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Unique therapy program offers troubled Jewish youth a distinctly Israeli alternative
KIBBUTZ HAZOREA, Israel — Throughout high school, Ben rarely did his homework, struggled to complete school assignments and used marijuana on a daily basis.
Frustrated with his situation, Ben, 18, decided in early September to leave his U.S. home and enroll in Free Spirit Experience — an in-residence therapy program in Israel’s Carmel Mountains. Three months on, it has ended up changing his approach to life.
“I went there to work on my studies, but I ended up figuring out who I was independent of my parents and learning how to prioritize,” said Ben, whose last name is being withheld to preserve his privacy. “Just being able to separate myself from my family was really important.”
The program at Free Spirit caters to Jews from the Diaspora in their teens and early 20s struggling with emotional, social or family issues including anxiety, social isolation or depression. Some lack motivation or the executive function skills necessary to succeed in college.
What they have in common is a need for a different kind of help, and they’ve all turned to the program at Kibbutz Hazorea — not far from Haifa — that takes advantage of Israel’s unique location, environment and culture.
“Nobody else is doing what we’re doing,” said educator Tzahi Billet, who ran a boarding school for delinquent Israeli teens near Akko before founding Free Spirit with psychologist Dr. Tamir Rotman. “There are yeshivot for Orthodox kids, and they have the Torah, but they don’t have therapy, and they usually don’t work through deeper issues. For us, the fact that we’re Israelis is very important. The participants here realize we’re very straightforward with what we have to say.”
Some of the teens who come to Free Spirit are experiencing personal or interpersonal challenges, such as isolation or low self-image. Others are in emotional turmoil or crises of various kinds, including relationship issues, failure to launch and other mental health challenges.
Billet and Rotman founded Free Spirit in 2015 to meet the urgent needs of youth from abroad in crisis or serious emotional turmoil. The organization’s programs — which include gap-year offerings, summer sessions and rolling admissions for youth in crisis — combine treatment and emotional and social coaching with outdoor education and therapy. The goal is to instill in Jewish youths greater stability, self-regulation, confidence, sense of purpose, self-reliance and independence.
The location, in the bucolic Jezreel Valley on a kibbutz founded in 1936 by German immigrants, is meant to be an ideal setting to help young people from any kind of Jewish background tackle the underlying conditions that lead to anxiety, depression, anti-social behavior and other issues troubling so many teenagers today.
The organization’s mission is “to bring people from all over the world for a meaningful empowering experience based on a challenge by choice.”
“For a lot of these kids, this is the first time they’re being seen by mental health professionals on a 24/7 basis, so we have a much better understanding of their issues,” said Rotman, the psychologist. “In the U.S., you have programs like ours that force participants to attend. Here, the kids have to want to come. We don’t accept anyone if they don’t want to be here.”
Fundamental to Free Spirit’s philosophy, said program therapist Yuval Gofer, is using social and emotional coaching to give young people the inner strength and flexibility to make their own decisions, rather than merely respond to the promise of reward or threat of punishment.
“In many other programs, you learn to live inside the system and not do things because you’ll get punished, but when you leave that place, there’s no reason to continue that specific behavior,” Gofer said. “We don’t work with punishments. We want this growth to be sustainable after they leave us.”
Keren Shema, Yuval Goffer and Tzahi Billet, left to right, form part of the 12-member staff at Free Spirit, a program for at-risk youth at Kibbutz Hazorea in northern Israel. (Larry Luxner)
The gap-year program Free Spirit runs is tailored to Jewish youths ages 18 to 23 from overseas. Some already have struggled through a semester or more in college; others are graduating from residential programs and need help managing the transition from a structured environment into independent life. During the year, participants experience community life on the kibbutz, spend four weeks traveling in Italy, sail to Cyprus on a yacht and do a semester-long internship in Israel.
The summer program — which is designed for teens ages 14-18 who are experiencing challenges but who get by during the school year — includes kibbutz living, excursions, and therapeutic programming designed to encourage social engagement, boost self-confidence and help teens navigate the transition into adulthood.
The rolling programs for youths in crisis usually last eight to 10 weeks and are also for teens and young adults.
So far, over 150 youths have attended Free Spirit programs, about 85% from the United States and Canada and the rest from Europe. The cost is roughly $2,000 per week; partial subsidies are available to those who can’t afford the cost. Aside from tuition fees, Free Spirit is funded by an American Friends of Free Spirit organization largely supported by families of alumni.
A typical day at Free Spirit starts at 7:30 a.m. with breakfast and a group meeting to discuss the day’s plan. Participants then work on projects from building tables and decks for the kibbutz to creating their own art. After that is lunch, rest time and a variety of afternoon and evening activities like forest hikes and campfires. There are weekly field trips to points of interest throughout Israel.
Interest in the program is increasing as a consequence of what managing director Rami Bader described as the post-Covid “mental health crisis” sweeping North America.
“You name it, we see it: anxiety, depression, lack of social skills,” Bader said. “A lot of this has to do with the Internet and lack of face-to-face meetings, and Covid only made things worse.”
Some of the youths who come to Free Spirit are grappling with gender dysphoria.
“Part of the natural process of adolescence is figuring out who you are, but in recent years, things that were obvious are no longer so obvious,” Rotman said. “Your gender is not something you assume anymore.”
The unique value proposition in an Israel-based therapy program isn’t just the location and Jewish environment, but the benefits of Israel’s culture of structure and responsibility as well as in-your-face directness, according to Bader.
“We are not a rehab program, but we do accept people after they complete rehab,” he said. “Although we don’t allow drugs or alcohol, we don’t have a zero-tolerance policy, which allows us to work through some of these issues if possible.”
Ben said that when he started the Free Spirit program in September, he felt he no longer needed the marijuana he had relied upon for so long. “At Free Spirit, we spent a lot of time outdoors, hiking and also sailing to Cyprus,” he said. “I was able to take time to reflect and think without a phone or other distractions.”
Now in the United States for a brief visit, Ben plans to return to Free Spirit for another four months and then attend American University in Washington, D.C., to study communications, economics and government.
Josh arrived at Free Spirit from London in 2015 as a troubled 16-year-old having been kicked out of two previous therapeutic programs.
“Growing up, I had a difficult childhood and I always struggled to fit in,” said Josh, whose last name is being withheld to preserve his privacy. “I had a toxic relationship with my father, with screaming matches on a daily basis.”
He spent three weeks at Free Spirit. But when he returned to England, so did all his emotional problems. Realizing he had left too soon, Josh convinced his parents to send him back to Hazorea, where he ended up staying for eight months.
Josh eventually joined the Israel Defense Forces, spending two and a half years in an elite paratroopers’ brigade — an experience he says “helped me grow into a man.” Now 23, he works at a high-tech firm in suburban Tel Aviv and visits his friends at Hazorea whenever he has time.
“Free Spirit embraces people’s personality traits. They help you find the correct path in life in a way that society will be more accepting of you,” said Josh. These days, he added, he has an “infinitely better relationship” with his father. “We’ve put the past behind us.”
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PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
The post PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors appeared first on The Forward.
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Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide
(JTA) — The Church of England’s legislative body voted Monday to encourage churches across England to engage with a document produced by Palestinian Christians that accuses Israel of genocide despite requests from Jewish organizations and Britain’s chief rabbi to reject it.
The document is titled “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” and is also known as Kairos II, after the Palestinian Christian movement Kairos Palestine that produced it. It describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide, states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism,” and says decades of “occupation,” “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The vote on Monday does not adopt the accusations as church doctrine but says the church should hear the documents as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians,” and to engage with them in order to better understand the conflict.
Ahead of the debate in York, several Jewish organizations expressed concerns, and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis asked Synod members to reject the amendment. Mirvis called Kairos II “deeply concerning” and that it “risks undermining decades of careful relationship-building” between Christians and Jews.
“It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood,” he said.
Afterwards, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, issued a statement calling the passage of the motion “highly problematic.”
“Kairos Palestine may come from a place of genuine pain, but the falsehoods and distortions of Kairos II, including its erasure of Jewish identity and experience, is a prescription for more division and not the answer to conflict in the Middle East,” he said.
“This document reflects the pain and trauma of the Palestinian people. As a pastor, I hear the cry of our Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers — a cry that rises from the ruins of Gaza, and from the violence and oppression of the West Bank,” she said.
She added, ”I also hear the concerns of the chief rabbi, the co-leads of the Movement for Progressive Judaism, and the Board of Deputies, and I thank them for their honesty.” She said the church remained opposed to antisemitism and committed to safety for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
The Synod debate followed Mullally’s visit to the West Bank in June, where she met Palestinian Christian communities in Birzeit. During the visit she said, “I will use my role as Archbishop to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve.”
The debate marks the ascendance of Israel-related issues in another major church, after the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV angered Jewish groups soon after being elected last year by endorsing an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
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Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown
(JTA) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has weighed in against antisemitism after officials in his Indiana town say a costly fire may have been caused by arson to an Israeli flag displayed on a local barn.
The alleged arson broke out early Friday morning, damaging a historic home in Zionsville, Indiana, where Pence lives, and causing an estimated $150,000 in damages, according to the Zionsville Police Department.
Zionsville Mayor John Stehr said during a press conference on Friday that officials believed the fire began when an individual set fire to an Israeli flag that had been displayed outside the building alongside an American flag. The town later announced that the FBI had joined the investigation and that officials were examining whether the arson “may have been motivated by bias” but said no determination had been made.
“Absolutely despicable,” Pence tweeted on Sunday. “There can be no tolerance in America for Antisemitism or political acts of violence, and it is heartbreaking to see in our adopted hometown of Zionsville, Indiana. We thank God no one was hurt and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”
Pence has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, including after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, and has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism in the conservative movement and beyond.
Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks also condemned the alleged arson in a post on X Saturday. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated. Not in Zionsville. Not in Indiana. Not anywhere,” Banks wrote. “Thank you to the federal, state, and local officials working to bring the perpetrators of this despicable arson attack to justice.”
On Sunday, the Jewish community in central Indiana hosted a rally condemning the alleged arson attack, chanting, “We will stand up,” according to local outlet Fox 59. While Zionsville does not have a large Jewish community of its own, other suburbs of Indianapolis have significant Jewish populations, and Zionsville is also the longtime home of a Reform movement summer camp, the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is in session now.
“The founding fathers founded a country where we have the ability to resolve differences among each other; we don’t do it by firebombing homes,” rally organizer David Schiller told Fox 59. “It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.”
The Zionsville Police Department did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the status of the investigation on Monday.
The post Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown appeared first on The Forward.
