Do you know families that have a child or other loved one with special needs? Have you ever heard parents speak about how driven and determined they are to have their child with special needs be able to fulfill his/her full potential?
A formidable place where young women with special needs have the opportunity to grow in life skills, social skills, character, and employment possibilities is Ulpana Ofra, a girls’ high school founded in 1985 with 17 students in its first class. We first became acquainted with Ulpana Ofra a few years later, when we spent a sabbatical year in Israel from 1991 to 1992.
Rookie Billet remembers: At the time, I was a participant in the senior educators program at the The Melton Centre for Jewish Education at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU). Senior educators came from all over the globe.
The program attracted promising and seasoned educators who wanted to study in Israel, grow in their leadership skills, connect with Israeli educational leaders, and bring back what they had learned to improve Jewish education in the Diaspora.
After returning to their home countries for three years of service to the Diaspora Jewish community, the participants could make aliyah if they desired. It took us a lot longer.
The program sought to introduce the participants to outstanding educational institutions of all stripes in Israel, and then have them study education as a graduate school subject, attend classes at both HU and another institution of their choosing, do research, and complete an approved grand project over the course of the year.
When we first visited Ulpana Ofra some 30 years ago with the program, we noted how the staff showed great personal interest in the students.
At the time, there was a program for Ethiopian immigrants to complete their matriculation exams. Aside from addressing these educational concerns, we were impressed with how the ulpana (“high school”) had all the girls of Ethiopian origin who needed orthodontics fitted for braces so that their teeth would be straightened, and their radiant smiles could reflect the joy they felt about their new lives in Israel. Our photo album of that year included beautiful photos of the students and the artwork and crafts they had made.
Another impressive feature was how the school provides avenues of success for all kinds of students. In addition to the lovely student-made artwork and crafts, such as quilting hanging on the walls, there is a small orchestra that musically inclined students can join. There were dramatic productions and sports activities in addition to academics, all in keeping with the scriptural idea of Chanoch l’naar al pi darko (“Educate the child according to his needs and ways”).
FAST FORWARD to today, when Ulpana Ofra has more than 900 students from all over Israel and is the largest independent ulpana in Israel. Particularly moving is the greatly expanded inclusion program for students with special needs.
It is so important to help these students develop their full potential and become a part of the social and cultural life of young people’s hevra (“social circle”).
Toward this end, the ulpana provides them only with a unique program that addresses their personal educational needs, and integrates them into the fabric of life in the school and the dormitory. And it makes great efforts to ensure that the other students understand and collaborate with this mission as well.
At the beginning of our aliyah a few years ago, our friends from the Ulpan Ofra administration, Amichai Braverman and his predecessor Moshe Batish, told us about a project they were undertaking.
With a large special needs population at a school for which they were committed to providing the very best, the faculty had found that the kitchen and food service work for which the girls were being trained was not enough.
Some young women needed to do work other than food preparation and waiting on tables. They spoke to us about how they were building a greenhouse where the girls would learn agricultural and horticultural skills and work with plants, flowers, and gardening.
For a family committed to the special needs population, and as lovers of gardening, trees, and plant life, this project spoke to us. Together with our children, we dedicated the new greenhouse to the baby daughter and the granddaughter we had lost, Miriam Rut Billet and Eliana Sara Jacobson, calling it Gan HaBanot – the “Daughters’ Garden,” hoping that the new life planted and cared for there would enrich the lives of the young women who learned and worked there, and that the souls of our loved ones would be nourished by the greenhouse as well. The response to loss has to be life, and this is one of the projects we undertook in their memory, such as the writing of a Sefer Torah [“scroll”].
Now, several years later, we were invited to visit the location of the proposed expansion of the greenhouse and other new programs put in place for the special needs population. The greenhouse has become so popular and central to the campus, that groups of senior citizens and Holocaust survivors come to work and build their skills in the greenhouse. It is a true example of hesed gorer hesed, that “one act of kindness leads to another.”
Needless to say, we were deeply moved and impressed with what we saw.
We saw the girls at work in the greenhouse and the joy on their faces. We met some of their dedicated teachers and mentors. We witnessed the location of the soon-to-be-expanded greenhouse being paved before our eyes.
The sewing center was our next stop, a new project where the girls craft gifts on sewing machines and sell them on their website. Creating the gifts involves using vividly patterned fabrics to make tissue holders, pita warmers for microwaves, challah covers, tallit and tefillin bags, warming covers for Shabbat hotplates, and more.
While some students dedicate themselves to honing their sewing skills, others take care of filling and wrapping the orders that come in from the website, calculating and recording the payments, and developing other skills. Along the same lines, girls work in the kiosk, where they make coffee or serve other items, take payments, make change, and work on practical life and commercial skills.
Our attention was called to the patience and respect accorded the students by the clients and customers, and the true inclusion that is happening there. One of the mantras of the school is that it is not a separate program for students with special needs but an authentic, fully integrated program where regular students and students with special needs learn, work, and play alongside each other, just like real life is supposed to be. What an inspiring place!
ANOTHER ELEMENT that moved us deeply were three olive trees we saw in the new paved area where the multi-purpose, fully accessible building and social center is going to be built. We were told that on the day that Shiri Bibas and her two beautiful red-headed sons were brought for burial, three olive trees were transplanted to make room for the new building. These olive trees that are thriving in their new location are a tribute to the beautiful Bibas family and all the other hostages, both living and no longer alive; [those] who endured and continue to endure so much, along with their families, just because they are Jewish and Israeli. The olive trees, which are also a symbol of peace, serve as a visible reminder of the fallen soldiers who have bravely gone to war to redeem the hostages and secure our nation, and the kiddush Hashem (“sanctification of God’s name”) that they represent.
We are so proud that we have been able to make aliyah and cast our lot with the Jewish people in our homeland. We hope and pray for genuine peace, both within the ranks and factions of our at-times-divided people, and with the outside forces that rise up against us in every generation.
How wonderful it would be if a desire for peace and friendship, raising good families, and contributing positively to the world would overpower the hate, greed, and evil that affect so many inhabitants of our Earth.
Rookie Billet is retired from a long career as a Jewish educator, principal, rebbetzin, and Halacha consultant in the US, and hopes to contribute to life in Israel. Heshie Billet is rabbi emeritus of the Young Israel of Woodmere, New York, and former member of the US President’s Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.
