We arrived at Ben Gurion airport in January of 2006 and were met by two female soldiers,  one of whom was our contact, called Liat.  We were taken to our duty station which was the Mishan Nursing Home in Ramat Eyfal. 

It is a compound of about 30 buildings.  It has six story buildings that have studios and one bedroom apartments.  This is the independent living part.  We were in a studio.  There is one building that is the nursing home and that is where we are working most of the time.  I peel eggs and grate them.  Arlene gives out bibs and cream of wheat, oatmeal and coffee.  We then start to feed the patients after the nurses bring out the rest of  the food.  We start at 7:30 am and work till 9am.  Then off to breakfast. 

Arlene then goes to another building that has assisted living and a physical therapy department. She helps with the patients and takes them back to their rooms.  She works there until noon when she returns to the nursing home to help me give out bibs again and feed the patients lunch.  After lunch we take the patients back to their rooms for nap time and we go to lunch about 1:30pm.  We are now free for the rest of the day.

Dinner is at 6 p.m. We have the weekend to ourselves which starts on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. and lasts until Sunday, at7:30 a.m.  All the staff here is wonderful and some speak English. They really appreciate what we are doing and go out of their way to make us feel welcome. Even some of the patients speak English. 

Although communicating was the most difficult thing during our stay, the staff came to our rescue all of the time.  We met some of the residents in our building who also made us feel welcome and we had tea and many conversations with them. However, the program is not all work. The first weekend we went into Tel Aviv to meet the program coordinator for Sar El, Pam Lazarus. We also met  other volunteers. Spent the day there, visited the Carmel Market and Craft Fair, went to services, had dinner and returned to Mishan. 

Sar-El also offers tours on the weekends, but when we were here in May on tour we had visited all of the major sites, so we elected to do our own thing.  The next weekend we had a guide and went to Haifa to see the Baha'i  Gardens.  We took the tour from the top of the gardens to the bottom where the Temple is (700 steps down).  The guide then took us to a museum in Caesarea and on a driving tour of two seaport cities, one of them being Netanya.  We had dinner and then returned to Mishan.

The next day we went to the Eretz Israel Museum on our own and it was very interesting. The following weekend we checked into the Renaissance Hotel in Tel Aviv and had the use of the pool,  hot tub and sauna.  We really enjoyed our night there.  On Shabbat, right outside the hotel on the promenade, there was a DJ who played folk music from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m.  Many people, young and old, came by to dance, and many of them stayed the whole time. 

The last weekend we just hung out at the compound. It was a great experience and we gave  from our hearts.  We hope we can convince some other people to do this.  Israel needs the help and we have to support Israel.

 Asher & Arlene Soloman

We would be happy to answer any question that you would have, feel free to contact us at

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