Political and social commentators Dan Senor and Saul Singer have tagged Israel as being the pre-eminent “startup” nation in the world. The tag has stuck. And deservedly so.
After their army service, large numbers of young Israelis – among them highly motivated, risk-taking, solution-seeking people who develop high tech and other electronic marvels – test themselves and their ideas in the wave and crash of the rough and tumble business world.
But not all young Israelis, after their tour of duty in the army, surf in the high waves of business trying to make their fortunes in the neon and stardom of the startup world.
Some, like Ben Erely, Dana Merzel and Omer Shafrir, test their mettle, their ideas and their ideals in the grimy, hard-scrabble streets of the poor and the needy. Social workers, counsellors, community organizers and activists, the three 30-something Israelis work in the close and cluttered neighbourhood of Kiryat Hayovel, one of the poorest in Jerusalem.
Ben Erely, pictured left. Omer Shafrir and Dana Merzel pictured on right.
For millennia we have prayed for the rebuilding and restoration of Jerusalem. But it is the highly motivated solution seekers such as Erely, Merzel and Shafrir who actually do it. They strive to rebuild rough neighbourhoods even as they strive to “rebuild” the lives of the people who live in those neighbourhoods.
Kiryat Hayovel is in the southwest part of Jerusalem. Housing first appeared on this lovely hilltop after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. To provide new homes for the waves of refugees from Europe and the Arab world arriving daily to the newly sovereign Jewish state and even well into the 1960s, the authorities built large-scale, high-density housing projects, long, cinder-block rectangular structures of small apartment units. Nor did they use the iconic Jerusalem stone on the buildings’ exteriors. They were unimaginative, heavy, squat, dull, colourless, “Soviet-style” dwellings. In those days, speed and efficiency were the rallying cry, not esthetics or charm.
Though there are indeed some very lovely parts to Kiryat Hayovel, it is described as primarily an impoverished, down-on-its-luck neighbourhood where thousands of people from diverse backgrounds live clustered and crowded lives.
That is why, some five years ago, City Hall decided to change things there. Not surprisingly, the Jerusalem Foundation became involved immediately. The important task of restoring Kiryat Hayovel, fell fully within the foundation’s mandate of “building” Jerusalem. The foundation sees its work in Kiryat Hayovel as creating “a massive, multi-disciplinary investment that will succeed in bringing about significant, visible change by bringing more young people to the area.”
Erely is the manager of the foundation’s ambitious Adopt-a-Neighbourhood program in Kiryat Hayovel.
He guides a visitor from The CJN on a walk through the neighbourhood, pointing out some of the sites and sores of the area, old broken-down grates and new improvement projects, too, earnestly greeting whomever he meets, smiling his own sunshine into their mornings.
On a different street in the neighbourhood, described to The CJN as the “Harlem of Jerusalem,” the visitor from Canada walked with Merzel and Shafrir. Like Erely, they reach out to the Jerusalemites who live on the other side, so to speak, of Jerusalem’s golden hills.
They described their mission as trying to “build the human tissue” of the neighbourhood. By that they meant fostering among the residents a sense of confidence and belief in their own skills and abilities, planting in them the notion of inter-connectedness among all the residents of the neighbourhood, strengthening the sense of common interests and a shared future.
The young idealists work in a place where the living conditions are substandard. The levels of income, the levels of self-confidence, the levels of neighbourhood resources are also substandard.
“How do we create a new social dynamic among people who are used to constantly hearing the same negative epithets spoken about themselves or the same excuses used to explain “their failures?” the young idealists asked The CJN. “It’s quite a challenge,” they said.
As long as these young idealists and the countless others like them are ready to struggle with that challenge in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Foundation will be the wind at their backs. And perhaps one day, a new Kiryat Hayovel will sail forward. – MBD
(Second in a series)
