Sarit's+I+Face

toc =Rationale:= __ Rationale __ The person I chose to interview is Toby Klein Greenwald. She contributes to Israel in many different ways. The one I would like to focus on is Toby's contribution by directing the series of plays – "Raise Your Spirits".

I find Toby to be a great citizen because she totally gives of herself and passes it onto others. Her experience that she brings to "Raise Your Spirits" , her love for what she does, is always obvious,  whether if it will help others in the future or make them happier right then and there.

What I hope to learn from my project is how to give more to others while feeling 100% certain that I am doing the right thing. One other thing that I would like to find out during this project is how I can better contribute to Israel.

=Profile:=

**__ Toby- Klein Greenwald __**

Toby Klein Greenwald was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Toby has lived in Efrat with her husband since 1985. She has six children and three of them are married. All together, she has, “// bly ien hara”, // 8 grandchildren.



Toby made Aliyah in 1967, תשכ"ז, one month after the Six Day War. Toby made Aliyah alone while her family stayed behind in America. She finished high school and a lot of her friends came to spend a year in Hachsharat Bnei Akiva, in yeshiva or in other places. Toby went to Machon Gold, which was the only place in Israel at that time that provided a year program for girls. The program then was mixed both boys & girls. She was planning on coming for a year, or maybe even for two years, but Toby stayed on for 43 years. As Toby says “as soon as I got off the plane, I know that this was the place!"

When Toby made Aliyah, it was a very exciting time because Israel had just liberated Yerushalayim, Hevron and Beit Lechem. Everyone was in a stage of euphoria. “It was very exciting”, Toby says. It was exciting in an emotional and spiritual way. It was exciting to go to all those places that you learned about and then finally to see them. And, yet there were little things that brought Toby down to earth, like dealing with getting around Israel or going into a store and buying something. Toby did not know the Israeli language such as names of food products and little things like that, which made things harder.

Toby came to Israel at the time with a friend who went with her to Machon Gold, but nobody was there to pick them up because the school thought they where coming the next day. “Somehow”, Toby remembers, they got to Jerusalem on their own, shleping their suitcases on buses and getting off in the central bus station. Her friend, who spoke some Hebrew, unlike Toby who hardly spoke any Hebrew, wanted to go and ask the information center where they can find a sherut, but her friend thought that in plural “sherut” was “sherutim”. So her friend went to the information center to ask them were are the sherutim and they were sent to the back of a building. So Toby and her friend shleped all their luggage and just waited and waited and waited and waited there, yet there were no taxis that came. They brought all their things back and asked the information center again where the sherutim were. The lady at the counter told them that it's in the same place that she told them before and they started arguing with the lady that its not there. She said yes it is, they said no, it's not and so on. So they went back and did this two more times.

Finally they just took a bus to Machon Gold which they discovered was so close to Tachana Mercazit that they probably could have walked to the school the whole time instead of shleping their baggage back and forth. That's when they discovered that sherutim was not moniot sherut, but rather bathrooms.

For more than thirty years Toby has taught. The subjects she taught include the Bible, Jewish philosophy, Creative Writing (in both Hebrew and English), Drama, Film and English. Toby Taught in // Pelech, Ulpenet Omanuyot // and more schools, including boy’s yeshivot in Gush Etzion. Toby was also a co-founder of an internet company in Israel, WholeFamily.com, and is involved with different drama plays.

Toby started dealing with plays at the age of seven and had directed her first play called the ‘Shoe Maker and the Elves’, at the age of eleven. Toby directed plays for B'nei Akiva, at school, camp and in college. Toby even taught by bringing drama into her teaching.

After the Intifada in 2001, Toby started directing plays about stories from the Bible with a friend who founded the group and was the producer – Sharon Katz. And that’s when “Raise your Spirits” began to perform. So far they have produced five plays and are now in the middle of their sixth one. It started off in Gush Etzion and got to all different places throughout Israel. Much of the money from the selling of tickets went to charity. They have raised about a half a million shekels for charity so far.





All these drama plays came from the love that Toby and others have for it! One of Toby's inspirations was – "when I was a little girl I used to listen to my parents records", especially the one called the 'King and I' which was her favorite, "and danced around the living room".

Toby, with her neighbor friends, put on plays outside for the neighborhood for fun which was another inspiration for Toby.

Toby describes the good things that she does as being “very exciting to do something that you love and to make other people happy”. “I’m thrilled when I see women who have performed with us". "In some cases they are amateurs and they stay amateurs, but it changes their lives, and in some cases it makes them more professional". Some of the women who have performed in these plays came out with jobs. The plays led these women forward and opened more doors for them, it made it easier for them to deal, later on in the future with the drama performing. What Toby says from the Rambam: "the highest level of tzedaka is to help someone get a job".

The drawbacks are that it takes a lot work. You need a lot of patience because you’re dealing with women, who are very dedicated, but it’s not a professional cast: some of them come from the world of professionalism and some are semi professional. “You need to be not just a director but you also need to be a psychologist”. That took Toby a while to learn. Toby also deals with bureaucracy which is difficult, because they have to deal with community center and all kind of thing like that. It’s also difficult to raise money, and it is not easy dealing with all the different foundations.

They host families of victims and of terrorism or soldiers that have fallen and they love it, it lifts them and gives them nechama. One very special rule that Toby and the rest of the cast had come to a decision about was that, no matter what, they would never cancel a play! “Not to surrender” as Toby says. But they don’t force women that still do not want to act. After 911 there was a very big discussion if to cancel the play or not, and that’s when they started, which was at there 2nd show, reading Psalms in the plays and singing Hatikva and “Ani Mamamin” at the end of the plays.

 Toby’s work has touched the thirty thousand women who have seen these shows and there are thousands of more that have seen them in other places in Israel and in other countries. These plays lift people’s spirits and people learn from them.

Toby works with groups that have dealt with some sort of trauma, for example - girls from Gush Katif. It helps not only the people that watch, but also people that are involved personally. The plays help them forget their troubles for a while. It is good PR for Israel and for Gush Etzion. Toby thinks it inspired other people, because before those women where not involved in things like this and it helped open up that whole religious world.

They host families of victims and of terrorism or soldiers that have fallen and they love it, it lifts them and gives them nechama. One very special rule that Toby and the rest of the cast had come to a decision about was that, no matter what, they would never cancel a play! “Not to surrender” as Toby says. But they don’t force women that still do not want to act. After 911 there was a very big discussion if to cancel the play or not, and that’s when they started, which was at there 2nd show, reading Psalms in the plays and singing Hatikva and “Ani Mamamin” at the end of the plays.

Toby learned a lot about theater plays, but also learned a lot of Tanach before Raise Your Spirits was founded. In order to write the shows they have to learn a lot of Tanach and to know it well. Toby is a real perfectionist, and she learned that in community theater and in everything in life, that the fact that your a perfectionist does not mean that every one around you is also a perfectionist. It was a learning thing about Midot for Toby.

Toby always believed deep down in side that it would go farther then just a few performances. She thought this was too good and too important just to do a few times and she was right.

Toby's dream was to create a lot of musicals that would go around the world, just the way it does. Their shows are played all around the world, in camps, schools and at more places. To Toby it is a very exiting thing, “it is a real //ke mtzyon teze Torah//”. It is sending shows out to the world that people could learn from them and bring them closer to Torah and Eretz Israel/

When it comes to Toby’s feelings about how it is to know she’s helping Israel, she says, “It feels great. It’s all from God”. Her favorite expression is, “we only take with us what we leave behind.”

=Background Research:=

**__ Raise Your Spirits __** Five years ago, at a time when there was much terrorsm, a group of women in Gush Etzion came together "to raise their spirits". Due to all the depression that was going around caused by daily terror attacks, they decided to start a new type of project- They decided to put on a show. The show that they were planning, "would give them a positive outlet for their feelings and emotions". The show would be played by women and, would be only played for women.

Doing the play, "forced them to concentrate" on other things other than the unhappy news reports they’ve been hearing. Together they got to the name "Raise Your Spirits Summer Stock Company" production of "JOSEPH and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.



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__ Bibliography __ []

For All Pictures:

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 * __ If you'd like to fined out more information you could contact: __**

Sharon Katz izzy@actcom.co.il

Arlene Chertoff arlenekc@netvision.net.il

Toby Klein Greenwald toby@wholefamily.com

=Literary Connection= This is an article from the "Gushpanka" magazine, which is given in Efrat, Israel, and speaks about fostering and what’s it all about.

**באהבה ובאמונה**



Israel in 2010 is a country of violence, with murder and assaults being part of the routine. There are places that are dangerous to the people of the community and there are lots of children going around armed. With such an environment like this, it gets to be normal that even in a home which is supposed to be a promising and safe place for people and children is not that kind of place anymore. Many families are unable to raise their kids on their own as these children are suffering from violence, neglect or from parents that are just not interested in their kids.

With all of this, there are beams of light sent into this darkness and one of them is Machon Samit which takes care of children whose parents are not capable of raising them and puts these children in foster homes. Niva Ament, the coordinator and social worker of Machon Samit for the preschoolers says - "in any given time, we have about 50 -60 children of all ages because if we don’t find these kids a home, they will be sent to all kinds of dormitories where the child grows up with no relative, without a father and mother figure and a place were there are more kids like him who were taken out of their homes. This is a very hard reality and we try to avoid that experience for these children”.

Fostering a child is a special arrangement. It is different from "adopting", which in that case the child is given to ‘new’ parents in a complete way and does not know who his biological parents are until he his older. In "fostering" a kid, although the foster family raises the child and takes care of all his needs, the child knows throughout the whole process his real parents and the foster parents hope is, together with Machon Samit, that if and when his parents can raise him, he will go back to them.

The thought of the foster child maybe going back to his biological parents, makes it very difficult even though its for his own good - as Niva said, “it is very complicated: you get very attached to the kid, but in your mind you know that there is a real possibility he will leave. To give the child 100% love, but knowing that it is temporary”.

Niva started her job of Director of Fostering nine years ago. Then, there were in Gush Etzion, a very small group of foster families. Today, she discovers that there are about ten foster families in Gush Etzion and ten in the Community of Efrat.



Israel for me is what I call home!!!

In this article you can see some of what Israel is all about - for Jews and Israelis in general. One of them is living by the values of the Bible, the kindness and the giving of people to others, which is what a home should be like.

The article is about the power of wanting to help those who can't help themselves, those children who don’t have a proper home for them to live and grow up in.

In our world, there is not always enough desire to help those who need it, there is always something to push it off. I feel in my heart that Israel is a country that helps his citizens in all different kinds of ways.

The article also shows the values Israel ‘lives’ on, and that’s why I chose this article!!! One very important value that is stressed, is helping both young and older kids find a good home for them to live in, yet keeping in mined their biological family who can’t take care of them.

I feel that putting a kid in a new family, but still trying hard to keep the relationship between the foster kid and his biological parents is amazing. Except for the “ obvious  ” idea you get from the article - helping a child, it is helping Israel and Jews, keeping everyone into being one big family.

And that is exactly what Israel is for me!!!

**__ Bibliography: __**

__ Picture: __ http://www.baitisraeli.co.il/?CategoryID=577

=Creative Connection= __ Israel ____ for Me __

I chose to mark on a map a face which represents my thoughts about the face of Israel:

__ The eyes: __ I put the eyes on Mount Herman. I put them there because of the phrase- “Mount Herman is the eyes of Israel": Mount Herman is the highest mountain in Israel and from it you can see the northern boarders of the country and that is why it is Known as the eyes of Israel.

__ The nose: __ The nose I put on the city of Tel-Aviv. In Tel-Aviv, seats the Israeli army intelligence agency. That kind of agency is very nosy: it 'sniffs' information from all over.

__ The mouth: __ The mouth I put on Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the voice of Israel. It is also the capital of Israel, and all the political decisions are made there. The many faces on the map represent the different types of people who live in Israel. There are Jews, Arabs, Ethiopian and so many others. Every one of them contributes to Israel in their own very special way. Although some of the contributions aren’t necessarily positive, they still contribute to Israel's existence. The combination of the many different types of people is what makes our country- Israel, the country it is. The country I call home.

**__ Bibliography: __** Map: []

Eyes, nose and mouth: []

Faces without color: []

Faces with color: []

Happy faces: []

Dictionary- Morfix: []