1985-1986 Rothberg Yearbook

KA TAMON,
Our Adapted Community
I and many more students of the OYP volunteered in
Katamon, there were all sorts of things for us to do. To
teach English, to work with children or the elderly, to
work with physically disabled children, and we even had
the opportunity to get an adoptive family.
Every Sunday, nine hyperactive children waited for
Shuky and me to play with them and to love them. To
show them we cared... It was an experience hearing them
say “I’ll miss you ”, or “The best day of the week is on
Sunday”. We played all kinds of games, took them on
Tiyulim, but the most important thing was that they
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knew we loved them — this was what they really needed.
We also had the experience of being adopted by a
Katamon family. I became very close to my “mother”.
For a whole year, almost every week, I went to visit my
“fam ily”; I learned about the community and about
Israel in general through them. Every time I went there,
they fed me so much, and — lets not forget the doggy bag
for the bus ride...
My work in Katamon was an experience I’ll never
forget... I’ll miss going to the gonenim Maatnas (community
center) and talking to the guard, the secretaries, the
teachers, the director, Yosi and Ofira, and especially I’ll
miss Shuky and our nine children... I wish I could express
on a piece of paper what they all really meant to me, but
you had to have worked in Katamon in order to
understand my feelings.
Caren Joffe