Page 23 - C.A.L.L. #44 - Fall 2018

For stressed African

migrants in Israel, collective

farms offer a refuge

A government plan to expel thousands of African refugees elicited an emotional response
from many Israeli Jews – and the idea that kibbutz members could host at-risk families.

Dina Kraft, CS Monitor

Under a canopy of jacaranda and eucalyptus trees, Rowha Dabrazion, an Eritrean asylum
seeker, pushes her one-year-old daughter in a crib on wheels, a fixture of kibbutz life. Her five-

year-old flashes a triumphant smile, enjoying her perch on the back of a kibbutz member’s
bicycle.

It’s been a week since she arrived here to this lush cooperative community along the shores of

the Mediterranean, midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. And the relief is beginning to set in
that she is no longer one step away from homelessness.

Just one month ago her husband left her and the children. She had quit her job cleaning to

care for her baby daughter, and she found herself with no income and no idea where the
money would come from to cover rent and expenses.

Then Ms. Dabrazion got word that a kibbutz would take in her and her children as part of a new

program in which kibbutzim across Israel are volunteering to take in the highest risk cases of
refugee families. Most such families are headed by single mothers struggling with dire poverty
in Tel Aviv, where the majority of asylum seekers live. The program offers them housing, health

care, education for their children, and “adoptive families” for social support.

“I feel better, like I can breathe. Every day my mind would race and wonder what would be,”
she says, sitting in the living room of Yael Eisner, a kibbutz member who, along with her

husband, volunteered to host, or “adopt” Dabrazion and her children.

While Dabrazion talks about her life as an asylum seeker in Israel – she crossed the Sinai Desert,
partially on foot, to get here seven years ago – her younger daughter fidgets in her lap. “Come

to savta,” (Hebrew for grandmother), Ms. Eisner says, sweeping the little girl into her arms. As

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