New Wind in the Negev

...We've just been dumped here...

...It's yours...

...Today Dimona residents tell this joke on themselves without bitterness...

...It hovers around 6,000 today, which is barely viable...

...By helping raise their standards, we improve the local schools and thus give a boost to this whole part of the Negev...

...This is a first—and it's had a tremendous effect on the local residents, who've had nothing but a negative image of their town before...

...But in fact they're thriving there...

...Comparisons can't be avoided," he says, "when one moves from New York to Tel Aviv, or from Columbia to a university in Israel...

...It sits on the college board, provides funding within its means, and has turned over a huge unfinished sports complex next to the college for use as an art-theater-dance-music facility...

...They asked the opinion of Elad Peled, then a Columbia graduate student and today a deputy mayor of Jerusalem...

...Yeroham's population— about 75 percent Moroccan, 20 percent Indian, five percent from here and there—was no different from that of a score of other communities established to absorb the immigration wave of the early 1950s...

...He also believes it no accident that much of modern art and science is the product of Jewish minds...

...Many lack a B.A...

...The community doesn't need that...

...No wonder that only 10 percent of the oriental kids ever Finish their public schooling and pass the matriculation exams...

...I don't believe in the separation of secular and religious subjects...

...A determination to suit their institution to the needs of Yeroham and its environs is just why such a college can work...

...Vandalism—even with little to vandalize—is common, and elders complain that youngsters are into drugs...

...Motti teaches courses in desert ecology and environmental adaptation, and like all of the college faculty, is involved with practical matters in the town...

...When I explained my apprehensions to him, he said, very wisely, 'You're a college man...

...Emphasis is on the practical and specific problems which exist in the area's public schools (many of the college faculty also teach in those classrooms...

...Take the college with you.' " Although he hadn't quite planned it that way, Menahem ended up doing just that...

...The dull apartment blocks lack character even by Israeli standards...

...Crazier still, they are determined to turn the town around and bring it back to life...

...A sense of community, even within the tiny confines of the town, never took hold...

...In recent years, although Yeroham has one of the highest birth rates in Israel, the population has steadily dropped...

...But even in Hatzor one does not sense the apathy and despair which is immediately sensed in Yeroham...

...But the Ramat Hanegev group is dedicated to enriching itself through the warm traditional Jewish values of the populace...

...He had taught English in Beersheba for about a year, but found the capital of the Negev too urbanized to suit his taste...

...They can afford to, for their settlement is far more successful than most Israelis realize...

...A group of bank clerks who otherwise might have had to commute to Beersheba now comes in twice a week from Dimona to study English...

...They all say they've chosen to live in Yeroham to satisfy their own particular needs...

...We're all traditional Jews at the college...

...But as the American experience has shown, just heaping money on a social problem is insufficient...

...My wife," he says, "had long believed in the advice of the Lubavitcher rebbe...

...Such a thing had never been suggested before...

...After a modest start with 130 students," says director Fine, "we're really getting under way, and we're coming up with exciting programs, the kind which are natural in such an environment...

...Says Rabbi Ben Hollander, who teaches Bible and Jewish studies: "The people here have such a valuable family and traditional life, and the warmth they generate is simply incredible...

...The Alexenbergs therefore decided to return to Israel in such a radical manner that a lowering of expectations would not even come into play...

...Menahem (Melvin) Alexen-berg, former associate professor of art and education at Columbia University...

...Unemployment figures are vague, but about half the town's population is receiving some sort of welfare aid...

...Before he left New York, however, Alexenberg acknowledged his doubts about what he would do in a dusty little development town...

...That may be unique for any Israeli settlement...

...They must be integrated...

...There are no jokes about Yeroham...

...They're coming from Dimona and Mitzpe Ramon and Sde Boker and elsewhere—for classes and cultural enrichment...

...Teeming with fish, ducks and Other wildlife, the lake reflects Yeroham's name, "Waters of Mercy," and the tradition that this was the place where the Lord provided a spring in the wilderness for Hagar and Ishmael...

...One investigative reporter spent several days there a few years back and concluded that the best thing might be to shut down the place altogether— to unplug the life support systems and to disperse its shriveling population elsewhere...

...Along with the Alexenbergs, some other families with academic qualifications unusual for Yeroham had moved into town...

...Alexenberg agrees...

...Signs indicate that such hopes are not mere dreams...

...College director Dr...

...Now people actually come to Yeroham...

...Raising teachers' standards, however, doesn't mean simply helping them to acquire certificates...

...But we can provide a step for people to raise their educational standards and to better themselves...

...Equally significant, housewives and factory workers are starting to take enrichment courses at the college...

...Miriam Cohen Center right: Dr...

...Given all the aforementioned, the young man's desire to leave sounds rational...

...The "commercial center," with its fly-specked shops and single cinema (offering, on my last visit, The Magnificent Seven) bears only remote resemblance to many neighborhood shopping centers in Jerusalem...

...Just as they are committed to the spiritual life of the community, so are the newcomers committed to the land...

...That's happened elsewhere...

...But Yeroham has what I wanted—the ecological purity of the desert, the warmth and traditions of a small town...

...In truth, I came here for only a year of national service, but if my teaching and other commitments in Jerusalem permitted, I certainly could see settling here...

...They've been saying that about small towns in America for years...

...Not so in the next development town 13 kilometers to the south...

...Page 38, left: Professor Menahem Alexenberg Top right: Dr...

...Efforts were made to provide all development towns with adequate housing, employment and amenities...

...Both the subject and the structure of what is being taught are utterly foreign to, and unsuitable for, the oriental pupils, whose entire space-time framework is contrary to that of the West...

...Hatzor residents may complain that over the years the government has neglected them...

...And I wanted a simplified life style...

...Our little college has been in existence just two years, but already the town has seen phenomena such as it's never known...

...So possibly a student here could go on to get a degree elsewhere...

...Although some of the faculty may admit to long-range fantasies of a full-fledged liberal arts college, which would be a first for Israel, everything about the college is related to the immediate and practical needs of the community...

...But we don't want that at the expense of ruining the human and ecological qualities of the town...

...Though it sounded reasonable and even merciful, his report distressed the nation...

...Led by energetic young Mayor Yerach Glatter, the town council has overcome its doubts and is pitching in...

...When the trucks ran out of gas, the joke goes, the immigrants were dumped out and the development town of Dimona was founded...

...The godfather of the group is Dr...

...Saddest of all are the young men who, having completed army service, spend their days in the town square idly kicking a soccer ball, drinking espresso, or staring into space...

...Attention from the outside must be matched by a will to live from within...

...or other teaching certificate...

...What place in Israel has the least pretensions of copying Western culture, the place most thoroughly Israeli...

...One youth, lounging under the war memorial in the commercial center, gestured vaguely toward the industrial garbage dump on the edge of town and told me: "That's us...

...But their positive impact on the town is already demonstrable, and the town is showing its appreciation...

...Some of our courses are accredited to Bar-Ilan University...

...My daughter is the only Ashkenazi in her high school, but she's been welcomed and accepted completely...

...And such comparisons inevitably lead to disappointments...

...Then again, we can provide some mental stimulation for its own sake...

...A college would be born and he would be its president—and it would come about in the often mad way that things happen in Israel...

...Such a failure had never been acknowledged before...

...All of them are ecology-conscious and have come to value the desert, none more so than Greek-born architect Motti Cones...

...Some of the towns prosLe ? Bearfield is the pen name for an Israeli journalist...

...He's taught at many of its universities, headed national projects for the Education Ministry, lived comfortably in Israel's elite academic suburbs...

...Several were members of a garin, or nucleus, of an urban cooperative settlement group hoping to pursue their careers in an area where they would be appreciated and needed...

...And conversely, the idea of anyone moving into Yeroham sounds crazy...

...Yeroham was always a place people left—either for shopping or for medical and educational services—or for moving out for good...

...Knowing the town already had sufficient school buildings—Yeroham certainly wasn't growing—he made inquiries...

...You don't get this kind of synthesis in the American Jewish day school," he says, "or even at Bar-Ilan University...

...All of this helps to lay to rest the suspicion of a group of western-educated academics moving into Yeroham with plans of "saving" the town with their "superior" knowledge and techniques...

...Much of the input behind the college's educational psychology and philosophy comes from Professor Alexenberg, who has done extensive research and writing on Israeli education...

...Menahem is convinced that the intellectual synthesis of East and West which he is seeking is rooted in a traditional Jewish thought which Jews from European and oriental communities share...

...Most come from English-speaking countries, but some Israelis have been drawn along as well...

...In a classic example of Israeli idealism, something which often seems in short supply these days, several energetic families have moved into Yeroham, bringing impressive skills and big plans...

...Soon as I figure out where to go, I'm getting out of here...

...The point is," Fine continues, "to serve the community...

...His last appearance in moment ("Peace: It's a BOR") was in May 1980...

...Alexenberg Finds examples of this third-stream philosophy in such areas as conceptual and abstract art and in post-Einsteinian physics...

...Hatzor, a former immigrant tent city next door to Rosh Pina, still lacks such essentials as a police station or a public telephone...

...There's so much to be done," Motti Cones enthuses...

...Certainly the amount of money invested in the town plays a role...

...A native New Yorker, Alexenberg is a longtime veteran of Israel and of its higher education institutions...

...We know it's desirable to have more people and industries here...

...Well," he adds with a smile, "I've done that—with a wallop...

...Haim, who is from Coalinga, California, a village outside of Fresno, dismisses any talk of "dying" towns...

...It is difficult to understand just why one development town flourishes while another wilts...

...Pinhas Fine, formerly of Dartmouth, Harvard and Columbia, explains: "We don't see Ramat Hanegev ever becoming another university...

...For example, there are 1,000 teachers in the area—800 in Dimona alone...

...Education here means western values and concepts fed to a herd of receptacles in a teacher-oriented, frontal classroom situation...

...It has a thriving population of about 20,000, offers diversified employment— including at the famed nuclear plant—and has sufficient cultural, social and medical services to free the town from total dependence on Beersheba, some 30 kilometers to the north...

...Haim Chertok, for example, chose to live in Yeroham for the very reasons which are often given as its chief drawbacks: its smallness and its isolation in the desert...

...But we're less concerned about Orthodoxy than we are about tuning into the true traditional religious life and thought patterns of the local community...

...We want to make sure it doesn't happen here...

...It's not going to be easy to leave...

...The Alexenbergs had never heard of it, but decided it was for them...

...pered, others faltered...

...The professor himself has a background in both art and science, and it is no accident that he believes study in both areas can be integrated...

...To his surprise, the town council promptly responded: "You want the building...

...Great...

...Too much of Israel is centralized and depersonalized," Haim says...

...He'd like to see Yeroham as a model for solar and wind energy use, has interested people in an adobe brick factory, and is designing dormitories which would be partly subterranean and built into the wadi behind the college...

...Kiryat Shmona, after some rough periods, now talks of itself, with much justification, as the capital of Upper Galilee...

...Considering Yeroham's longtime reputation as a dying community, all of this is nothing less than startling...

...Among the 30-odd development towns throughout Israel, Yeroham has long been considered the sick man...

...Peled immediately said Yeroham...

...A vigorous political leadership never developed there...

...Not only do they stand out like a handful of sore thumbs...

...Yet Yeroham always seemed to lack that cohesive chemistry necessary to make the town thrive...

...In a perfect example of Yeroham's luck, it seems that an institution for retarded children, slated for another development town, had been erected in Yeroham because of a bureaucratic error...

...Haim Chertok Lower right: Rabbi Ben Hollander Photographs by Richard Nowitz they returned to Israel...

...One group of hard-line religious Ashkenazim did form a kollel in Yeroham...

...One day, shortly after moving into Yeroham, Alexenberg was strolling by the edge of town when he came across a newly constructed and attractive classroom building...

...Young adults keep moving out, and no one blames them...

...The fact is," he says, uthe Israeli school system has failed the so-called oriental community, which is well over half the school population, and that failure is no surprise...

...only of Yeroham has it been suggested the case might be terminal...

...they've also proved disruptive, in some ways, to the local way of life...

...In Yeroham they feel they've been totally abandoned...

...An oppressive air hangs over the place...

...Montreal has adopted Yeroham under the UJA's Project Renewal—Fine, but we want planning done with local involvement, and we want Mon-trealers to come here and be involved...

...Fourteen overseas students are spending a year at the college— among their projects is helping young people in Yeroham videotape oral autobiographies of old-time settlers—and 20 more students from abroad are expected this summer...

...That was all right...

...What we're trying to do is to develop a synthesis, an integration of Western and Eastern concepts and attitudes which will break down the barriers and allow some true education to take place...

...We're developing an art curriculum for religious schools, Jewish studies materials for secular schools—" here he breaks into a smile, "and we even have hopes of setting up in Yeroham a national center for the study of problems in development towns...

...Fifteen young men who otherwise might have drifted away from Yeroham are, with Motti's help, seeking to establish a cooperative desert farming venture...

...Or we may simply help someone get the matriculation certificate he never had...

...The newcomers, of course, deny any idealism...

...Through the use of tools such as videotape, for example, teachers can see themselves teach...

...Others turned up just by happy coincidence...

...The health of many of those settlements is tenuous...

...I'm sure Yeroham can thrive, too...

...Yet over the past few years a number of people have been doing just that...

...Ramat Hanegev College, the first college ever in a development town, was established...

...Remarkably, not one of these families has quit the place...

...Motti has also organized neighbors in clean-up campaigns, is pushing for the re-opening of the old Beersheba-Yeroham road, which would cut a half-hour off traveling time, and is promoting tourism plans centered on Yeroham's most surprising asset, an artificial lake nestled in the Negev hills...

...Of the latter, some pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, some did not...

...But on a recent stint back at Columbia, Menahem and his artist-wife Miriam decided that they wanted something different when Pages 34-35: Factory dump, Yeroham Page 37: City center Insets, upper left: Residents, lower left: Neighborhood...

...There's also a good chance that army families will be moving here as part of the military pull-back from Sinai to the Negev—fine, but we don't want these families in some sort of elite community...

...Failure is signaled by the stubby trees that line Yeroham's dusty main street, Rehov Born-stein, which is named in homage to the owner of the Tempo soft drink bottle factory—Yeroham's chief employer...

...Today Carmiel and Arad are lively if somewhat overly planned and programmed showplaces...