CRENSHAW : Students Use Israel Trip to Dispel Myths

Rising at 4:30 a.m. to harvest bananas for six hours may hardly seem like a vacation. But for 10 Los Angeles high school students who spent two months on a kibbutz in Israel, it made for an experience of a lifetime.

“The greatest thing was the people,” said 17-year-old Shawn Taylor, a Roosevelt High School senior who is sharing her experiences with classmates. “Everyone worked really hard together. . . . We felt very accepted.”

Crenshaw High School student Rochelle Brown said the hard work was only a small part of a rich tapestry of experiences.

“I’m really going to miss my new family,” she said with a sigh, clutching a small silver hamsah --a gift from her adopted Israeli sister--hanging from a chain around her neck. “I can’t wait to go back.”

Taylor and Brown were among the students from Roosevelt and Crenshaw high schools chosen to make the trip to Israel in April to experience firsthand the communal life of a Jewish kibbutz.

The trip was sponsored by Operation Unity, a nonprofit group founded in 1991 by journalist Cookie Lommel to improve relations between African Americans and Jews. Lommel opened the trip to Latinos to give them a chance to learn about a culture that she says is probably more foreign to them than to blacks.

Ricky de la Paz, 18, said the trip gave him the chance to see something very close to his heart that he never thought he would: the Holy Land. “That was like . . . Wow!” said the Crenshaw senior, grinning and spreading his hands to indicate the enormity of the experience. “We saw all these big temples. I felt high, I felt great. I’m like a new person now.”

Lommel, who is African American, said she was inspired to start the trips after traveling to Israel three years ago and witnessing the warm interaction between Ethiopian Jews and their Israeli counterparts. She said she also wanted young people to see that the Middle East is not the war-ravaged, fractured land presented by the media.

Brown acknowledged that her parents had doubts about sending her off to Israel after the Feb. 25 massacre of 48 Muslims by Jewish extremists in Hebron. “I used to think that (Israel) was a bad place, but I learned firsthand that it’s nothing like that,” she said.

Students lived with families on Kibbutz Beit Zera, about a mile south of the Sea of Galilee. They tended bananas and other fruits and vegetables, and worked in plastics factories. In their free time they visited such places as the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem and the West Bank. They also visited Arab and other families.

For 17-year-old Ivan Lopez, a Crenshaw senior, one of the high points was unearthing an artifact during an archeological dig at Bet Guvrin, outside of Jerusalem.

“I found a Greek perfume bottle thousands of years old,” Lopez said proudly. “I couldn’t keep it, but it was great. I never thought I’d find anything.”

One thing the students did find was a sense of community they say is sorely lacking in their own neighborhoods.

“It felt really good to be a part of the (Israeli) society,” said Taylor. “They were very together. . . . We could learn from that and make this world a much better place.”