Nestled in the Haifa Bay area, Bat Galim is one of Israel’s few residential areas touching the shores of the Mediterranean. Glistening blue seas and miles of uninterrupted beaches hug the coastline and surfers gather here to catch some of the best waves in Israel.
The neighborhood was designed as a garden city, but as Haifa expanded, Bat Galim became run-down. However, the area has seen a surprising rejuvenation in one area of community life: its Ashkenazi religious community.
“Bat Galim was once the most desirable area in Haifa,” laments Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan, community rabbi of Bat Galim and Kiryat Eliezer, and hospital chaplain for Rambam Health Care Campus. “Slowly but surely, over the last 20 years, the older residents departed and my congregants became fewer and fewer in number. But a couple of years ago, the Americans began to come!”
These “Americans” that Kaplan talks about are medical students coming to study at the Technion’s American Medical School.
Moshe Klausner, from Massachusetts, is a second-year medical school student. “Arriving in Haifa, I spent my first semester living in student accommodation at the Technion’s primary campus at the top of the Carmel Mountain; I wanted to meet new students and live the student life,” Klausner explained. His first semester of medical school went by in a whirl and, if studying for exams was not enough to keep him busy, Klausner wed his high school sweetheart over the winter vacation. With his new wife now joining him in Haifa, it was time to find their first home, and although Haifa’s traditionally religious neighborhoods tempted the couple, Bat Galim’s proximity to the medical campus and train station was the decisive factor.
“A few students were living in the area at the time and we were very nervous as to whether we had made the right decision, but over the past year the size of the religious community has ballooned,” he said. “There are now around 30 to 40 religious students building the community.”
“The American medical students have helped us immensely,” said Alex Efrati, warden for the Bat Galim Ashkenazi community. “With the young, native Bat Galim residents heading for the lights of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, we were in desperate need of a breath of fresh air.” According to Efrati, they are now welcoming their fourth cohort of American medical students choosing to live in Bat Galim and the numbers rise dramatically each year. “These American students know how to lead services, read from the Torah and they bring guests from around the world to spend Shabbat by the sea.”
“The Americans have become an integral part of our community, bringing a new lease on life to what was a fast-declining community,” said Kaplan. “They have an amazing knowledge of Judaism and bring new ideas, new styles of prayer and new traditions from abroad.” Indeed, as the sun sets on a Friday night, Americanized Carlebach tunes ring out from the synagogue, which sits on the tree-lined Rechov Caspi, just two blocks from the seafront. “It is very emotional to be here when the students are praying; the synagogue is a completely different place,” he added.
Sabrina Grodzinski from Toronto decided to study medicine in Israel, where she felt she could best express her Judaism, and moved to Bat Galim on the advice of a fellow Torontonian. She met her husband during her first year in medical school and lauds the Bat Galim community.
“I come from Toronto, which is very community- oriented, and I had a hard time spending weekends in Jerusalem, which I found to be very segregated, with people attending a different shul each week,” she said. “In Bat Galim, we established a young, affiliated community; we take on crucial roles in the shul and feel a sense of ownership. It is wonderful to be part of a community where if you miss a week, people will wonder where you are.”
After receiving her undergraduate degree from Yeshiva University in New York, Tali Bauman, a second-year medical school student from Baltimore, longed for a young Jewish community upon her arrival in Haifa. In Bat Galim, she lives surrounded by her religious and nonreligious classmates and they take turns hosting Shabbat and festival meals. “On Purim we all dressed up, had a potluck meal together, shared stories and then, being exam time, dispersed to resume our studying.” Likewise, on Thanksgiving, students celebrated with the requisite football game (held on the beach) followed by a dinner complete with turkey, pumpkin pie, popcorn and traditional board games.
Unlike many areas of Israel, in Bat Galim the religious students and nonreligious students spend weekends together and, likewise, the native Israeli and North American students are also beginning to break down cultural barriers.
“One Israeli placed a notice saying he was interested in organizing morning services for students at Rambam hospital [opposite the medical school],” said Klausner. “We came and helped organize the minyan, which now, thanks to a generous donor from L.A., has breakfast served twice a week.” Previously unaffiliated students are now drawn to these services and Shabbat activities because of the strong bonds that have formed in this small, student body, he added.
Meanwhile, the rabbi’s enthusiasm has rubbed off on the students. “Rabbi Kaplan and the Bat Galim community have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome, making medical references in sermons, supporting our hospital minyan and always greeting us with friendly faces,” said first-year student Alan Katz. “In turn, we have taken on the responsibility to not only maintain the American community here in Bat Galim, but also to encourage new students to make Bat Galim their home.”