| I taught English and mentored Israeli high school seniors at Ha’Kfar Ha’yarok, (The Green Village) an agricultural boarding school, in 1993. Ha’Kfar Ha’yarok has changed in a lot of ways since then, but the pictures on its website still look a lot like when I was there (http://www.kfaryarok.org.il/en).
One of my favorite things about the six months I called it home was my roommates on campus, Yaniv and Kotz. Yaniv and Kotz (his name was Avi, but everyone called him ‘Kotz,’ short for his last name, Kotzky, but also meaning “Thorn”) were shin-shinim. It took me a while to put together that “shin shin” was just two Hebrew letters shin. It was an abbreviation for shanat sherut, or ‘year of service.’ They were among hundreds of 18-year-old Israeli men and women who had chosen to defer their mandatory enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces by volunteering for a year. Yaniv was hoping to enter the Israel Air Force pilots’ course (“Don’t worry, I won’t be a pilot, believe me,” he would say); Kotz the musician dreamed of serving in one of the IDF’s entertainment units or a military band. Although they were scarcely older than the students I was teaching (or trying to teach), and I was quite a bit older than they, all three of us had chosen to defer some of adulthood’s rites of passage.
So, I’m delighted that shin-shinim are still a thing and that once again they’ll be a presence in my community. However, in 5781 nothing goes smoothly. Two shinshiniyot, (young women volunteering for a year of service), Adee Kelty and May Oizerovich, who we tried to introduce virtually to our community at Shabbat two weeks ago, will not be joining us after all, due to travel issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The good news is that two other shinshiniyot, Maya Hirshberg and Enav Elhaiany Perez, have been issued visas and are expected to arrive here in Indy this Friday, October 30.Maya Hirshberg is a pianist and a lover of history. She led yoga sessions and taught creative writing classes in her Jerusalem neighborhood, called the German colony, during the quarantine. She’s excited to share her love of Israel through music. |
