Marcia Primus (lt) and Jackie Klein (rt) with Michal Ezer (center) of the Yeshiva Tichonit, one of the schools that will participate in the oral English Program for bagrut students

Perhaps I was naive when, eight months ago, I was approached to expand ESRA activities in Modiin. I thought that with ESRA’s long-established record of community programs in the educational, social and welfare fields, what city would not welcome us with open arms. So with childlike enthusiasm I set about the task. The first and best step I took was to enlist, as my co-chair, Cynthia Barmor who, like me, hails from South Africa, the only difference being that she has lived in Israel for more than 40 years, while I was still in the first flush of Eretz innocence.

ESRA has long had a presence in Modiin, in the capable hands of Stella Padeh, who arranges popular monthly lectures on a diverse range of topics and has been the backbone for many years of other ESRA activities (see page….). However, both Cynthia and I felt the time had come to extend ESRA’s activities in Modiin to include community outreach programs, and ESRA’s leaders had similar thoughts. It was time to add Modiin to the long list of cities benefitting from ESRA’s care and concern. 

The first step was to identify and list the English-speaking families here. To date we have almost 500 names and addresses, but unfortunately we don’t have email addresses. From this list we distribute 300 magazines every two months and hopefully, within the next couple of editions, we will be able to reach all the homes on the list. Our team of distributors is growing steadily despite initial difficulties in some suburbs of our rapidly expanding city.

 We were optimistic in hoping that we could  open a nearly new shop along the lines of the Raanana store, but we had to temper our plans somewhat when we started approaching management companies which run the many malls, both small and large, in Modiin. It seems they would rather have their premises standing empty than offer rentals charities could afford. We therefore adjusted our sights and decided to start with a second-hand book store, but the reality set in that even this smaller project would require municipal support. Then we started our Modiin Mambo with the municipality as our dance partner. Meetings were many; results were few, but promises were extracted. While offering support in general, the local city councilors are not familiar with ESRA and we are going to have to work hard to prove ourselves.

Then a visiting British professor, David Weitzman, came up with the idea that until such time as the municipality could find us a suitable location, we should run our book store on-line. Our local project committee of Vivienne Maron, Marcia Primus and Linda Lewis thought this a marvelous idea and a definite step forward. All we needed was a storeroom in which to collect and catalogue our books, and we asked our wonderful Modiin listers for help. The perfect storeroom was offered - another step forward - and then its availability retracted - a step back. We will perhaps first focus on obtaining email addresses for the 500 families on our list of English speakers living here, which will be a requirement to operate our ‘virtual’ book shop.

The other project we are pursuing, which fortunately requires no venue, is English conversation for bagrut students in local high schools. On October 19 Lola Katz braved Israel Railways and came through to Modiin to “train the trainers” and some 20 volunteers turned up and learnt much from her presentation. A step forward. Another giant step forward was a meeting with Deputy Mayor Moshe Levi (in charge of the education portfolio), members of his staff and the indomitable Dr Chai Aran on October 25^th. Dr Aran, with everyone’s blessing, wasted no time in calling the principals of local high schools and introducing them to us and the program. We are now setting up a meeting with each school and hopefully will be in a position to get started within the next week or two.

The Mambo continues, but we will not allow it to become a dance marathon.