Kadoorie: A school for all students

The door to Hillel Heilman's office opened so frequently yesterday that it was difficult for the director of the Kadoorie youth village and agricultural school to finish a sentence.

The third student who approached him was Avi Be'eri, a 17-year-old Muslim orphan who fled Guinea two years ago and ended up in Israel. Be'eri was quickly followed by yet another refugee from Guinea. Outside, three refugees from Darfur waited. They came to Israel after their families were murdered.

Alongside the African refugees were students from the Na'aleh program: teens eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return who came without their families. Also waiting was Alex Shalev, who graduated Kadoorie last year and is now in the army, but popped over from his nearby base to visit his old school, located near Mount Tabor in the lower Galilee.

Heilman described his office as "the first day [of school] situation room." Secretaries entered and left to get his signature on endless forms. In spare moments between the secretaries and the students, he related the school's proud history.

Founded in 1933 as an agricultural school, it soon gained a name for producing leaders of the Labor Party and the State of Israel, such as Yitzhak Rabin and Yigal Allon. Agriculture is still taught at Kadoorie, but times have changed since 1933, and today, many other subjects are taught as well.

Similarly, in its early years, Kadoorie was highly selective, accepting only 20 students a year. Today, it has 1,580 students.

"We are very nonselective," commented Yona Gur, the school principal. "The emphasis here is on multiculturalism ... We are defined as an experimental school on the subject of multiculturalism.

A student walked in and asked permission to put a sticker on Heilman's shirt. He agreed. He earlier consented to a parent's request to film the teachers wishing him a happy 50th birthday. For Heilman, even this home video, meant to be shown to a few relatives and friends, was a chance to expound his message: Hugging the latest arrival from Guinea, he introduced the boy and promised that the staff would help him adjust to his new surroundings.

Over and over, Heilman stressed the school's broad spectrum of students, ranging from kibbutz members through new immigrants and Israeli Arabs to African refugees.

Later, at an eighth-grade civics class that he taught, Heilman used the stories of the three Darfur refugees to expound on the role of the state. "One of the state's jobs is to ensure the personal security of its residents," he said. "But look what happened to these boys who are learning with us: Not only did the state not protect them, it murdered their relatives."