Dina Kraft
Coming together on the court
A member of the Lithuanian team hangs from the ring after dunking, as Russian team members watch helplessly during the Friendship Games at Tel Aviv University on June 3. Brian Hendler/JTA
RAMAT AVIV, Israel – As the pony-tailed Polish point guard tried to dribble past a towering Chinese defender, rooters in a cacophony of languages cheered from the bleachers.
Russian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Serbo-Croatian — they all could be heard as Poland and China battled in the women's championship game of the second annual Friendship Games.
Israeli school gives athletes a leg up
Mekora Tarapeh would run up the steep, pine-covered hills on the outskirts of Addis Ababa for hours with friends, not realizing that his running talent would eventually help bring him to Israel.
Tarapeh, 19, along with several other Falash Mura teenage boys, was identified by an Ethiopian-Israeli running coach. Soon after, Tarapeh's family's immigration request was granted after an eight-year wait.
Tarapeh now rises at dawn for runs with a view of the Mediterranean Sea.
He's training as a long-distance runner at Hadassah-Neurim, a boarding school near Netanya that helps immigrant students fulfill their athletic potential.
Young adults help war-battered northern Israelis
Twenty-three Yeshiva University undergraduate students visited northern Israel to learn about the conflict with Syria and Lebanon and help Israelis rebuild structures damaged this summer. The trip was coordinated by YU's Center for the Jewish Future and the departments of student affairs on both undergraduate campuses. Besides touring strategic sites, the group spent time with Israeli peers and met with the wife of kidnapped soldier Ehud Goldwasser. They also participated in a blood drive coordinated by Magen David Adom. Included in the group from our area were Benjamin Benson and Victoria Stone of Teaneck, and Sara Lebowitz and Shani Mintz of Fair Lawn.
They painted flowerbeds and underwater worlds on the walls of bomb shelters. They planted tree saplings and cleared brush on hillside forests scorched by Hezbollah rockets.
Hundreds of young adults from across the Jewish world — including a student from Paramus, see related story — rolled up their sleeves to give back to the residents of Israel's war-battered north.
The group of 550 college students and young professionals from North America and Europe, from India and Australia, joined a mass community service project over the winter holidays called "Leading Up North," funded by the Lynn and Charles Schusterman Family Foundation.
