Volume 8, Issue 4 / Adar II 5765 / April 2005
MADA Program
After graduating from Liverpool University, Atara Haber, 21, headed for a year-long trip to Israel, but wanted to do something "productive and worthwhile, as opposed to just chilling out and being passive." So she signed up for a two-month Jewish Agency program which trained her to be a first-responder for Magen David Adom (MADA) and placed her at the ambulance headquarters in Jerusalem. She found the work so meaningful that she took additional training to earn a higher certification, and when she later started an internship at the Jerusalem Post (also through placement by the Jewish Agency), she continued performing ambulance shifts in her free time; she's now been at MADA for 8 months.
She wasn't considering aliyah before, but she is now.
"The Jewish Agency inspired me," she said. "My work for MADA has inspired me."The Jewish Agency has been placing volunteers in Magen David Adom for 14 years, though it was only four years ago that the Jewish Agency began admitting (and training) those with no previous ambulance experience. Now, there are 8-12 overlapping Jewish Agency - MADA programs each year. At any given time, between 40-200 Jewish tourists between the ages of 18-25 are spending 40 hours each week helping to rescue wounded Israelis around the country.
They first complete an intensive 8-day training course administered by the Jewish Agency, and then volunteer with MADA for at least 6 weeks, administering oxygen and CPR, taking pulses and blood pressure, and cleaning wounds. They ride the ambulances in teams of two, together with a driver and one other trained medic. Mid-program, all the volunteers converge for a hiking trip, seminar about aliyah, and Jewish textual study on medicine, tzedakah, or tikkun olam.
Participants - who usually have seen the "typical tourist attractions" and choose the MADA program out of the idealistic desire to help Israel - hail mostly from North America but have also included Australians, Britons, French, Austrians, Poles, Hungarians, and Italians. Some have chosen to enter medicine professionally as a result of their volunteerism. All have the option of renewing their certification and continuing to volunteer whenever they visit Israel or after they make aliyah.
Said Haber, who has helped deliver two babies: "I'm not leaving MADA. I will keep coming back. You really get to integrate with Israeli society, in the station and in the ambulance. You go into their homes."
Haber's partner is New Jersey native Yael Ben-Baruch, 18, who completed an EMT course in the US but was retrained for MADA. Like Haber, Ben-Baruch has extended her volunteer period; at the end of the two-month program she realized that she was much more confident speaking Hebrew to her colleagues and patients, and that she enjoyed the camaraderie with the Israeli medics and volunteers. As opposed to some of her friends in secluded study programs, "we get to work with Israeli Arabs," she pointed out. "Here there are all kinds of stories and perspectives. It's very eye-opening. And helping people who are hurt makes you feel you are here for a purpose." She now plans to make aliyah and is applying to colleges in Israel.
Without volunteers, "Magen David Adom couldn't function," asserted MADA spokesman Hagai Shmueli. "The ones from foreign countries are particularly helpful because they speak other languages. This Jewish Agency program has become part of MADA. They are not 'special' - they are an integral part of our operations."
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