Coming soon to Atlanta and Miami - Fall 2007
Kids from different American communities are bringing this Multi-Media play to USA stages, remembering the Holocaust and our israeli victims of terrorism. I your interested in having your own school or community kids perform in your area get in touch with kidsforkids@kidsforkids.net.
A LESSON IN HEROISM  

Israeli Kids Bring Drama About Terrorism To The Stage by Lisa Traiger Special to WJW

Wearing braces and ponytails, low-cut denim and T-shirts, 200 Washington-area teens learned a lesson in heroism from their Israeli counterparts on April 27. Distilled in song and photographs, uncensored news footage and historic documentation, but most unflinchingly in real-life personal narrative, seven Israeli teens painted a picture of what it's like to live in Israel when the grip of terrorism knows no boundaries.

These children may wear scars, some visible, others hidden, but they haven't given up on life and that's the message that the American teens took to heart.

Kids for Kids, founded four years ago to assist youthful victims of terrorism in Israel, conceived Yesterday's Kids, a 100-minute dramatic, multimedia production, performed by and for kids. In Israel, a Hebrew-speaking cast of teen performers, none trained actors and all victims in one way or another of terror, has been working for a year on this project under the direction of Leora Adam, a drama teacher there.

But Kids for Kids founder and director Yeshara Gold, a Jerusalem resident, knew deeply that these Israeli kids were more than just victims: They had an important message to convey about their lives to their Jewish American counterparts. Gold revised her script for seven English-speaking Israeli teens, and Yesterday's Kids made its United States debut at Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac.

Co-sponsored by Har Shalom along with congregations Beth El of Montgomery County in Bethesda, B'nai Israel and Magen David Sephardic, both in Rockville, Ohr Kodesh in Chevy Chase, Tifereth Israel in the District and the D.C. Metropolitan Area Coalition of Israel Affairs Committees, the event was important enough to take teens away from homework and soccer practices, band rehearsals and other extracurriculars on a school night.

Yesterday's Kids is dogged drama, raw, unmitigated by the inexperience and youth of its performers.

The many vignettes tell parallel true-life stories of Warsaw ghetto resistance fighter Mordechai Anilevitz and an Israeli sergeant, Gad Ezra; of well-known children's humanitarian Dr. Janus Korczak and his work with orphans during the Holocaust, and a contemporary humanitarian, trauma expert Dr. David Applebaum, who died last year in the Cafe Hillel bombing on the eve of his daughter's wedding; of the Piazene rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto and of Rabbi Yitzhak Arama, a father of six who led the community of Gush Katif and was gunned down in 2002.

This ripped-from-the-headlines sensibility is underlined as well by current and World War II newsreel footage. In introducing her young company of performers, Gold carefully noted, "We are in no way equating the Holocaust with the situation in Israel today É but if we look back, perhaps we can find a secret that they held back then to help with our struggle now."

Gold continued, "Our kids are not terrorist victims; they're survivors. They're heroes. That's what this program is all about."

At the program's conclusion, the seven Israeli teens came forward and introduced themselves. Their own personal stories were as powerful as those they just enacted. There were two buddies, Judah Millstein and Dovi Leibowitz. Both were just 14 when their best friends -- Koby Mandell, whose family had moved to Israel from Silver Spring, and Yosi Ishran -- were brutally stoned to death in a cave not far from their quiet Jerusalem bedroom community, Tekoa.

Sara Poupko's heroic story is inspirational. Nearby when an Egged bus exploded in Jerusalem, Poupko ran toward the scene pulling away wounded children, among them Shoshie, a 6-month-old baby girl, who was lying cut and bleeding on the ground.

Atara Blaustein suffered the loss of her mother just eight months after her family made aliyah. Yet, when asked in the brief question-and-answer session what she loved about her new homeland, she described with absolute conviction the beauty of the land, the attachment to the Jewish people and the hope to which she stills holds fast.

This is the heroism Gold meant to highlight in Yesterday's Kids. For Jessica Reback, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Har Shalom in Potomac, the program was eye opening. "We don't hear about Israel from people who have our perspective as kids. This is on our level; it's not just what the newscasters on CNN are saying. It surprised me that every single kid up there knew someone and they're so confident in what they're saying."

That confidence comes from the hard work and effort of Kids For Kids, which in addition to the Yesterday's Kids program, has initiated a number of support programs and groups for the silent majority of terror victims, those that founder Gold says "fall between the stretchers."

"We have a view," she says, "of who needs help."

Traditional recovery programs in Israel do not cover victim services for best friends, cousins, students who lost a beloved teacher or for witnesses to a bombing. That's where Kids for Kids steps in with counseling, dramatic therapy, writing-to-recovery programs, support groups, hospital and home visits, and other therapeutic services.

But it's not just teens in Israel who can learn from Kids for Kids. "These kids in America are just as important as our kids in Israel," said Gold, a mother of five who made aliyah from Miami 28 years ago.

"As long as people come and hear these stories and they grow, it's meaningful. We wanted to reach out and to give the message that we are still here. You never know where the little seed will be planted. What we're giving these kids is a gift."

Lisa Traiger writes frequently on the performing arts.

This story was published on Thu, May 6, 2004.