ZULA
Among the many services and events that the OU Israel Center offers is their remarkable Zula program that reaches out to Israeli teens at risk. At Zula there is an open, non-coercive atmosphere of camaraderie, Jewish music and self-expression that nurtures young people back to their tradition. The Zula counselors maintain almost daily contact with their teens, acting as big brothers and sisters who demonstrate to these young people that someone genuinely cares about them. Zula has had exceptional success in bringing these young people toward a more religious lifestyle, reuniting them with their families, and helping them leave behind a destructive lifestyle of drugs and alcohol.
While I was visiting the program I heard a heated exchange between a troubled young man who came from a right wing background (but was no longer religious) and one of the Zula counselors. The counselor was wearing a large kippah sruga (a knitted kippah) which prompted the boy to exclaim, “What do you know!? You are a Mizrachi (a religious Zionist).” I found this comment particularly troubling and ironic. Here was this poor boy who felt abandoned and antagonized by the world around him and someone wanted to help and support him, however this young man was spurning this offer of help simply because it came from someone who was Mizrachi.
Hearing this young man’s remark I couldn’t help but marvel at the many valuable lessons of Torah, mitzvot, and middot that someone failed to teach him, while someone had managed to ingrain in him an unfortunate sense of sinat chinam (baseless hatred) against someone who is Mizrachi and that this prejudice was presently preventing him from getting the assistance he so desperately needed. This incident is yet another example of the great responsibility we all have to instill ahavat chinam (love without a specific reason) within ourselves and our children. More than ever we remember we are one nation with one destiny and we must love and respect each and every Jew.
It is truly sad that this boy got it all wrong, especially when so many “right wing” yeshivas are preaching tremendous Ahavas Yisroel no matter what the background.
Posted by Noach Klein on 02/16 at 10:46 PM
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