A Young Man Finds a New Awareness Half a World Away : Christian Taverez of Boyle Heights got a different perspective on life with a visit to an Israeli kibbutz.

Last year, 19-year-old Christian Taverez embarked on a journey to Israel with 11 other students from Franklin and Crenshaw high schools, where they lived with a Jewish family on a kibbutz. The trip was sponsored by Operation Unity, a nonprofit organization that seeks to expose young African Americans and Latinos to Jewish culture and strengthen the religious and cultural ties among the groups. Taverez, a graduate of Franklin High and a Boyle Heights resident, was interviewed by Erin J. Aubry .

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I went to Israel over a year ago, and stayed on the kibbutz for two months. Teachers were asked to pick students they thought would get the most out of the trip, not necessarily good students, but those with potential.

Me, I’ve always known I was going to make something out of my life. My English teacher saw my talent, even though I haven’t really been able to make the most of my potential yet.

The kibbutz experience was the greatest one I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve never traveled, except for going from here to New York and to Puerto Rico, which is where my family is from. The change of climate, the people, the surroundings . . . sometimes that’s what people need--a different place. It cleared any fog in my head about what I wanted to do.

America has the reputation of being the greatest country. With all the violence happening, people still believe that. But getting away, living in a different area, I caught more warmth than I get here at home. It makes me look at where I’m at. Feeling the kind of warmth and intelligence and compassion that I felt, it made me feel the same way. Now I’m home, and I have the gifts that [the Israelis] gave me.

The only thing I knew about Israel was that it was the Holy Land. I didn’t know anything about the history or the conflicts until right before I went on the trip.

Our group stayed together and we were given an adopted family. We were treated like family because that’s what the people do: welcome you into their homes and treat you like one of their own. Families there seem much more close-knit than families here. Everybody works together, for each other, so there’s no sense of me trying to get over on somebody else. “Wherever I go, my family’s going.” Everything’s happening together.

It’s hot there, but the country is gorgeous, full of colors. We worked harvesting bananas, watermelons, dates, things like that. They also had a plastic factory; they stuck me in there for about three days, but the place made me sick, so I went back to the fields. That’s the type of work I like to do, out in the open. I fell in love with that. I decided that if I ever decided to go into agriculture, I’d be well off, because I enjoyed the little time I spent doing it.

You get used to the work like you get used to getting up at 5 in the morning every day. We worked from about 6 a.m. to 8 in the evening, seven days a week. Here, you’re used to eating your hamburgers, your pancakes; on the kibbutz they give you fruits and vegetables for breakfast, and you say, “What is this?” But you eventually get used to it. The first two months I was back, I kept to the same diet.

In the Israeli system, your food is provided for you, your meals are always prepared. After work, you come back to the house and read or watch TV. Some of the students had a lot of school credits to finish up, but not me.

You had time to take a look at yourself, take a look at the people around you and analyze friendships as well as struggles going on with other people. I learned a lot about myself and the people I hung around with. We all did. I learned that just because you happen to know somebody’s name and you happen to be with him most of the day doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re friends, or that you’re going to work together.

I got tight with some students during the trip, but afterward we found that we didn’t really complement each other in many ways. We could take positive things from each other, but as for being best friends, it wasn’t going to happen. And people that I never thought I could get along with turned out to be friends I’ll have for the rest of my life. In taking time and making these decisions, I learned about myself and my habits.

I don’t think that self-reflection is encouraged here [in the United States]. We finish school, and then we have to work. I graduated, but now I have a job at a mini-market in South-Central, and it’s all work, work, work!

While I’m working, I’m thinking about going back to school. I don’t have too much time to sit down and think about where I really want my future to go. You have that time when you’re little. I remember being 12, 14. Now I’m 19. Next year I’ll be looking at 20, and in 20 years I’ll be looking at 40!

I think I want to be a writer--first in journalism, then in books, films, things like that. I write every day, on the bus as I’m going to work. I’ll see something that catches my eye, and I’ll put myself in that place, and write about it.

I call my family in Israel once in a while; I can’t talk too long because the bill is sky high. I loved it there so much, I told them that I’m coming back in the next five years.

The last time I called, my Israeli “sister” swore that I was in the country. I made everybody there aware that I loved it so much on the kibbutz that I didn’t want to come back home. Here, there are a lot of pressures that I didn’t have to go through there. Things just flowed better. The country itself, I got strung out on it.

I loved it.