Yahel Social Change Fellowship: The Grassroots Israel Experience

This program is run by toxic people who are often jumping on the side of gaslighting, victim blaming, lying, manipulating, and the list goes on. They are a bunch of annoying people who do not meet their promises even if that entails as urgent matters as medical care, comfort level in hostile environment, and even safety. The same people who tell some of us that we need to seek professional help at times of crises are the same people that:

* Don't care about our well-being
* lied about the medical insurance benefits, uses, and accessibility
* need to seek professional help themselves.

Regardless, that's not the way to go about dealing with vulnerable people during hard time; especially when they played a role in creating and leading to such toxic, hostile environments.

20% of the participants, including myself, all had left the program. This was due to many reasons. Staff and participants are toxic, there is absolutely no space for opinions that disagree with whatever is mainstream. If you dare have a different opinion be ready for the bullying that comes with this!

Besides that, the staff does not understand the antisemitism that diaspora Jews experience. They believe that Jews are oppressors and that hatred towards Jews/israel is “due to the conflict”. If you experience antisemitism in the diaspora this is not a place where you will feel safe or comfortable.

In one of my placements I worked with Arab children who on multiple occasions made their hatred towards Jews very clear to me. One of the children there grabbed my Star of David necklace and said “this is a dog” to me. He also had pro hamas and pro terrorism content on his TikTok account. I continued going to this placement until I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

The program staff expected me to keep going even though I made it clear that these experiences are traumatic for me and I felt that the environment was unsafe and that I didn’t belong there. The program staff gas lit me about this and argued with me about how I should continue going. Dana Talmi, the program founder, told another participant that my experience wasn’t antisemitic because it’s a “product of the conflict”. When this participant told her about the history of antisemitism, pogroms and expulsion in this land and about how Jews aren’t oppressors Dana had told her “that she didn’t agree with her interpretation of history”. So the founder is basically a conspiracy theorist who denies history and the oppression of Jews in their own homeland.

When I did stop going to this placement I was punished for my behavior. I was threatened with a contract breach and was told that any more problems could lead to my being kicked out of the program. Not to mention, if you do get kicked off the program you will lose your long term visa and will be “asked to leave” the country. AKA deportation.

We were treated as employees rather than people who came to Israel to volunteer out of the goodness of our heart.

This review hardly details the toxicity of this program. This program doesn’t do anything to better Israeli society or to critique it in a productive way. The blatant anti Zionism and anti israel rhetoric shared from staff, volunteer placements, and lecturers is not something that should be funded by Masa.

While I really loved my placements, the programme itself was an experience I wouldn’t want to repeat. Staff were unsupportive and created an environment of intolerance. 20% of the Yahel programme of 2021-2022 left early. Plenty of conversations were opened about what could improve the programme but they were not open to hearing this. More than half my city left early. They failed in their duty of care numerous times and I experienced prejudices and discrimination. Wouldn’t recommend. After countless attempts at trying to talk to them, I emailed Masa and was asked to leave the following day. I was the 4th person to leave that week.

I spent a summer with Yahel’s Jerusalem service learning trip and it was an incredible experience. We had a home base in a big building in Kiryat Yovel, where we all worked in different capacities in community service. I worked for the most part in manual labor projects with teens from the community. Despite the language barrier, I learned so much from them and from the program and felt amazing about the physical impact we had on our environment. We did everything from gardening to picking up trash to painting houses. As a program, Yahel also took us on amazing excursions to meet all kinds of people and we discussed our intended impact for social change in sessions as a group. I loved every second of it.

For the last seven months, I've been volunteering in Israel under Yahel. It's been a complete and total blast. I'm doing a lot of volunteering for the local community of Rishon LeZion, mainly teach and tutor kids English. I also had the chance to learn Hebrew, meet some great people both inside and outside my program, and explore Israel in new and exciting ways, like learning all about the Ethiopian-Israeli community.

I'd highly recommend this program for anyone who just graduated from university and is looking for a great way to spend the year.

I had a great time as a participant on the Yahel Social Change Program! As a member of the Lod Cohort, I volunteered in schools, an after school program for Ethiopian-Israelis, and led an English club for Arab high schoolers, however everyone was really able to shape their experience and volunteer with whatever type of organizations inspired them.

Our apartment was a beautiful two story space with a giant porch that wrapped around and all the amenities one could hope for. The neighborhood was close to the center and a mixed population. While Lod wasn't the safest city in the country, the program did a good job of keeping the participants safe while still showing us lots of sides of the country we wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to see.

The staff did a good job of helping out when we needed it and keeping their distance when we could figure things out on our own.

Overall would highly recommend.