Tamar+Chesterman

__ Rational: __ In my project I hope to find some answers for the questions on my mind. I chose to interview Chana Loesher, one of the amazing people I ever met in my life, and I met her on a charity walk I did almost a year ago. Because I heard a lot about her, and I wanted to understand what makes her keep on, who is guiding her, how can she know she's on the right path… Chana made Aliya 27 years ago. I have never understood why do people make Aliya? And what makes theme keep on? I feel like I went through all my life (almost). I feel like I don't have the strength to dobig stuff than I am doing now. So what makes a person to give more and more from him self? One of my missions in this project is to write, to create, what is Israel for me. And I have never thought deeply about the meaning of it, so maybe I'll find some answers for the questions I have, and I hope to figure out what is Israel for me.

**__ Profile: __** Chana Loecher was born in Holland, November 10, 1944, to a family with 10 children. Her first memory was being in a crib with measles. After 5 weeks in the old city, when Chana's family visited Israel for the first time in the winter of 1981-1982, her children did not want to go back home. The following year August 1982 the Loechers made Aliyah.

Our world is in danger. There is no balance between the animals and the human being: between the sky and the ground: between the heat and the cold: between the age and the behavior of people: between the need of water and the amount we have… When I walked with Chana, I saw she was picking up cigarettes from the ground, bags of snacks, nylon bags, papers... and all kinds of trash you can think about.

Chana told me that she always loved animals and nature. When she was young, she had her own little garden, witch consisted of plants she found in the wild. One of her big dreams is to see a clean Eretz Israel.

One of my big fears is of getting old. It seems to me that I will be bored, that I'll just sit on a chair all day and solve crosswords, that my grandchildren will come and visit me and I'll give them some chocolate, but I won't be strong enough to go outside and play with them basketball or something ells. But it turns out things aren't what I think they are. When you get old you can do all the stuff you didn't have time to do when you were young. You should exercise and eat healthy food and then be strong enough to go outside and play basketball with your grandchildren. You can go volunteer somewhere, spend some time with the people you love…Do what you like… Chana swam the Kineret from Ein Gev to Tiberius (when she was around 52 years old), a 4 hour and 45 minutes ordeal without resting, and because of that the idea of riding around the Kineret came, she did that to raise founds for a home of autistic teenagers (ALUT). A few years after that, Chana did the "Alyn Ride". The Alyn Ride is a charity ride, and if you want to join it you have to raise 2000$, and the money goes to the children hospital- Alyn. The ride is 5 days, and every year it's in a different area, once the riders rode from Tiberius to Jerusalem. Chana did the ride twice: once from Jerusalem to Eilat and once from Maalot to Jerusalem. It's very difficult to raise 2000$, but Chana never asked for a lot of money- what ever is given is gratefully accepted. Riding 5 days isn't a little issue; the riders have to train, to get their body into shape. So it took Chana 10 weeks to get the body into shape, and because she never biked in the mountains before and never biked with gears – Chana practiced on every mountain around Jerusalem. From Mevasseret to Ramot to Beit Shemesh. When I asked Chana what made her keep on when she swam the Kinneret, when she rode around it, and practiced 10 weeks for the Alyn ride, her answer was: " Giving up is not in my vocabulary, the Almighty gives you strength, you just use it for good."

In 10 years from now, Chana sees herself continuing on the path that HE shows her, and her agenda is to be able to continue to be involved with good causes, besides the family needs. As a prime minister, Chana would make sure that the school curriculum includes pride in our heritage, Torah and Tanach; " Take one minute at a time, and make the most of it. Smile, it's a mitzvah: and you change the world with a smile. "

Chana, my cousin and me

**__ Background research: __** Alyin is a pediatric and adolescent rehabilitation center with non profit organization, which takes care of babies, children and teenagers that are restricted, victims of hostility and road accident victims. Alyin has special ways of treating patients, and today it is the most big children hospital in the middle east and the only one of kind in Israel.

The hospital was built in 1932 by DR. Henry Keller, an American orthopedic doctor that dedicated himself for volunteering with kids in Jerusalem. In these days there was the polio disease, and a lot of people were sick, so the government gave to the hospital an old building that was a church a long time ago, and then became a hospital. In 1971 Alyin moved to a normal building in Kiriat-Yovel.

The children in Alyin gets multi- disciplinerary in a high level and quality in goal to return them to normal life. As I mentioned, Alyin is a non profit organization and the government doesn't pay the expenditures and the patients pays a small amount that doesn't cover even half of the expenditures. Therefore, the hospital has to rely on donations that cover the disciplineraty expenditures, and that’s when "wheels of love" gets into the picture. In 1997, a new immigrant from England approached Alyn Children's Hospital with the inspired notion to continue his cycling tradition from "the old country" and include Alyn's children as beneficiaries of the annual Norwood Ravenswood Israel Charity Bike Ride. In the years that followed, other riders from Israel joined him and by 2000 a record number of ten riders signed up. But due to violence in the region, the Norwood Ravenswood contingent from England took the decision to cancel three weeks before the start of the 2000 ride. However, the ten Alyn riders decided to go ahead, and the first dedicated Alyn Charity Bike Ride was born. In their ride from Jerusalem to Eilat, the ten riders raised over $65,000 for the Alyn Hospital. As word of mouth spread, the number of riders grew from year to year. In 2001 48 riders rode from the Golan Heights to Jerusalem. They broke the 100 rider mark in 2002, when 107 riders rode once again from Jerusalem to Eilat. In 2003 they once again started up North, this time in the development town of Ma'alot and finished at the Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem. The year 2004 saw the first Alyn 'side-by-side rides', one on-road and the other off-road, but both rides starting and finishing at the same point. A total of 245 riders participated. Nearly $2,000,000 was raised by the 324 riders who participated in 2005 ride which began on the Golan Heights went up Mount Hermon and finished up in Jerusalem. For the second year running more than 50% of the riders came from overseas. In 2006, they added a third Challenge route for the fleet-of-pedal and had nearly 400 riders snaking their way from Jerusalem to Eilat. The 2006 ride raised over $2,500,000 in contributions. In 2007, they grew yet again. A fourth Touring route was added that gave an opportunity for riders to ride only part of the day and in addition tour Israel’s magnificent North. The ride started in Tiberias and ended in Jerusalem. Over 3 million dollars was raised.

**__ Literary connection: __** Jordan Bar-Cochva was born in 1979, and when she was 21, her father died. Jordan is an actor and a singer, and she played in many Israeli films. In 1998, Jordan joined the band "LOLA", and in 2000 the band published the successful disc "Quiet Days", that was named after the song "Quiet Days" that Jordan wrote.

The song talks about Noah and the ark.. God wanted to destroy the world because the people were bad, there was evil everywhere and the only solution was to build a new world. The words in the song talks about the last days in the ark and the leaving of the ark. After the flood there was a new world, Noah and his family were the only human beings in the world. They had a mission: to build a new world, a world without all the bad things that were in the old world, before the flood. We have a mission. Although it's been about 5000 years since the flood, the mission should be due.

The song expresses the yearning to peace and quiet. in our country, where violence and terror is part of normal life, a lot of people write songs about their feelings. Human nature is to want quiet. Peace is something that seems to be far away from us, especially in Israel. There was a part of my project that I interviewed Chana Loesher, that her goal is to smile all the time, even in hard times, and to continue the path that HE shows her. This song connects to my project, where happiness, hope and love meet.

__ Quiet days\ Lola __ Here they come quiet days, After the big terrible noise. We can sit and relax on the porch And pick up the pieces from the storm.

Here they come, quiet days, I already forgot how they look. We can open the door now, And send the birds out to the wind.

Here they come, quiet days, Let's go out to the window and watch, If the water dried up, Maybe there's ground in the horizon. Pairs pairs, We'll go out in pairs, We'll look up to the sky, And we'll wait to the do Here they come, quiet days, After we lost everything. Sit with me on the porch, Cry with me about yesterday.

Here they come, quiet days, Both of us are here on the mountain. The water dried up and there's a rainbow, We can go out, the end of the world past. **__ Reflection: __** Now that I have some answers I can deal with things that happen in my life. Now that I understand the meaning of Israel for us, Jews, I can see things I did not see before.

There is nothing for us to look for in the world, in other countries, for Jews Israel is the only real, safe, perfect place to be in.

For me Israel is life, for me there is a meaning for random things that happens, now when I got the answers that I wanted from Chana there is more meaning for a day off that I have, or an empty day without loads of things to do. And the most important thing- I learned to do everything with a smile, even if it's hard. Because in a smile I can change the world.

__Bibliography:__

1)Aliyn website: www.alyn.org.il www.alynride.org.il

2) Interview with Chana Loesher March 20, 2009.

3) Jerusalem post, April 3, 2009