Big, scary plans for 2022-23

 

Dear friends,

I have spent these last few weeks summing up the previous year at Elifelet, and planning the coming school year. I must say, I have found the process to be energizing, astounding, and not a little frightening. In the last year, we grew from a violin class of 9 to a class of 25. We placed seven children in the municipal conservatory. We started to branch out to other instruments – ukulele, guitar and piano. We tried to start a choir, but failed. Our team of volunteer music teachers grew from two to six.

But the plans for the coming year dwarf that growth. This school year, we want to reach more than 80 kids. We expect 14 to 16 second year students to sign up for conservatory, in addition to four of the original seven who will continue into their third year. We hope to grow our volunteer staff of music teachers from six to 12 or 15.

Last year we brought an amateur symphony orchestra to play for the school, we had two public concerts and two special events. This year, we want to have special events – workshops, drummer sessions, concerts – once every one or two months, and we hope to stage four concerts during the course of the year.

See what I mean when I say frightening?

For my part, I am not only frightened, but I am deeply ambivalent. When I started here four years ago, all I wanted was to teach violin to statusless kids in South Tel Aviv. I have done a lot of things in my life, but nothing as moving and as deeply satisfying as this. I saw how music could transform these kids; how, for two hours a week, they could step out of the poverty, the insults, and the violence confronting a people that Israel has repulsed; for two hours a week, they could be equal, they could touch the stars.

But with a project of this dimension, I will have to give up at least part of my teaching load, and spend that freed time managing this project. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy managing, it is what I did most of my professional life. But compared with the deep glow I feel from teaching, it doesn’t stand a chance. On the other hand, I guess I am somewhat to blame – this was, after all the realization of a dream that was mine. And seeing it approaching fruition is, in itself, worth a lot to me.

And, speaking of dreams, this is only the start. Because what I really want – what I dream – is to have my kids – my statusless, hopeless, rejected kids – playing side by side with all the kids of south Tel Aviv, in a community orchestra that destroys the awful walls that hatred and fear have built. And I now believe that dream is within reach.

We still have a lot of challenges facing us. We need to enlist the teachers, we need to purchase new instruments. We will have to hire a professional teacher to take those students that I cannot teach. It also means we need to find the money to subsidize conservatory lessons for triple the number of students.

So, this letter is not just a status update. It is an appeal. I am not very good at asking for money, so I am not going to do the usual things that money raisers usually do. Just, know that we need money – not a prohibitively huge sum, but a lot more than last year. So, if this letter has moved you, and you want to donate – stop. Take the amount you thought of and multiply it tenfold. Then go to this website:

https://www.elifelet.org/donate?lang=en

Here are some pictures from last year.

 

Year end concert - with an eye to next year

 Saturday was our year end concert. Fifty or so parents, and about 15 students. It was the perfect end to a delightful, meaningful and fruitful year.

This year we had more than just violin. Mark taught a ukelele class, and at the concert his kids played songs in Togalog and Tigrinyi as well as Hebrew. Parents and kids joined in. Avigail and Avigail (two girls, same name) played a Bach minuet. Noah played "The Storm". The first year students played Pop Goes the Weasel, the Angry song, and the Hiccup song. The whole crowd hiccuped away at strategic moments. 

This year we added guitar and piano, taught by Eden and Shiraz, two volunteers from the Rimon school of Jazz. They began teaching only toward the end of the year, and their students didn't feel ready to go up on the stage. Next year!

Now starts the work of signing up kids for continued lessons at the municipal conservatory. This school year we had seven students in the conservatory. I expect that we will have an additional 10 students starting in September. I will keep you posted.

As a means of recruiting conservatory students, our program at Elifelet is by far the most effective in the country. About 70 percent of our first year students want to continue their studies. I think the reason for that is that, for our students, violin is much more than just a neat hobby. It is a way to respect, to self-esteem, and an oasis of peace and joy in a hostile world. 

Respect and self-esteem are indeed one of our main goals in the program. But they are not our only goals. Another objective is to get our children out of the closed neighborhood that is almost their entire life. Many of my students have rarely if ever ventured beyond Har Tsiyon street, the border of the Shapira neighborhood. The weekly trip to the conservatory is a life-opening experience. 

And, ultimately, my dream is to see these children making music with other children - children from the neighborhood, and from beyond the neighborhood. To see them playing in a community orchestra, with Black, White and Yellow, kippa Sruga (religious) and secular, Jewish and Arab, sharing their music together.

I am still far from that goal. But I am optimistic that in September we will take the first steps to achieving it.