Despite rocket fire, Birthright launches 1st volunteer mission for adults with disabilities
10-day trip sponsored by Birthright and Camp Ramah enables a dozen adults on the autistic spectrum to lend a hand in Israel during the war
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
At a farm in central Israel on Monday, a group of American volunteers spread out through the olive groves holding an informal, friendly harvesting competition. Wearing heavy gloves in the late morning heat and carrying thick plastic buckets to collect the spoils, the group moved quickly and soon assembled a sizable haul of hard, green olives.
It was not the usual group of volunteers from abroad: the 12 participants all were on the autistic spectrum or had other non-physical disabilities, in what sponsor Birthright Israel said was the-first-of-its-kind volunteer group to visit Israel during the Israel-Hamas war.
This trip was “different because we’re doing a lot more of my kind of things. I love volunteering,” said participant Maddy Katz, a young woman with glasses who proudly showed the olives she had gathered.
They almost didn’t make it to pick olives at Harvest Helpers, a farm in Rishon Lezion run by food rescue organization Leket Israel, because that morning, due to the escalating situation in Israel’s north, they learned that they would have to relocate from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for the last few days of their visit.
Having to quickly pack their things and change the itinerary at the last minute didn’t phase Katz, who said the trip had “a lot of moving parts.” She was looking forward to going home to Columbus, Ohio, where her first priorities would be “sleep, shower and laundry,” and then updating her binder, where she keeps records of her 80,000 hours of volunteering over the last 10 years.
The volunteer group, due to return to the US early Wednesday, was sponsored by Conservative Judaism’s National Ramah Tikvah Network and Birthright Israel’s Onward program. All the volunteers had previously participated in Ramah camps in the US and most had already been in Israel.
According to Birthright Israel, this was the first volunteering trip for disabled adults during the conflict. Since November 2023, Birthright has brought over 7,500 volunteers on similar trips to Israel, they noted, and organized its first “accessible trip” in 2001.
In addition to agricultural work, the group’s 10-day visit included volunteer activities where they helped pack up food and supplies, but they also toured Israel’s Paralympic training facility, spent time in Tel Aviv, visited the Western Wall, and more.
“It’s been a good trip,” said another volunteer, Michael “GG” Goodgold, from Chicago. A tall young man who had been working hard at the olive picking, Goodgold noted “it’s very different” in Israel this time, as compared to his previous visits in 2013 and 2016.
“I think that with the war going on and all that stuff, I wanted to go to give back to the community because everyone, especially up in the north, is really having a hard time dealing with the rockets and the fires,” he said.
Goodgold, who stays “on top of the news from Israel no matter what time it is,” said that it actually “felt peaceful” being in Israel, despite the war, and he particularly enjoyed visiting the beach in Tel Aviv.
Annie Michaels, also from Chicago, has been to Israel “nine or 10 times,” she said. This trip had been “a very good experience” partly because it was “my really first time being alone, volunteering and doing all these activities on my own independently,” without her immediate family.
(The group was accompanied by several guides at all times and individual members were allowed to independently visit their family in Israel.)
“I’m happy to stay. I’m sad to leave,” Michaels said, but added that back home, she “feels great” to be able to share stories about her visits to Israel or about “what was happening when I’m volunteering and just giving back to the world.”
For Hannah Berman from New Jersey, the olive picking was a new experience. “I’ve never picked olives before. It’s a lot of work,” she said, showing her hand, which had red scrapes.
Nonetheless, “I don’t know how excited I am to go back,” she said wistfully, but she admitted that she would be “excited to see my family.”
Back home, Berman said, she was busy working on her autobiography, for which she conducts interviews with people in her life. This Israel trip won’t be included, she said, because she “has already picked the endpoint,” from before the trip.
