ALIYAH COMMITTEE
AMTON Newsletter
June 2001

Laurel and WJUS group during tour of the Golan.

EYE ON WUJS
World of Jewish Students

The WUJS Institute, sponsored by The Jewish Agency, offers young graduates and professionals from all over the world three or six month programs of intensive Hebrew language instruction as well as an amazing range of courses in Jewish History, Judaism, Modern Israel, The Middle East, Contemporary Jewry, and Hebrew and Jewish Literature. The program includes extensive hiking, mobile seminars and a three-week volunteer experience. Located in Arad, in the Northern Negev, this beautiful town has a pleasant, dry climate and boasts its own commercial center and easy access to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

After completing the six month study program, the WUJS Employment Department helps interested participants find suitable jobs in their own field. WUJS also assists students in finding internship and volunteer programs in Israel. Participants share premises with the Arad Absorption Center, thus while participants have their own studio apartments and their own classes, dining room, and pluralistic synagogue, they live among new immigrants from all over the world.

In an effort to learn more about life in Israel, and at WUJS during the current Intifada, AMTON asked a current participant, Laurel Metzger, to share her impressions with us.

ISRAEL REFLECTIONS
by Laurel Eve Metzger

(A native of Kansas City, Laurel arrived in Israel last June, completed the WUJS six month program, and has stayed on for the last few months working in a professional capacity at WUJS in Arad.)

I have always felt a strong connection to the words of Hillel "If I am not for myself, who am I? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" I can find no better phrase to sum up why I am in Israel right now. I have been here since June 26, 2000, when I came to the WUJS Institute in Arad for six months and have stayed on working for WUJS ever since. My experiences here have already filled two journals. I love my life at WUJS, living in the Absorption Center with immigrants from all over the world, Russia, Ethiopia, and Latin America. And the WUJS program is great because it allows me the space to explore Israel from the base of a supportive community and all in an environment where we are learning Hebrew, as well as everything else about Israeli society, religious and secular.

My family and friends back in the states often call to make sure I am okay and I always tell them that we still get up and go about our lives every day. Of course my friends and I are a bit cautious about where and how we travel, but we go back and forth to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the north and south of the country, and we do not feel danger. I am surely not leaving.

Being a Jew is no easy affair. The questions and challenges that I face everyday here force me to reaffirm that I am carrying on a 5000 year old heritage. It is a struggle, but the struggle makes me feel more alive than anywhere else in the world.

That being said, I think that now more than ever, Israel needs people to come, to visit, to learn how special life is here, and to show Israelis that we support them in difficult times as well as in easy times.

Top of page | Newsletter main page | June 2001 main page