Page 25 - C.A.L.L. #44 - Fall 2018

recent years, kibbutzim have temporarily taken in refugees from Kosovo and immigrants from
the former Soviet Union.

‘I too could have been a refugee’
Although the kibbutzim themselves are initially covering the cost of hosting the families, to
make the effort sustainable they are seeking sponsors.

The Consortium for Israel and the Asylum Seekers, an umbrella group of activists working on
behalf of the asylum seekers has launched what they are calling the Kibbutz Resettlement
sponsorship initiative to support the work of the kibbutz movement.

Eisner, a nurse, recently volunteered at an Israeli medical clinic in Serbia at a refugee camp for
those fleeing Syria and Iraq.

“That is where the story of refugees came into my heart. It was there I understood I too could

have been a refugee. That they are like me with homes, careers, and communities, but they lost
everything,” she says.

“All of us need to do something to help. And I have everything I need in life, a family, money, a

kibbutz, a normal country even if I don’t like the government,” she adds as her one-year-old
“adopted” granddaughter naps next to her. “So how can I be quiet and do nothing? And when
the story of [the proposed] expulsion began, I thought, how can we as Jews do this?”

‘You can laugh here’
Dabrazion enters her one-room apartment with her daughters. She had just stopped at the

sprawling communal dining room with its views of the sea and multiple food stations offering
fresh salad fixings, watermelon slices, hot meals, and once a week even sushi.

In her tiny kitchen, a cooking pan overwhelms a corner of the counter used to make traditional

injera bread.

“On the way to the kibbutz, I was fearful, wondering ‘where am I going?’ but when I arrived and
saw how I was welcomed by people with all their hearts, I saw that things are good for us here,”

she says.

She says in Tel Aviv she was concerned about the role-reversal she saw in her older daughter,
who was constantly tending to and worrying about her.

“She now says, ‘Mommy, we have a grandma and grandpa now. We go to the pool here, we go
to the sea. You can laugh here.’ ”

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