Community friendship circle

R.C. BERMAN

Last month, Tal Cohen of Kiryat Bialik stood before a Torah and uttered the words common to bar mitzvah boys around the world. For Tal, whose speech and learning abilities lag far behind due to pervasive developmental disorder (PDD), it was an uncommon accomplishment.

“Everything Tal did at his bar mitzvah is in Rabbi Pini’s merit,” said his mother, Esti Cohen.

Chabad of Kiryat Bialik’s representative, Rabbi Pini Marton, met with Tal and nine other boys with PDD at the Kadima public school at regular intervals during the school year to prepare them for their bar mitzvahs. Now, Marton is opening Israel’s first Friendship Circle, a Chabad-sponsored program with 70 branches worldwide. It pairs up teen volunteers with children of special needs through visits at home and various social programs year round. Kiryat Bialik’s program will be the first non-school-based Friendship Circle in Israel. Currently, the only other Friendship Circle in the country is a school-based program run by Chabad of Ashkelon. Chabad of Bavli in Tel Aviv is also on track to start its own Friendship Circle around the same time.

Marton’s goal is to begin the first year with 20 volunteers and 10 children. The friends will meet once a week in the children’s homes, and come together for a monthly group activity like bowling.

Parents of children with special needs, most of them members of the bar mitzvah club, have already signed up. Teen volunteers, on the other hand, are more challenging, said Esti Marton, the rabbi’s wife, who is a graphic designer. She has prepared online presentations to help make the message of the Friendship Circle more interactive.

The Martons have also connected with the volunteer coordinator for ORT Bialik, the area’s largest public high school. Students are obligated to fulfil a number of volunteer hours before they can graduate, but the Friendship Circle will be up against the allure of volunteering for the ambulance corps or the fire department, both of which are popular options for Israeli teens.

The obstacles don’t scare the Martons. Since their appointment to their post five years ago by Chabad of Haifa Bay’s Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Oirechman, they’ve surmounted the odds, including opening the neighborhood’s first public religious preschool. When they moved to the mostly secular Givat Harakefot neighborhood in Kiryat Bialik on the eve of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, there was no synagogue; people gathered to pray in private homes.

“In times of war, more people feel the need to pray,” explained Esti Marton of the area’s first Chabad, which opened its doors for High Holiday services, hosted in a large bomb shelter (not an uncommon venue in space-starved Israeli cities). Hundreds attended. Continued interest in the prayer services convinced the city to grant them a space to pray. Today, Pini Marton leads the Community Synagogue of Givat HaRakefet in a bright, airy building constructed by the municipality.

When Marton crosses the road from the synagogue to a preschool across from the synagogue, the four-year-olds greet him like a rock star, clustering around his knees. A preschooler in a pink sundress runs over. “Rabbi Pini, do you remember we came to your house?”

Throughout the year, Marton visits the children to bring them classic Chabad holiday workshops: shofar factory, matzah bakery, Chanukah olive oil pressing.

“They feel like I am their friend,” he said. “For children to see a rabbi and feel that he is a normal part of their lives is an accomplishment.”

The workshops have become a feature appreciated by local public schools. Ami Reuben, director of Kiryat Bialik’s education department, thanked Marton for “enriching the knowledge of many students, especially with regard to Jewish values, Torah and mitzvot” and expressed hope that he “would continue and expand” his activities.

For her family and for her community, Cohen hopes that Chabad Bialik’s Friendship Circle meets with the same success. “I hope Tal will have friends, and learn to be a friend.”

This article is reprinted with permission. A longer version appeared on lubavitch.com.

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