AMIT’s Junior Colleges Propel Students into the Future
By Heidi Mae Bratt
Stepping into adulthood is never easy. Transitions into a life of responsibility, especially for the not-quite-yet-adult 17- and 18-year-old Israeli teen bound for the IDF can be bumpy when coming from any social strata. Imagine when a youth has a more challenging start in life – when home is not a warm and loving place, or when finances are scarce, or, in some cases, even worse.
Many of Israel’s youth do not get their start on the upper berth. They may finish high school, but they’re not exactly raring to go.
What they need is more. They need more direction. More skills. More technical training. More academic training. More Torah. More support. More confidence. More time to grow and mature into themselves.
“I was a problem child,” admitted Shlomi L. “But here I discovered myself and learned that I could do a lot of things that I once thought I could not do.”
Here, Shlomi was referring to, is AMIT Tiferet Gur Arye Junior College, Rehovot, one of the network’s junior colleges that gives its students a good two years more to acquire more than just an education or a certificate. These students come because they want to, and because they are willing to put in the extra years of school, that is grades 13 and 14, even though their peers have moved on. The students come here because it gives them a way where they can, and they do, make it to that upper berth.
Elad A. is a prime example. A 2017 graduate of AMIT Tiferet Gur Arye Junior College, Rehovot, currently serving in the IAF, Elad now is rising to officer. Last Rosh Hashana, he was awarded with the prize of Excellence for Soldiers in the IAF Technological Systems. Elad credits his success and his ascent in the IAF to the two years that he spent at the junior college.
But gliding up was not always the case.
Elad was not interested in school and struggled with academics while at AMIT Hammer Junior and Senior High School for Boys in Rehovot where he attended from 7th to 12th grades. His real passion was in studying electronics, a major he concentrated on during his high school years. It was only at the suggestion of a high school teacher that Elad considered going to the junior college. Even at the junior college, his interest was focused on electronics and not on academics. But his counselors encouraged and pushed him, and he ploughed through, studying Torah in the mornings and electronics in the afternoons.
In fact, the staff at the junior college was so supportive that they allowed Elad to tailor his schedule during his second year when he needed to take a job to help support his family because his father lost his employment.
“The junior college taught me three things,” Elad said. “It restored and strengthened my connection and commitment to Judaism. It taught me how to build myself up to get married and be a family man, and to understand who I am and what I want in my life. And it taught me how to build myself up as a committed Jewish man.”
Elad, who is now serving in the IAF in a secretive position as a manager of 15 soldiers, trained in the pre-air force program within the college, known as The Lewis and Wolkoff Preparatory Air Force Program dedicated by Alan Lewis at AMIT Tiferet Gur Arye Junior College, now makes time to study the Talmud on his own for one hour every day.
“In AMIT, we like to say that we are giving our children fishing rods, not just giving them fish,” said Amnon Eldar, AMIT’s director general, referring to teaching self-sufficiency. “The program is really unique. The population of children are at-risk. These children come from low socioeconomic and dysfunctional families. At the end of high school they continue this program, created by AMIT. The uniqueness is that it is not only about professional studies, it’s also a values program, teaching them how to build a family, how to be in a marriage, how to live with Jewish commitment, learning financial skills, and even physical exercise.”
In AMIT’s network there are seven junior colleges, with grades 13 and 14. The junior colleges give students a vocational skill and a technological degree that they can use in the army and ensure more meaningful army service. With the certification students receive, students are better equipped to enter the workforce. The junior colleges are both single gendered (male) and co-ed and all offer a transformative post-high school educational experience. In addition to Tiferet Gur Arye, colleges include AMIT Gloria & Henry I. Zeisel and Family Junior College at AMIT Kfar Blatt in Petach Tikvah; Junior College at AMIT Fred Kahane Technological School, Ashkelon; Junior College at AMIT Elaine Silver School, Beer Sheva; AMIT Chamudot Junior College, Jerusalem; Junior College at AMIT HaOfek, Or Akiva; and Junior College at AMIT Menorat HaMaor, Petach Tikvah.
Rabbi Zuri Levy, head of The Lewis and Wolkoff Preparatory Air Force Program at AMIT Tiferet Gur Arye Junior College in Rehovot, said that the junior college like all of AMIT schools takes a holistic approach in educating the young men, and “does not grant exclusive importance to the diploma.
“It is important to give the boys personal resilience, confidence, empowerment, and a connection to tradition and roots. We accept boys from every socioeconomic strata of Israeli society. Graduating as technicians and practical engineers, they acquire experience through our association with the Air Force and then are released into the Israeli labor market.”
Rabbi Levy said the junior college operates on two levels. The students get their technological studies and learn from high-level instructors. There are programs in engineering, electronics and a new computer communication program, and “the heart of the college” is its social-ethical education that emanates from the Beit Midrash, the Torah learning, and how to inculcate Jewish values into their lives.
The junior college students know they are in a special place. “I did not fit into any system,” said Meir N., a practical engineering student at AMIT Tiferet Gur Arye Junior College in Rehovot. “I thought I would just come here, get a diploma and leave. But I discovered that it was much, much more than a diploma.”
Said another practical engineering student at AMIT Tiferet Gur Arye Junior College in Rehovot, Yonaton D. “This is a family, not a regular college. You can attend a regular college and be number 20 in a regular college. Here you are Yonaton, the person. They see you as a person, not a number. The priority of integrating tradition with our coursework is what symbolizes this junior college. It is work alongside of Torah.”
One of the student’s mothers put it this way: “I felt like I put my child in a good place. My son is in a safe place. In the best and most trustworthy hands possible. I was sure if he had gone somewhere else, nobody would have bothered to provide him with one hundredth of the support they gave him here.”
Appreciation is expressed on the front end as well as the back end of the program. Most graduates finish with honors and 95 percent go into meaningful service in many ways, taking air force posts working on the F-15, F-16, F-35 aircraft systems, the Iron Dome, electronic warfare, and other anti-aircraft systems.
“The collaboration between the Air Force and AMIT’s pre-military technological junior college in Rehovot is excellent,” said Brig. General Natan Israeli, head of Air Force Personnel Directorate. “A junior college graduate arriving at the Air Force will enter a much faster training track, much faster promotion track, and enjoy a clearly higher level of success and progress.”
For Elad, his stop along the way at the junior college really was the ticket to his going places.
“Attending the junior college opened opportunities for me to advance into what seemed to be unimaginable positions for me to attain in the IAF. My dream is to stay in the army, to continue to contribute by studying engineering and implementing into a meaningful role and high position in the IAF,” he said.
“Attending the junior college changed the course of my life,” he continued. “Before I came, I did not even want to enlist into the army. I thought it was a waste of time. Zuri (Rabbi Levy) encouraged me and taught me how to look at my life long-term. To envision what kind of a man I want to become, and father I want to be. He used to say, do you want your kids to view you as a father who sits and drinks coffee or who does something greater with your life? He helped me envision my life course as being successful, a strong Jew leading a life of giving back to society and commitment to my religion and the Jewish people at large.”
