From Bed-Sty to Israel
McCarthy, Abigail
These facts are well known and yet we refuse to face them. We keep on going back to law enforcement and punishment, a costly and consistent failure. Fed up with mandatory sentencing guidelines,...
...They are well-dressed...
...They had to be warm toward each other and willing to share...
...The hardest part of getting the project under way, he found, was not fighting through the school bureaucracy, but selecting the students...
...The black teen-agers entertain stereotypes of their own...
...In themselves, these are only palliatives...
...The same thing must be done for other drugs...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS Abigail McCarthy FROM BED-STY TO ISRAEL BLACK TEENS ON A KIBBUTZ t is still hard for Americans to admit that things are better, or are done better, in other countries, other cultures...
...According to one of the volunteers, Dr...
...The students, without exception, marvel at their unconditional acceptance...
...We have heard, in an abstract way, that many of our citizens live in third-world conditions...
...They may walk the mean streets of "Bed-Sty" and struggle in a special school...
...We must do the same with other drugs...
...They admit to knowing no Jews and expecting the people of the kibbutz to be like the Hasidim, "smelly, and wearing funny hats and clothes...
...It is a film all Americans should see, if for no other reason than to learn how attractive, engaging, and "normal" these--our own-teen-agers can be...
...The striking and heart-warming film, Blacks to the Promised Land, made by Madeleine Ali, an AfricanAmerican who is a convert to Judaism, is making the rounds of small theaters...
...Why did they have to go 5,000 miles away to find white acceptance...
...The real solution to drug addiction lies in individuals' heightened awareness of the destructiveness of drugs, and in self-pride programs for society' s "have-nots...
...If we can distribute condoms and clean needles to control the spread of disease, why can't we bring ourselves to distribute drugs cheaply and legally...
...The same arguments about cause and effect ought to be made here as well...
...Those who drive while under the influence of drugs would be severely dealt with--much as we do with those who drink and drive...
...Midway in their threemonths' stay, as was only to be expected, they were rebelling against the food and the confinement and "dailiness" of kibbutz living...
...For their part the students fit into their temporary Israeli families with ease, meeting welcome with clear affection...
...They had to be stable and independent enough to sustain the experience...
...His selection seems to have been flawless...
...It is a shock, nevertheless, to learn that the French medical relief organization, Doctors of the World, which sends volunteers to underdeveloped nations like Somalia and Ethiopia, also has an affiliate in New York City...
...A study in the 1950s traced adolescent heroin addiction in New York City...
...The real solution for challenging and changing the grip of the drug culture lies in people having some sense of hope for their future...
...It is a risk, but given the alternatives, the risk is worth taking...
...While there has been a slight increase in drug use in those countries, the number of crimes associated with drugs has decreased...
...Yet the benefits of legalization will outweigh the negatives: less crime, illegal profits, more resources available for greater rehabilitation efforts, fewer jail cells and prisoners, better utilization of law enforcement personnel, greater respect for law, fewer corrupted policemen, and fewer deaths from impure substances...
...Thanks to such groups as MADD, laws related to drunken driving have become tighter and more strictly enforced...
...Television interviewers lay stress on the seamy sides of their backgrounds-over and over...
...At first it was exciting...like, wow...we're going to be on television...but after a while it got boring," says one girl, "They were always in your face," implying, she added, that the students were potential criminals, and describing them as typical products of a dangerous neighborhood...
...It was never like--oh, he's black, you know," says one of them...
...According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (1992), there has been no increase in its use in those states...
...In the documentary itself the viewer is left wondering as to how these students from the Bedford-Stuyvesant Street Academy were selected...
...It documents the experience of one group of such teen-agers and their hosts...
...Nadia Marsh, the people there are worse off than the poor of the third world Commonweal 16 July 1993:7because they do not have the extended families which provide a sense of security for third-world people (New York Times, May 4, 1993...
...But what is important for us to know is that they brought much with them--vitality and a sense of fun and celebration which caused the Israeli teen-agers to mourn their going--"It will be so dull without them...
...They took away an appreciation of work and cooperation and an understanding of what supportive family life could be...
...In the U.S...
...Why do we need this film to learn to know and love them...
...Let me hasten to say that neither the legalization of drugs nor the mere availability of treatment/rehabilitation would cure the root causes of their widespread use...
...They expect the whole country of Israel to be a desert and are surprised and struck by the natural beauty surrounding the kibbutz-Kibbutz Levahot-Habashan near the Golan Heights...
...PETER J. RIGA Peter J. Riga, a free-lance writer and a theologian, is an attorney in private practice in Houston, Texas...
...They also brought, unsuspected even to themselves, a deep wellspring of faith...
...Take, for example, the repeated statistics demonstrating that where the sale of guns is controlled, as in England, the number of homicides is minimal compared to ours...
...One boy says that he expects them to be very different because they come from a place of shooting and drug-dealing--"that's the world they know...
...But in the end they all left with regret...
...The legalization I envision would not be without regulation...
...One boy shows the "stash" with which he has provided against deprivation--candy bars and cookies hidden under a coverlet, and soft drinks stored in his locker--evidently brought all the way from home...
...Since then, numerous other studies have established the link between deprivation and drug use...
...Inquiry revealed that Stewart Bialer, a teacher at the academy, himself Jewish, had initiated the project...
...They needed immersion, he thought, in another culture to learn new habits and get perspective on their lives...
...There are scenes, too, in which the Israeli teen-agers awaiting the Bed-Sty students' coming express concern...
...And they tell interviewers that their teacher, Bialer, is "like a father" to them...
...It is interesting that, in the retrospective scenes at the end of the film, this same boy implicitly denies having entertained such concerns himself and attributes such suspicious expectations to his elders...
...As another federal judge, Robert W. Swett, told the Times, "The present policy of trying to prohibit the use of drugs through the use of criminal law is a mistake...
...Your Honor, we find the defendant guilty, the court room jammed, the docket overloaded, the calendar crowded, the jails full, the system appalling, but, what can you do...
...In the dining room," an enthusiastic Israeli woman said, "there were always six or seven calling me 'Morn.'" It is never explicit but it is apparent that the black teen-agers come from a culture where fathers are in short supply...
...Part of the money from the legal sale of these drugs could be allocated for education and rehabilitation, much as we do with tax money from alcohol sales and from gambling...
...The two mothers interviewed seem to have an intelligent and realistic understanding of their children's lives...
...there are now eleven states which have decriminalized the personal use of marijuana...
...Or the repetition in the current health-care debates that our Canadian neighbors across the border do not share our fears of financially crippling illness because the universal, singlepayer, health-care system there protects them in a way which most Canadian citizens find very satisfactory...
...Its volunteers work in parts of the city where people do not have even the most basic medical care...
...The United States has cut back drastically on its alcohol and tobacco consumption because people have become aware that even in moderation these legal products are dangerous...
...Yet we bump into the evidence every day in the pages of our newspapers...
...He was concerned that his students had no hobbies, did nothing constructive to speak of, and were passive recipients of the culture conveyed to them via film, music, and television...
...They are obviously a superior group...
...Pragmatically, the legal and controlled sale of drugs would not only reduce crime but channel valuable resources into treatment...
...It found that the majority of users were from poor neighborhoods...
...They are especially fond of George, the patriarch of the KibbutzHabasham...
...It is upsetting, too, that the people of Israeli kibbutz communities are taking in troubled black teen-agers from places like Bedford-Stuyvesant and giving them the acceptance and sense of family they cannot find here...
...The problem is not one of race, but of class and the sense of possibility...
...Drug legalization in England and Holland has had mixed results...
...Fed up with mandatory sentencing guidelines, two prominent federal judges in New York recently refused to hear drug-related cases (New York Times, April 17...
...8." 16 July 1993 Commonweal...
...Clearly, there will be some increase in drug use if drugs are made legal and accessible at a reasonable price...
...Their response to their Israeli "fathers" is very moving...
...Nevertheless, I think the time has come to legalize drugs...
...The stereotypes against which these students must contend are illuminated again and again in the opening scenes of the documentary...
...They may admit to having "boosted" (shop-lifted), or having been truants for months at a time, but they are lively and humorous and, in their serious moments, admit to a constant yearning for a better life and a better world...
...Their response to early rising and the work tasks to which they are assigned is not so affirmative but they adapt, with groaning and grumbling and eventually with high spirits...
...From the very first encounter the relationship between the students and the members of the kibbutz is heart-warming...
...Furthermore, taxes from these legalized drugs will fund treatment centers and educational outreach...
...They express themselves well in standard English...
...One of the most touching of scenes is that of their tearful response "to walking where Jesus walked," when they were taken on a tour to the Garden of Gethsemane...
Vol. 120 • July 1993 • No. 13
