Jewish students work to preserve the culture

Roy Nitzan

Roy Nitzan, WTV Staff Reporter

Several of the schools Jewish students left for California on Thursday for a retreat as apart of the Israeli scouts organization. WTV’s Roy Nitzan has the details. 

With less than one percent of the population in Texas being Israeli, the organization the Friends of Israel Scouts, or Tzofim, works to preserve the culture.

“The Tzofim, is the Israeli Scouts, it’s part of the world scout organization, but it deals with Israelis in Israel and here with Israelis that live outside of Israel,” education coordinator for the Israeli Scouts Aya Pitcovski said. “The goal of the Tzofim is to concentrate the Israelis, children to Israelis that left Israel, and to teach them about the Israeli culture, the Jewish holidays, and to make a community to help them connect to Israel. My role is the educational coordinator and I am the head of the counselors, it means that I give the counselors the tools to teach the little kids. I am an Israeli myself that’s been out of Israel for a few years now, I am very zionist, very patriotic, and I have a passion to Israel and I’m trying to pass it to the counselors as much as I can, so they can pass it to the little kids.”

Formed in 1995, the friends of Israel Scouts, Inc. – Tzofim encompasses programs which seek to educate its members, grades 4-9, develop self-confidence, leadership skills, and the desire to get involved in the community through educational programs weekly meetings, camps, and other special activities.

With less than 10 Jewish students estimated to be on campus, junior Yael Ben-David takes comfort in having a local Tzofim chapter.

“Being Israeli in this school isn’t really hard but it can be a bit lonely sometimes, I think there’s maybe 5 or 6 Israelis in this school so having someone to talk can be comforting,” Ben-David said. “Having friends who go to school with me and go to Israeli scouts is both awkward and comforting because, like I said, having other Israelis in the school can give me someone to relate to in a different way and they can understand you in a way that a lot of people here can’t or they don’t really understand part of our lives.”

Able to enter Tzofim in 3rd grade, students are able to become counselors once they reach the 10th grade.

“It’s a brand new responsibility because you are responsible for over 20 kids and sometimes they don’t even show up so it’s even more responsibility to call their parents,” senior Daniel Even said. “We make sure that all 20 kids show up and are under my custody for an hour and a half.”

There are Tzofim chapters all over the world, with 23 located in the United States and Canada offering camps that usually last between 2-4 days.

“So we have 2 camps, the winter and the summer camp, basically we have all kinds of activities in the camp,” Tzofim Dallas manager Assaf Mor said. “Every camp has its own unique style, we try to give them all kinds of experiences like sleeping out of the houses, without parents, and only with their friends, so we grow their independence and their maturity so we see a lot of difference between before and after the camps.”

The benefit of the camps comes back to campus, providing those in the Israeli scouts a tight knit group of support. Reporting for WTV I’m Roy Nitzan.