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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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US Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Deport Immigrants With Extremist Ideologies
US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) leaves the House Republican Conference caucus meeting in the US Capitol on April 15, 2026. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) has introduced sweeping legislation aimed at expanding the federal government’s authority to deport, denaturalize, deny US citizenship, and refuse entry to immigrants tied to extremist ideologies, including socialism, communism, and Islamic fundamentalism.
The legislation, titled the MAMDANI Act, short for Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists, is a direct political reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and what conservatives describe as a growing alliance between far-left anti-Israel activism and Islamist extremism.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist, has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric.
In a statement, Roy argued that the legislation would increase the government’s capability to filter out potential immigrants with anti-American, anti-Western ideologies.
“Not just for the last six years, but for the last 60 years, our immigration system has been cynically used to disadvantage American workers’ competitiveness in favor of mass-importing the third world,” Roy added. “This has not just led to higher crime and lower wages, but also the promulgation of hostile ideologies fundamentally opposed to American values.”
Roy said the bill is intended to confront what he called a “Red-Green Alliance” between far-left and Islamist extremists that has fueled antisemitism, anti-American radicalism, and support for terrorist organizations under the guise of progressive politics.
“By targeting the Red-Green Alliance, this legislation deploys new tools to fight back against the Marxist and Islamist advance that has devastated Europe and has now arrived on our doorstep, especially in my home state of Texas,” Roy continued.
Under the proposal, non-citizens affiliated with socialist parties, communist parties, the Chinese Communist Party, or organizations deemed to promote Islamic fundamentalism could be denied entry or deported. The bill would also expand grounds for denying naturalization and, in some cases, allow denaturalization for individuals found to have concealed ideological affiliations or to be actively advocating for violent anti-democratic movements.
Supporters of the bill argue that the measure is necessary amid rising antisemitic incidents across the United States following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. They point to pro-Hamas rhetoric on some college campuses and among far-left activist circles as evidence that immigration enforcement should include stronger scrutiny of extremist ideological affiliations.
In recent years, conservatives have drawn attention to the massive surge in antisemitic protests on American soil, pointing to an increase of foreign migration as the culprit. In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 slaughters in Israel, protests erupted on US campuses and streets. Many of these demonstrations, many of which devolved into riots, were spearheaded by either foreign nationals or recent migrants from the Middle East or southeast Asia.
US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned in 2024 that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to many of these protests.
Critics, however, say Roy’s legislation raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly around First Amendment protections, religious liberty, and due process rights. Civil liberties advocates have warned that broad ideological tests for citizenship or deportation could be vulnerable to court challenges and used too broadly against political dissent.
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Orthodox Jews Harassed in Brooklyn as Antisemitic Hate Crimes Surge in New York City Under Mamdani
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during his inauguration ceremony in New York City, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Multiple videos which emerged this week captured in vivid detail the surge of antisemitic hate crimes that have proliferated under New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s leadership.
On Monday, Williamsburg News shared a 36-second video depicting two young males riding bicycles on Williamsburg Street & Lee Avenue in Brooklyn. The first swerves his bike in front of an elderly Jewish man, leading the victim to turn and address his assailant. Then the second perpetrator comes from behind on his bike and knocks off the Jewish man’s black hat.
Shocking! 2 perps on cyclists assaulted and threw down a hat from a elderly Jewish person, on Williamsburg St & Lee Ave, @WSPUshomrim and @NYPD90Pct are on scene investigating for a possible hate crime. @nypdhatecrimes pic.twitter.com/Y3mXw6CZmH
— WILLIAMSBURG NEWS (@WMSBG) April 20, 2026
Officers from the New York City Police Department (NYPD)’s 90th precinct responded to the assault and opened a hate crime investigation.
Also on Monday, the Boro Park Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group, released a 37-second clip of young males driving a white SUV into a crosswalk before stopping to address a Jewish man with payot wearing traditional Hasidic attire. He begins to walk away, provoking a teenager in the back seat to leap out, chase after him, and yell, “Come here! Come here!”
An individual sitting in the front seat’s passenger side applauds the act of intimidation before the young man rushes back into the SUV which speeds away, tires squealing.
These individuals are wanted by @NYPDHateCrimes for terrorizing and harassing local residents in Boro Park over Pesach. If you can help us identify them, please contact 911 and our 24-hour emergency hotline 718-871-6666. #YourCityYourCall. @NYPD66Pct pic.twitter.com/WFRBGDXej7
— 𝐁𝐨𝐫𝐨 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐫𝐢𝐦 (@BPShomrim) April 20, 2026
While evidence of these antisemitic incidents emerged from security footage, the perpetrators of a separate incident from last week chose to film their harassment targeting a Jewish pizzeria proprietor themselves.
Operatives of the so-called Palestine News Network (PNN) conducted one of their pseudo-interviews of Isaac Garson, owner of Slices Pizza in Hastings-on-Hudson, a community roughly 20 miles north of New York City.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group’s modus operandi of choreographed hostility, explaining that members “have a history of entering neighborhoods with significant Jewish populations, or approaching those attending Jewish or Israel-related events, where they shoot videos that walk the line between ‘interview’ and provocation.”
The 47-second video appears in a vertical format, indicating filming on a phone. In the lower right corner, the video bears a red and white PNN logo intended as a parody of the traditional CNN logo. Garson emerges from the restaurant, gestures his hands, and says, “I’m going to be calm. I want peace around the world.”
The man filming the encounter then goads, “What about Palestine? Can you say Palestine, specifically?”
The video cuts to footage of a man outside the restaurant who appears to be affiliated with PNN and carries a fractured placard that says, “End US AID to Israel.” However, the word “Israel” was originally at the bottom of the sign but snapped off, requiring the activist to carry along the broken piece to complete his political proclamation.
The next 20 seconds of the video focus on the men harassing a woman wearing a black baseball cap and black sunglasses walking by on the sidewalk. They demand to know “what’s your opinion?” The video cuts off her answer and jumps to them insulting her as “a textbook case of white mediocrity. Mediocre aesthetics, no stances, this is what we call ‘white mediocrity.’ You’re a shining example of mediocrity.”
The woman, taken aback by being insulted by eccentric activists carrying a dilapidated sign on the street, says, “Oh. Well, that’s also your opinion.”
The conclusion of the video returns to Garson, who asks the men: “What happened to Israel in 1948?”
The cameraman then yells, “Oh, it came out! It came out!”
Garson asks, “What happened?”
The cameraman then chants proudly, “The Nakba! The Nakba!”
The Arabic term “Nakba” translates as “catastrophe,” and anti-Zionists regularly deploy it to signify the founding of the modern State of Israel. In 2023, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree defining the “Nakba” as “the crime against humanity committed against the Palestinian people in 1948.”
Garson then asks in the video: “How many people were killed on Oct. 7?” referring to the Palestinian terrorist group’s 2023 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The cameraman shoots back, “We support Oct. 7!”
Beginning to walk back into his restaurant, Garson says, “OK, great, you support a murder.”
NEW YORK TODAY: Pro-Hamas Criminals Harass Jewish Pizza Shop Owner in Hastings-on-Hudson
They targeted him specifically because he is Jewish
Then they bully a random white Christian lady and ruin her day.
⁰PNN’s loser Muslim gang ambushed Isaac Garson, the Jewish owner of… pic.twitter.com/o26YdjBkQg— Shirion Collective (@ShirionOrg) April 15, 2026
Hastings-on-Hudson Mayor Tom Drake released a statement on Wednesday condemning PNN’s harassment.
“I am sorry that this type of conduct has reached our amazing and tolerant village,” Drake said. “Today, the strength exhibited by our friend and business owner, who I have been in communication with, makes me proud to be your mayor and do everything to support our businesses and residents, even when faced with such a gross display of hate.”
Drake added, “As a community, we cannot let stickers placed on signs or other forms of hate become normal. While they may seem small in some cases, they are intended to cause fear and intimidation. These actions have targeted a specific population of our village, and I urge all Hastings residents to join me in condemning such actions of hate and come together and support one another.”
The ADL names the leaders of PNN as Ramsey Aburdene and David Wolf, explaining they chose to found the group following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in southern Israel. Aburdene says that he has urged people for years to “stop condemning Hamas.”
Wolf is Jewish and described by the ADL as “an extreme anti-Zionist” who “had his Star of David tattooed over with a Palestinian flag.”
PNN has amassed more than 100,000 followers on the X social media platform and has seen its videos shared by prominent anti-Zionist influencers such as British rapper Lowkey and “anti-imperialist journalist” Benjamin Rubenstein.
The incidents come amid continued criticism and scrutiny over the Mamdani administration’s approach to countering antisemitism.
Earlier this month, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed that “confirmed hate crimes increased nearly 12 percent this quarter citywide. We continue to see that the vast majority of our hate crimes are antisemitic in nature.”
Tisch added that “in fact, in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of all confirmed hate crimes, or 55 percent, were antisemitic, despite Jews only making up approximately 10 percent of the population of New York City.”
Mamdani assumed office on Jan. 1.
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‘Another Holocaust’: Netanyahu Tells Bereaved Families on Memorial Day of Iran Plot to Destroy Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the opening event for the Memorial Day at the Yad LaBanim House in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: Marc Israel Sellem/Pool via REUTERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the Holocaust during a Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem on Tuesday, saying joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran had prevented the regime from carrying out its genocidal vision.
“The Ayatollah regime in Iran planned another Holocaust. It plotted to destroy us with nuclear bombs and thousands of ballistic missiles,” he said at the state ceremony for fallen soldiers at Mount Herzl military cemetery. “Had we not acted against the existential threat, had we not acted with determination and daring, the names of the death sites Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan might have joined the names of the death camps of the Holocaust: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka.”
“But that did not happen because together with our great friend, the United States, we crushed the Iranian regime’s machinery of destruction in time,” he said. “We removed an immediate existential threat.”
Netanyahu ended by saluting wounded soldiers and bereaved families. “May the memory of the fallen of Israel’s wars be blessed and kept in our hearts forever,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wearing the Tefillin of IDF Golani Brigade Fighter First Sgt. Sean Carmeli, who fell in the 2014 war with Gaza. Photo: Ma’ayan Toaf (GPO)
The national Memorial Day, known as Yom Hazikaron, came as Iran poured cold water on the notion of extending the ceasefire, saying it would not send officials to Islamabad to continue negotiations with the US.
Meanwhile, a second ceasefire brokered by US President Donald Trump with Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah was also poised to be tested, as rocket sirens sounded toward evening in northern Israeli communities near the border with Lebanon.
At a separate Memorial Day ceremony for fallen Mossad personnel, intelligence agency chief David Barnea disclosed that one of the service’s operatives was killed during the war with Iran.
The officer, whose identity remains under gag order, had served in the agency for more than three decades, Barnea said, adding that he was “filled with pride” by his actions.
“There is no other day during the year that is as difficult for us, for me, as Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen,” Barnea said, tracing a line from the defenders of the pre-state Jewish community to the soldiers fighting since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. He said the obligation to defend the country had passed from generation to generation, with each cohort choosing to shoulder it anew.
Other commemorations took place outside the state ceremonies. On Memorial Day eve, OneFamily, a nonprofit that supports victims of terrorism and bereaved families, held a gathering centered on personal testimony.
The evening was led by two bereaved mothers, Liat Smadja and Laly Derai, whose sons were killed in the same explosion in Gaza in June 2024.
Smadja, who serves in the reserves as a casualty notifier, described the cruel inversion of learning that the task she performs for other families had come to her own door.
“I have the job of knocking on doors and delivering the worst possible news, one that changes a family’s life forever,” she said. “And then the message came for me as well.”
In Israel, “the knock on the door” has become a traumatic shorthand for one of the most feared moments in public life, the arrival of military representatives to tell a family that a loved one has been killed.
Derai said the families had forged a bond that cut across their different backgrounds.
“We come from different worlds and different backgrounds. Since [their death], we are one family, connected by something deep and unbreakable.”
Two days earlier, Derai had attended a weekend for bereaved families organized by OneFamily, spending the run-up to Memorial Day among others carrying the same loss.
Yigal Tamam, whose son Adir and daughter-in-law Shiraz were murdered on their way to the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attack, was also there.
As rocket fire erupted early in the morning that day, the couple pulled over and ran into a roadside bomb shelter, where they were killed by Hamas terrorists who threw grenades inside. The two were survived by their young daughters.
“I’m breathing but I’m not alive,” Tamam said over the weekend.
He said he breaks down when he thinks about his grandchildren, Goshen, 10, and Gili, 8, growing up without their parents.
OneFamily founder Chantal Belzberg is set to receive the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement, a rare national award granted by the state for outstanding contributions to Israeli society, presented on Independence Day, which follows Memorial Day.