April 13, 2008

By Veronica Ouellette

MAMARONECK, N.Y. - Nili Yaari's notebook is filled with sketches of a house, a hand and other objects.

The drawings were used to communicate with children in Gondar, Ethiopia, where Yaari and four classmates from Westchester Hebrew High School in Mamaroneck visited as part of a class community service project.

"The way that they live is just so different from what we have," Yaari, 17, said. "For them, they have to grow their own food. They have to take care of themselves. It's how they live."

The 11th-graders spent a week in Ethiopia and Israel learning about the cultures and aiding 70 Jewish people make aliyah, or immigrate to Israel from Ethiopia.

The project was organized through the Jewish Agency for Israel and Operation Promise, which assists Jews with their journey to Israel. Three of the students on the trip - Yaari, Robbie Schrag and Alexandra Milstein - are from Stamford.

"I was personally blown away by the extensive poverty that some of the Ethiopians have to face," said Schrag, 17. "Coming from Stamford, I have everything I need and then I go to Gondar, and it really is a Third World country. They live in mudhuts. People are crammed into the streets. Most of the kids there do not go to school."

Dean of Students Nancy Block joined the students on the trip, from March 28 to April 3. The students had participated in a leadership conference earlier in the school year, and the trip resulted from "a study on the crisis of Jews living in Ethiopia trying to move to Israel," Block said. Under Israel's "Law of Return," any Jew has the legal right to assisted immigration and settlement in Israel, as well as automatic citizenship.

To get to Israel, the olim - the Hebrew word for Jews immigrating to Israel - had to take a plane, an act foreign to the Ethiopians, Block said. The students helped them fasten their seatbelts, use flush toilets and explained how a plane works.

"When we brought them to Israel, it has to be such a culture shock. They put their faith in these people to get to Israel. They're willing to do everything to get to Israel. The one thing that they want to do is to make their life better."

Once in Israel, the olim were placed in temporary living quarters until they become acquainted with the culture and language.

"They teach them how to adjust to life," Yaari said. "They have to learn these skills we've known since we were a baby. My brain couldn't put together how hard it must be to go from this world (Ethiopia) to a First World country."

The trip introduced the students to a doctor who adopted 19 of his patients to give them better lives; a woman who began work at an adoption center after watching an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show;" and a teenager who raised money to build a school in Gondar.

"Just telling people about what we saw, I feel like I'm doing something," Yaari said.

"I took back a sense of appreciation for my country, an appreciation for what I have," Schrag said.