For twenty years Naomi Ariel has been an active ESRA volunteer and an initiator of several important projects.

Her romance with Israel started in the early 1950s when she worked on Moshav Kfar Mordecai near Gedera where her parents were living. Later, due to financial difficulties on the moshav, she found work in Tel Aviv. Every morning after milking her family’s three cows and feeding the chickens, she travelled to Tel Aviv to work and returned at night. Later she stayed at Beit Hahalutzot in King George Street during the week and returned to the moshav at weekends.

At the end of 1957 she returned to England. In 1961 she married Benadam, whom she had met whilst working at Bank Leumi in Tel Aviv. They lived in Paris for two years, where Benadam was completing his studies for his Doctorate in International Law, and then they immigrated to Israel when Naomi was seven months pregnant and lived in Tel Aviv.

When the Ariels moved to Herzliya in 1985 the first contact Naomi made was with ESRA. Her volunteer “career” in ESRA started in 1990 with the mass immigration from Russia when she approached ESRA offering her help.   She became ESRA’s 'odd jobs' person, whatever and whenever needed – and this happened quite often.  She would take a new immigrant to one of the government offices and get them the assistance they needed, such as Bituach Leumi, the Ministry of Absorption, customs offices in Jaffa, and help in finding them accommodation.  When a large consignment of second hand clothes was sent from abroad to ESRA there was the problem of persuading the customs at Lod that this was not commercial merchandise. Her husband also became involved on the legal side, while Naomi remained the messenger. She made sure that correspondence was delivered to the correct offices in Lod and finally she was loaned a large four-wheel drive vehicle to drive to Lod and bring the consignment back to ESRA. Says Naomi: “I, who had never driven an automatic car, received a five-minute instruction on the vehicle from the volunteer loaning ESRA the van.  Everything arrived back safely!”

In 1995 when Merle Guttmann introduced community television to ESRA, Naomi enrolled in the first course. “Twenty of us, including Merle, did an in-depth six-month course on television and here I met and made long-term friends,” relates Naomi.  “ESRAvision is the result of this group, which is going strong till today.” And Naomi has been a vital member of the team, producing films in the early years and later carrying out administrative and public relations jobs.

In 2004, ESRAvision was approached by Middle East Television, an evangelical TV station with over 35 million viewers in the USA and two TV stations in this area, one for the Far East and one covering the Middle East from Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and countries as far away as Afghanistan.  METV offered ESRAvision a half hour spot on their Middle East station, which is where ESRAvision appears till today. From the beginning, Naomi has been ESRA's contact with both METV in Cyprus and their American counterpart LeSEA Broadcasting Company.

For two years Naomi served as a member of ESRA’s executive and for several years she was a member of the ESRA membership committee and the media committee.

She is constantly thinking about ideas for ESRA and among her other important achievements in ESRA are two very useful projects that she initiated and produced. In March 2002 she introduced the consumer-minded Tidbits, Comments & Oddities page in the ESRA Magazine (#113) and in March 2004, together with Ruth Wood, she established the ESRAlist, an online group for ESRA affiliates.

Naomi’s involvement with ESRA, her caring, her creativity, her constancy and her hard work show the true spirit of ESRA and we feel lucky to have Naomi in ESRA’s life.