JERUSALEM — When Alfie Kass was 16, he was involved in NCSY and came to Israel on a special “Jerusalem Journey” program for a month.
“I loved it! It was one of the best programs I’d ever been on,” Alfie says. “There was one bus with 40 kids. Now there are eight to nine buses.”
During his senior year at Shawnee Mission East, which he graduated in May, the Overland Park 19-year-old son of Dan Kass and Joy Wilner decided he wanted the gap year off to see Israel again before starting Johnson County Community College to work for an associate degree in fire science.
Initially, Alfie thought he wanted to learn Torah and more Judaism, so he looked at a lot of Israel programs. Someone suggested the Chai Israel Program through Ohr Sameach Yeshiva, where the young men have four hours of learning a day and the rest of the day is either volunteering, trips, speakers or seminars. So he enrolled in this program and arrived on Sept. 1.
“I liked it the first couple of weeks, then there were some issues, and I realized it didn’t have what I wanted. I had planned to volunteer with Magen David Adom anyway, and I found the Yochai Porat Overseas Program, which works with MADA (acronym for Magen David Adom),” Alfie says. (Magen David Adom is the Israeli version of the Red Cross.)
After taking the 10-day, 60-hour course in English, he became certified as a first responder. “It was an amazing program — 17 kids from eight nations, including Sweden, Australia, Mexico, England, Argentina, the U.S. and Canada.”
Alfie was then posted to a station in Jerusalem working eight-hour shifts with a paramedic who was the ambulance driver, an EMT, and another first responder.
“Things weren’t working out at the yeshivah, so I decided to do MADA full time,” he says. “They set me up in an apartment in Tel Aviv and I worked in Ramat Gan. Usually it was just a paramedic and me in the ambulance, so I did a lot more.”
Alfie says he also had the opportunity to work on the mobile intensive care ambulance occasionally where they are dispatched to serious calls such as those involving the heart and breathing.
Although Alfie was not fluent in Hebrew, he says he learned the medical terms and calls so he would know what to do, “which brings out your knowledge a lot more.”
Recently, on the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, he was awakened at 5:30 a.m. by a call from an elderly lady who had fallen out of bed and was becoming unconscious.
“The driver didn’t speak English, but we had a connection,” Alfie says. “I had the IV set up and the blood sugar ready and he indicated what he needed. You’ve got to know what the medic needs. Afterward he gave me a handshake, which meant good job, even though we didn’t speak once the entire time.”
Even though Alfie is leaving Israel early, Thursday, Dec. 23, he is excited about his stay here. “It’s been an eye-opening experience, how a different country and culture reacts to emergencies.”
He remarks that during the disastrous Carmel fire a few weeks ago he wanted to volunteer in firefighting but they were only accepting those with their own equipment, and Magen David Adom also had enough volunteers.
Regarding the Magen David Adom experience, he says, “MADA needs volunteers and they like volunteers to come over. It’s really a great thing to know. It›s a real good experience to see how another culture does things even though Israel is a lot like America.”
