On Friday and Shabbat the 20th and 21st of May we had a Shabbaton in Neve Shaanan. for some Boston teens who are spending the year in Israel. The Shabbaton was very nice. Five boys and two girls came. (Yoseph Gurevich, Joey Wallins, Uriel Habersman-Browns, Danny Malkin, Daniel Baranofsky, Esther Feldman and Laurie Pultman) Pairs of youngsters had home hospitality with English-speaking families with teens so they would feel comfortable.

On Friday afternoon, some of them met to explore Hadar, the downtown shopping area, together before coming up the mountain to Neve Shaanan. Shlomo waited for them at the Mercaz (the community center) to take them to their homes. On Friday night, Shabbat was really late so we didn't plan anything. But Shabbat morning after services, we had a sit-down kiddush for them and invited a group of Neve Shaanan teens their age to meet them. The young people were quite lively and obviously enjoyed getting together and after a few minutes, the conversations were flying around the table between the Israelis and the Bostonians. Shmulik welcomed them and Dr. Moshe Goldberg gave a very short talk in Hebrew and in English about the founding of Neve Shaanan in 1922.

During the afternoon, they met for a Shabbat walk and tour of the neighborhood, which included the Technion, led by one of the Neve Shaanan boys and accompanied by the youngsters they had met at the kiddush. They returned for a sit-down Seudah Shlishit at the Mercaz, with a short Dvar Torah by a young neighborhood teacher and some singing. After Maariv, some of them who had to catch a bus were driven downtown to the central bus station. Others, with more time, hung around the Mercaz for a while, enjoying just a little more time with their friends before returning to Jerusalem.

We hope to be able to do more of this next year with the Boston teens who will be spending a year in Israel. We are already lining up families who will be happy, starting in September, to "adopt" for the year, the Boston teens who have no family in Israel and would like a family to go to on their free weekends.