Leora Rachel Barkai

To Be Just Like Other Girls
The Rubin-Zeffren Children’s Home in Kiryat Sanz, Netanya, was founded in 1961 by the late revered Rebbe of Sanz-Klausenburg when one evening, a desperate widower abandoned his five small children at the Rebbe's home. Over the years, this institution has sheltered hundreds of orphans as well as “living orphans,” children abandoned by parents who were unable to care for or raise them. Some of the children had been abused, while others were removed from their homes by Court Order. Others were abandoned or neglected by their parents, and still others were orphaned by heinous terrorist attacks. 

Many of the children sheltered in the Home have been referred by social workers all over Israel. Nearly all the girls are suffering from very serious academic, social, health and emotional gaps. A special team made up of the House Mother, Educational Director and live-in counselors remain with the girls day and night. They are assisted by an interdisciplinary support staff of professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists) who help provide the girls with a normative, family-like atmosphere, just like any other girl.

This is Their Home
The girls receive very warm, devoted care here at the Home. The administration is concerned to provide the very best in fulfilling the girls health, nutritional, developmental and educational needs, to provide for all that they lack.

Dozens of devoted staff members act as the girls and young women’s father, mother, big brothers and sisters and life mentors. Girls who come from distressed or broken homes receive special care, so unique in these times, with the professional and experienced staff devoting their best energies and abilities, pouring their heart and soul into the work of acting as substitute parents. The staff provides all the warmth they can, since the children’s biological parents are gone or unable to care for them.

From Kindergarten to the Marriage Canopy  
Although care in Israel under Israel’s Youth Law is mandated only to age 18, like good parents, the Rubin-Zeffren Children’s Home, continues to provide for the girls after high school. The Home helps to find good matches, finances the wedding celebration, and helps set up the young couple’s home and furnishings, providing assistance until the young couple can provide for themselves. Over the forty years of its existence, the Kiryat Sanz Children’s Home – now the Rubin-Zeffren Children’s Home – has married off many of its students, who have set up beautiful Jewish households.