My Year Of Service In Merhavim Regional Council
My world has changed tremendously since my last blog post. On January 4, 2026, I joined a group of volunteers my age, who have committed to a year of service in the south, helping communities that were hit hardest by the events of October 7 and the war that followed.
I learned about the project from a magazine article and immediately knew I had to do it. When I applied, I was fortunate to discover that I could join in the middle of the year, as the group already serving the moshavim near Ofakim urgently needed an English teacher for the local schools. After a Zoom interview, I started last week.
Back in 1989, after nine years of school and work in the US, my family tried to return to Israel. My husband found a position at Ben-Gurion University, and I was offered a job as an English teacher at a high school. We came to Be’er Sheva with our young daughters. I was 34 years old and had never stood in front of a class. I was not equipped to handle it, and lasted only ten days on the job.
This time, many years later, I am back in school as a volunteer, not standing in front of a classroom (the teachers who do are absolute heroes), but instead I teach English, and sometimes Hebrew, to small groups.
In addition to teaching four mornings a week, we have activities with our fellow volunteers. They have been together since September, and I joined only last week, but they made me feel truly welcome.
We are a group of fifteen volunteers: four couples and seven women who came on their own. Most of us live in moshavim close to our workplaces: the schools, the regional council, and Adi Negev Rehabilitation Hospital.
On the first night of Hanukkah, when I came to meet the group in Moshav Patish (where I now live with a flatmate), I was struck by how dark and quiet the moshav was at night. But since starting last week, I have come to realize that there are many cultural activities in this part of the Negev.
This is a real opportunity for me to find a meaningful occupation and to give back to the community, something that I did not do when I was young. How fortunate that, at the age of 70, I can finally do it.
