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| Ex-'street girl' works miracles for homeless youngsters |
| TOGETHER AGAIN: Batel reunited today with her |
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THE short cut from two of Tel Aviv's major hotels to Neve Tzedek takes you through a pretty nondescript car park and past some spartan shacks.
You might just spot an attractive young lady with long dark hair, sporting a prominent tattoo on her left arm.
There again, you might just walk straight past her. She looks little different from thousands of other Israelis.
But Batel Aranz is no ordinary citizen.
It is hard to believe that this articulate, confident woman spent her teenage years and beyond as "a wild child", living rough on the streets. But today her life has turned full circle.
Hers is a heart-rending story with a selfless happy ending.
Today, through Beit Eli, a self-supporting organisation, she helps rehabilitate young people like herself who have run away from home or have taken to life on the streets for a variety of reasons.
Batel herself was 121/2 when she decided she could no longer live with her mother who she found to be stiflingly over-protective.
Initially, she moved in with her father who was estranged from her mother Mazel.
"Six months later I decided to leave," recalls Batel. "I was a wild child."
She couldn't get on with her stepmother.
She found herself in Eilat where she lived in caves. She begged for money and had a British boyfriend by the time she was 14.
She placed a pillow under her clothes, posing as a pregnant youngster and pleaded that she had nothing to eat.
Despite being a free agent, she still attended school and returned to Tel Aviv where she lived in a squat.
She was turned away from schools because teachers thought she was lazy. In fact, she was dyslexic.
"Many times," Batel admits, "I tried to go back home, to eat, to shower and to live with my mother.
"I was the trouble-maker. She was a great mother. It was just that she restricted me too much. She wanted to do everything for me.
"When I was in the squat, my father told my mother that if she tried to keep me in I would run away and she would never find me."
Unusually for a street girl, she kept in touch by phone with her parents, even when she was living on Eilat beach.
Her mother even used to attend parents' evenings when Batel asked her.
It was only at the age of 17 that a social worker in Jaffa recognised Batel's problem.
She tore up the "wild child's" file when Batel joined the army and told her: "You start afresh."
Unlike many of her street friends, Batel never turned to drugs or prostitution.
The question of theft is somewhat different, though - "There is a time when you have nothing to eat and you steal bread."
But Batel realised that she needed to do something with her life.
"When you live on the street you can become very strong and sharp or you can become like my friend Ilanit who turned to prostitution and took heroin.
"Four years later she was cut into pieces."
In the army Batel was told she could become a secretary. She insisted that she wanted to teach, despite having no formal education or qualifications.
"They said, 'You can't even do your tables'."
However, she was told to apply in the normal way. The person who interviewed her took to Batel and she was allowed to teach soldiers.
"I was the only teacher with no high school diploma," she recalled. "I taught according to intuition. I taught them about life and my own experiences."
She went on: "I realised I could do something with my life. I studied art for three-and-a-half years."
During that time she married, had a child and lived in her father's home.
She studied acting and gained a scholarship to Lewinsky College.
She cleaned the college to earn her tuition fees.
 AT HOME: Batel Aranzi in the living room of Beit Eli with its donated furniture and television |
Her marriage lasted less than three years. She and her husband divorced and promptly got back together, although they are now apart.
Her father Dino opened a shanty house 30 years ago, next to his own home, taking in street children like Batel.
"I was taking care of the shanty children. I remember when I came to live here [now Beit Eli] I lived with the shanty girls and I started to feel connected," Batel told me.
"The type of children there were those government homes had thrown out. My father gave them just a roof over their heads."
When her father could no longer continue his lifetime's work, the shelter closed for four years, but the 'street children' eventually asked Batel to reopen Beit Hashanti for them.
"All they had were blankets to sleep on the floor. People were just coming and living rough. I asked my father what he thought and he said, 'Take it for a year and try'.
"The word spread and I started to find food.
"I worked like a family with a lot of love, caring and chances. I didn't try to be their mother, just to be like a sister and good friend.
"I went through so much in my life that I wanted to show them there was another way.
"I encouraged them to work and study, finish school and go to the army."
Today, Batel has three children of her own - Naor, 12, Shira, 4 and Noa, 2.
Because there is no money to pay Beit Eli's bills - the organisation receives no government funding - her own children have to go without.
Money that might have been spent on birthday parties helps to finance the shelter, a series of ramshackle huts which today belong to Beit Eli through squatters' rights.
"My children just accept that they have a lot of uncles," Batel observes wryly.
Only young men are allowed and no-one is turned away, provided that they adhere to the rules, which include no stealing, no hard drugs, keeping Shabbat and yomtov and eating only kosher food. Any girls who approach Batel are introduced to a suitable shelter.
But the fridge is invariably empty, as it was on the day I visited, and Beit Eli is forced to rely on sporadic handouts of rice, vegetables and anything else they can beg.
"There are lots of bills and no way to pay," said Batel. "My Israel Fund has helped. I have used all my own money, pawned my car and used my children's savings."
It costs 500,000 shekels (about £78,000) a year just to cover basic costs and as we chatted two donors arrived, each being issued with an official receipt. Batel insists that everything is run above board.
Batel has known only sadness and tragedy and is determined to ensure that others do not suffer like she did.
Four years ago the shelter was named after her brother Eli who committed suicide. Her sister died of cancer just over a year ago.
The shelter takes up to 25 young men at any time, although this sometimes stretches to more, as I saw for myself, with two people sleeping in Batel's tiny office and others in a makeshift tent.
Make no mistake, everyone living at Beit Eli is happy. What it offers is infinitely better than life on the street.
The 'residents' stay for varying periods, but never more than a year. The idea is to rehabilitate them.
"We have over 85 per cent success," reports Batel.
Success is measured by those who go on to rent an apartment and join the army and then find work. Some have even returned to help as volunteers.
"They come here with social problems. One boy was a rent boy. He was here for four months. He has now finished school and gone to the army," Batel reported.
I met Ukraine-born Eli, 23, who had been at Beit Eli for four months. He left the army, drifted for three years and was eventually jailed for six months for dealing in soft drugs.
"I have no contact with my mother. I was an unplanned child, so I was rejected. Beit Eli gave me a chance to get my life straight," he told me.
Batel gave him the money to travel for a job interview. He now has a well-paid lorry driving job and is planning to further his career.
"If I hadn't known about this place, I wouldn't have known where to spend my next night. You see only goodness here. I don't know how to repay this place."
The youngest 'residents' allowed are 16. Anyone under that age can remain only two weeks. Batel often speaks to their parents.
She reflects sadly: "We don't really exist, so unless the authorities recognise us, 25 children will be on the street."
Batel herself became religious 14 years ago and Chabad come to Beit Eli every week. She says of the shelter: "Miracles do happen here."
But she was waiting for one as we spoke. She had just two weeks to find 6,000 shekels, just under £940, otherwise the electricity would be cut off.
* Batel welcomes visitors to the peaceful little
LUCY MANNING
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, ITV NEWS
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON
SW1A OAA
UNITED KINGDOM
T +44 (0)20 7430 4990
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M +44 (0)7803 853486
E LUCY.MANNING@ITN.CO.UK
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From: danni franks [danni.franks@gmail.com]
Sent: 22 July 2009 14:46
To: Karen Wilson; MANNING, LUCY; angela cohen; Naomi Chanoch; Jo Silverman
Subject: Jewish Telegraph - can you help?
Dear friends from the North (Jo, I think you have friends in the North, so I counted you).
There was an article (I believe) in the Jewish Telegraph about a myisrael project called Bet Eli, in the Tel Aviv feature section in this weeks Jewish Telegraph.
I am trying to get hold of the article online, but it's not so easy and I wondered if any of you might ask your parents or friends that get the JT to cut out that page (if they don't mind) and send it to: Lionel Deyong, myisrael, 2nd Floor, 85 Frampton St, London, NW8 8NQ.
Pls cld you let me know if you are able to help with this. Not sure if everyone in the north gets the JT or how long they hold onto it for.
Thank you for your help.
Danni
x
--
Danielle Franks
myisrael
www.myisraelcharity.org
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