by Simon Griver

Despite the searing heat of Israel’s summer, the first word that came to mind when Nick Desloge described his experience as a camp counselor in Yokneam-Megiddo was “cool”.

“It was cool to share the culture of these Israeli students,” recounts Desloge, 18, who is from Kirkwood in St. Louis Missouri.

“In many ways these summer camps are very different from those back in the U.S. where I have worked,” adds Desloge, who begins studying politics at college in Syracuse, upstate New York in the fall. “The kids are more spontaneous and energized and everything is much more laid back.”

The three-week Kefiada summer camp in July in Yokneam-Megiddo provided educationally enriching summer activities for 320 schoolchildren. Desloge was one of nine young counselors from St. Louis, Missouri and Atlanta, Georgia who joined 20 Israeli co-counselors to help supervise the Israeli kids. The Kefiada, (Kef means fun in Hebrew), was held within the framework of the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 (P2K), in which Yokneam-Megiddo has been matched with the Jewish Federation of St. Louis and the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta for more than 10 years.

“This was an extremely effective people-to-people program,” explained Judy Yuda the Jewish Agency’s Yokneam-Megiddo P2K Regional Manager. “The American counselors were able to build meaningful relationships with the children, their Israeli co-counselors and the Israeli families who hosted them.”

Desloge, who was in Israel for the first time, was returning home in August with what he described as “lasting connections with new friends in Israel.”

Elizabeth Gartenberg from Ladue in St. Louis, Missouri had previously been to Israel three times. “But this was the first time that I was able to get an intimate knowledge of the country,” she remarks. “Between working as a counselor by day and getting to know the family who hosted us during our leisure time I really felt like part of the country.”

“I didn’t think I was going to like a small town like Yokneam,” continues Gartenberg, a 20 year-old Pediatric Nutrition student from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “But I fell in love with the place. The people and the surrounding countryside are so beautiful.”

Nava Cohen, a local Yokneam volunteer resident whose family hosted two of the Kefiada volunteers, was equally effusive about her American guests. “They were wonderful,” she says. “I really enjoyed having them. I only wish that my English was a bit stronger and that I could have communicated more with them. My own three children have a very good command of English and they helped translate.”

Tania Eshel, the Kefiada counselor program coordinator stressed that the home hosting was an important part of the visit of the nine U.S. students from the P2K point of view. “In our post program evaluation we discovered that the American did not feel like they were at home,” she stresses, “they felt they were at home.”

Eshel recalls that one of the highlights of the three-week camp was a day in which the nine U.S. students were responsible for organizing the entire schedule as if it were an American summer camp. “They really rose to the occasion,” recollects Eshel. “They were truly inspiring. The St. Louis students got the kids to build a big arch like the one in their home city and spoke about the significance of arches, for example acting as a bridge between Israel and the Diaspora. The Atlanta students focused a lot on U.S. sports like baseball.”

Jane Diener, 17, from Atlanta Georgia, a student at Northview High School, said that she really bonded with the kids taking part in the kefiada. “At first I was a bit put off by the chaos or balagan as they call it in Hebrew,” she remembers. “But as the days passed I got used to the more relaxed discipline and I think it helped me build a really close relationship with the Israeli kids because I wasn’t interfering and telling them what they couldn’t do.”

“My hosts were great as well,” she adds, “I really felt like part of the family.”

According to Arkady Hasidovich, Regional Kesher Coordinator for P2K, the U.S. counselors program created a win-win situation for all involved. “The presence of these nine students not only strengthened the relationship between the communities in Atlanta and St. Louis and Yokneam-Megiddo, it also really helped the children improve their English, which is important for their school studies.”

Gartenberg was most impressed by the “strong sense of community support in Yokneam-Megiddo.” “And the most important thing was that for a few weeks I felt like a part of that community,” she says.