (the Sacrifice Holiday). The kids were so sweet and we all really enjoyed ourselves. Sadly I am legally bound not to upload any photos of the kids, but the second photo above is of me and my two friends Michal and Dana, waiting for the fifth graders to arrive.
After we worked at the school I went to the Scouts building and started setting up for the evening event. We worked really hard, and then the kids arrived between 5:00 and 5:30. The event went so smoothly. We had different stations with games and art projects, including an obstacle course in a dark room and twister/ring toss with glow sticks, cotton candy, a fortune teller, and more. We also had shows - an interactive theater performance, a fire circus, and a magician. Most of these kids are from very poor economic backgrounds, and seeing people of all religions and ethnicities (Jews, Arabs, Ethiopians, refugees and kids of immigrant workers, and more) come together and see things and do things that they don't have the opportunity to? So moving.
At the end of the event we lit the first Hannukah candle, and the scouts thanked us publicly (the Mechina, my committee, and specifically my team by our names). There ended up being about 350 kids plus some of their families, which was more than we expected, and we had so many good reactions. Our committee was extremely proud of the whole day, especially since our counselors and the head of the Mechina told us this was the best event of its kind that the Mechina has ever put together.
I'm exhausted, and I'm totally hoarse from the work, but it was worth it. We definitely lit up Jaffa, face by face, kid by kid.
