Grapevine: Teen hub opens in Sderot

New cafe run by and for teens, will be an escape for Sderot youth.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Teenagers (photo credit: Thinkstock)
Teenagers
(photo credit: Thinkstock)
YOUNGSTERS IN Sderot have a new place to hang out. Kehilla Doresh Tov, the Sderot branch of the International Young Israel Movement (IYIM), last week opened a Teenage Café in line with IYIM’s ethos of providing services for the betterment of Israeli society from across the socioeconomic spectrum.
The new Teen Café, aimed at youth from lower income families in Sderot, is open six nights a week. It is operated by the teens themselves, as well as volunteers from the Doresh Tov community and students from the city’s academic college. Located on the premises but in a separate unit of Doresh Tov, the café will, if all hopes are realized, become a hub for the teenage population of Sderot and surrounding communities.
The raison d’etre of the café is to provide these teens with a secure environment at night, where they will be given opportunities for educational enrichment, promotion of self-esteem, goodwill projects, interpersonal skills and much more.
During its running-in period, the project is being managed by Doresh Tov board members Yael Spangental, David Spangental, Igal Bracha and attorney Gal Taib. A youth director and social worker will shortly begin working as the first two members of staff. IYIM Israel president Ceec Harrishburg says that members of his organization are delighted to reach this milestone that has been in the planning for two years.
SOMETIMES IT pays to have a parent who owns a marketing and communications company. Sharon Gefen, whose daughter Keren Ella was among 22 graduate students completing their MFA degrees at Bezalel whose works went on display in a group exhibition in south Tel Aviv, sent out invitations for the opening last Tuesday to people on her regular mailing list. The exhibition remains on display at 60 Shalma Street until June 30. Viewing on weekdays is from 5 p.m.; on Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; and on Saturday from noon to 7 p.m.
IN A quasi-reversal of fortune, Prof. Joram Feldon was appointed president of the Jezreel Valley College after the Council for Higher Education had decided that Prof.
Aliza Shenhar, who had served as president of the college for 15 years, had to step down because she had exceeded the maximum 12-year period in which someone can serve as president of an institute of higher learning. However, the powers-thatbe at the college did not want to lose her services, so they created a new position for her – that of rector, a position she had held many years earlier at the University of Haifa. Shenhar is also a former Israel ambassador to Russia and is held in high esteem in many circles.
The problem was that no tenders were issued for the position of rector of Jezreel Valley College, and to make an appointment without publishing tenders runs contrary to the rules.
This was not the only problem. There were also several budgetary irregularities, including some related to Feldon’s employment at the college prior to his appointment as president, in addition to which he had refused to guarantee that Shenhar would continue to be employed at the college as rector.
Someone decided to make the state comptroller aware of these and other irregularities, as a result of which he wrote a scathing report. A month after Feldon’s appointment as president of the college, its governing council decided to cancel the appointment. In reaction, Feldon went to the Labor Court, claiming that the position had been snatched from him because he would not comply with the breach of regulations regarding Shenhar.
The governing council denied that this was the reason and said that the appointment was retracted because Feldon, at the time of initially being appointed as the college as vice president for research and development, had not disclosed that he was also employed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, which has since fired him because he had also failed to inform them of his employment in Israel.
Because Feldon is really a top-class academic, the college has now reached an agreement with him whereby he will remain on staff but will not serve as president.
Meanwhile, the future of Shenhar is still in limbo.
ELSEWHERE IN the country, Prof. Eliyan Elkranawi was slated to make history this week as the first Beduin academic to head an Israeli institute of higher education.
Elkranawi, 54, was due to be officially appointed as president of the Achva Academic Campus near Kiryat Malachi. Last week the executive board of the college unanimously endorsed the recommendation of the search committee, but senior members of the college council were vehemently opposed to the idea of a Beduin heading an Israeli educational institution, giving as their reason the fear that a Muslim could not possibly advance the values of love of the Land of Israel, service in the army and contributing to the state.
While it is true that Elkranawi did not serve in the IDF, several members of his family have done so. Elkranawi, who lives in Rahat, was previously head of the School of Social Work at Ben-Gurion University.
It is ironic that the council has rejected him at a time when the government is running a radio and television campaign to encourage employers to recognize the qualifications of members of Israel’s minority communities and to employ them accordingly without religious or ethnic bias.