Sandy Goldstein moved to Israel at 102 with his wife, Rosalie. As he approaches his birthday, his advice is simple: “Do not wait.
When Sandy Goldstein turns 105 on Aug. 28, he and his wife of 78 years, 100-year-old Rosalie Goldstein, may be among the oldest living olim in Israel.
The centenarian couple, who have three children, six grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren, made aliyah from Englewood, N.J., to Ir Yamim in Netanya in March 2023.
Sandy, born in Fall River, Mass., and raised in Borough Park, Brooklyn, worked as a certified public accountant and served the U.S. government in Washington during World War II.
His decades-long involvement in Jewish causes included work with the Jewish Defense League on behalf of Soviet Jews seeking to emigrate, whose eventual aliyah provided Goldstein with great inspiration.
“When Soviet Jews were finally able to come, their aliyah transformed the State of Israel. They brought incredible strength, talent, determination, and commitment. They helped build the Israel we know today,” he said.
Sandy and Rosalie’s only regret about making aliyah at ages 102 and 97—when both felt they needed the support of family—was that they had not moved to Israel earlier.
Their daughter, Risa Shapiro, has lived in Israel for more than 20 years.
“Do not wait. Make Israel your home,” Goldstein advises, noting that he had begun the aliyah process many times and was repeatedly told that he was “too old.”
“My own heart was always connected to Israel. I wanted to live here and be part of the Jewish homeland. But life does not always unfold the way we imagine,” he said.
Goldstein says he has lived his life according to two principles: The best helping hand is at the end of your own arm, and never give up.
“These are lessons I passed on to my children. It is okay to make mistakes. It is okay to face difficulties. But never give up. Have faith. Trust that with courage and determination, you can overcome challenges and find blessings you never expected,” he said.
Goldstein believes those blessings have surpassed anything he could have anticipated.
“The blessings we have received have been greater than I ever imagined. To watch my grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow, to hear my great-grandchildren happily speaking Hebrew as true Israeli sabras, to experience family life together, share celebrations and visits, and be part of the everyday moments that create memories—these are gifts beyond measure,” he said.
“No success in any aspect of life could ever replace what I have been blessed to experience in Israel by being together with my family here. Have faith. Be courageous. Do not wait too long.”
Walking down HaNevi’im Street in Jerusalem, not far from the famous Machane Yehuda outdoor market, a visitor to the Holy City could easily walk past an unmarked, locked iron gate tucked between old stone buildings. It was easy to miss — until you knew what was behind it. Callie Mitchell, who I had come to meet, sent me directions to help me find her home, on the campus of the Anglican International School. She instructed me to call when I arrived so she could come down and let me in.
I was immediately struck by two things — the incredible amount of space housing well-preserved old buildings, ones that even life-long Jerusalemites had never seen, and by Callie herself.
As Callie’s husband, Devin Mitchell, would explain when he joined us at the tail end of the interview around her wooden kitchen table overlooking the wraparound terrace that doubled as Callie’s office, we were looking out on the campus of the Anglican International School Jerusalem (AISJ), founded in 1962 by the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ).
Devin Mitchell, who came to Israel to teach ESL (English as a Second Language) and to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, now serves as the school’s principal. Before moving into the role — and into the house that came with it — he spent 14 years at the school as a teacher, dean of students, and head of secondary education.
The school’s own connection to Jerusalem runs deep. It traced its origins to 1847, when Bishop Samuel Gobat of Switzerland, the second Bishop of Jerusalem, opened a school in the Old City. The property itself dated to 1863, when CMJ built a sanatorium there; it later became a hospital known as Hadassah Aleph, serving as Jerusalem’s main hospital following the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. Devin pointed out that when tours of the campus were offered, there were always Jerusalemites of a certain age who reported being born in the hospital.
But I had come to meet Callie Mitchell (43), a blonde-haired, Israel- and baseball-loving Evangelical Christian, mother of four and a brain tumor survivor.
Callie opened the gate and greeted me in jean shorts, a Baltimore Orioles t-shirt, and a smile, playfully acknowledging that she intentionally chose the shirt with the Orioles’ “bird” for our interview — she remembered our earlier phone conversation, where I had disclosed my lifelong affinity for the Orioles. In return, I put on the special blue-and-white O’s hat with a Star of David that I had brought in my knapsack, a gift from my Baltimore-based sister, given out this season as part of Jewish Heritage Day.
It was an understatement to say Mitchell knew a thing or two about baseball. Her professional and personal experience with the game, at every level, could easily fill a memoir. But the fuller story of what she has built in Jerusalem — the program she inherited, nearly lost, and rebuilt — is where her real baseball legacy in Israel lies.
Inheriting a Challenge
Mitchell serves as the Jerusalem regional director for the Israel Association of Baseball (IAB), directing all operations for Jerusalem Lions baseball.
In her role, she has helped introduce baseball to five- to eighteen-year-olds as well as adults, and has handled the day-to-day nuts and bolts of running a baseball program in Israel — staying in touch with colleagues in Beit Shemesh, Gezer and Efrat, whose teams compete against Jerusalem’s; using her architect’s eye to turn soccer fields into workable baseball practice fields; and creatively sourcing balls, gloves and catcher’s equipment through Amazon and her family’s USA baseball connections.
But when Mitchell took over, there was not much of a program left to run.
“I took over a program of less than 30 kids, and 4 coaches. Only 2 of the 4 coaches returned my first year,” she recalled. The teams were fragmented — no sense of community, no way for families to see progression between age divisions.
There were not even enough balls to hold a practice. “We didn’t have any balls. I started the season with less than 12 balls,” she said — until boxes arrived as a donation from her father, Jerry Narron, a former MLB catcher, coach and manager with deep baseball connections to this day. He also sent a full set of catcher’s gear.
Helmets were another crisis entirely. The program had not had any the year before Mitchell took over, so she crowd-funded a set for every division through her home community in the USA, who “gave generously through the summer so we could have basic equipment.”
Even once she had scraped together equipment, the obstacles kept coming. “After October 7th, our storage shed flooded and we lost equipment due to mold.”
Once again, her father came through, this time via his close friend Paul Goldschmidt — the New York Yankees first baseman who played under Narron for the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2017 and 2018 — who covered the cost of a new shed.
The gear and shed were only part of the crisis. Behind it sat structural problems no amount of hustle could fix alone.
A turnover of IAB Regional Directors had scattered years of institutional history and resources. At some point, the amutah (Israeli nonprofit) that IAB had originally established for the Jerusalem region became inactive and closed — leaving Jerusalem’s parent leaders without an anchor point for real operational authority.
And as IAB’s National Academy program grew, Jerusalem’s relevance shrank further: academy practices, two hours away, put a hard ceiling on which local kids and coaches could participate at the national level. “The communities that were sending more kids to academy have generally had more IAB support in the past,” Mitchell noted — a gap she is still working to close.
Her colleague David Weiss, who coaches in Karnei Shomron and manages the U15 National Team, put it bluntly in her first year: “Jerusalem is where baseball goes to die.”
Mitchell laughed, recalling it. “Well, I believe in resurrection life, so we’re coming back from the dead.”
Rebuilding From the Roots
While Mitchell is skilled at using her resources, connections and charm to secure equipment, she views her job as much more than baseball operations and logistics. “I am a culture maker,” she said. “I facilitate the growth of a community so that people can make friends and put roots here.”
She playfully but sincerely credited her training as an architect — she holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Cincinnati — and her experience as a mom for helping her in a job that, she said, was “a little different each day.”
In her first year, before anything else, Mitchell spent much of her time simply getting to know families — understanding what they needed and identifying the small core of committed parents who would invest in the program’s future.
Community-building and player development, she said, had to move together: “I know our players will only reach their potential if we have adults committed to providing the structure and space they need to grow.”
That started with communication. “I set up WhatsApp groups, a team email and a Google Drive. I wanted to have better communication and to make sure there were at least two adults on the field at all times. And I wanted to meet the parents and find out who was committed — and to see what their needs are.”
Mitchell also organized buses for games, made sure registration and medical forms were completed properly and on time, fielded parent questions about equipment, and tracked Amazon shipping prices — a bigger deal in Israel than it sounds. Unlike with Prime membership in the USA, Amazon does not offer free shipping to Israel as a default, and between international shipping fees and Israeli import taxes, orders could get expensive fast, with free shipping only occasionally available on select items. “I look on Amazon to see what is shipping for free. When balls are being shipped for free, I buy them!”
Mitchell stressed that “the kids are the main focus of the IAB right now.” At the same time, she has not lost sight of developing homegrown talent. “We are really focusing on baseball in Israel. We want to make Israel baseball Israeli again — so local guys can play on the national team and represent Israel.”
The rebuild is paying off. “We have had 150% growth since I took over. We have gone from 30 to 75 kids playing baseball!”
This year, the Jerusalem Lions’ Little League team has been especially competitive — a result, Mitchell says, that is trickling both up and down through the program’s age divisions. Jerusalem, once written off, is proving it belongs.
A Baseball Lifer
None of this came as a surprise for a baseball lifer like Mitchell, who may well have the most impressive MLB credentials of anyone in Israel. “I went to a baseball game every day of my life from the day I was born to the day I moved to Israel in 2009.”
Mitchell honestly cannot remember her first baseball game or baseball memory. “Baseball has been life from the womb. Baseball was always home for me!”
Callie Mitchell’s family connections to baseball run deep. She humbly reported that nine of her relatives — many with the surname Narron, including her father, Jerry — have played and coached in the major leagues over the past ninety years. “The first was my great-great-uncle, Sam Narron, drafted by Branch Rickey,” the legendary baseball player, manager and team owner from the early to mid-1900s who was instrumental in breaking the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers organization.
Mitchell took out a framed picture and placed it on her dining room table: her father, Jerry Narron, in 1986, holding three-year-old Callie near the pitcher’s mound at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. She sheepishly noted she may have been the only person in Israel who ever appeared in Sports Illustrated, which published this photo. “It’s from Family Day,” she recounted — each year, various major league teams held a day when mothers and children played a friendly game against their major league fathers and husbands.
Mitchell nonchalantly name-dropped well-known baseball figures, simply noting they were people with whom she grew up hanging out with at ballparks. “Bob Boone and the Boone brothers were my friends.” She chuckled, adding, “They were quite mischievous — they used to kick my seat!”
She also recounted hanging around a young Alex Rodriguez when he played for the Texas Rangers organization from 2001 to 2003, when her father — a longtime Rangers coach — was appointed interim manager.
Mitchell and her four younger siblings spent their childhood summers on the road with various MLB teams. While she was mostly interested in ballet, cheerleading and equestrian sports, her dad noted her “intellectual interest in baseball” from a young age, and she recalled how thrilling it was to overhear him on the phone with general managers.
Even in college, she would step away from classes to be close to her father and the game — including a memorable exchange with a professor who put together her last name and a Boston Red Sox bench coach named Narron and asked, half-joking, whether she was headed to Boston to watch the playoffs.
Mitchell admires her father as a highly respected role model on and off the field. “My dad had a 51-year career, and everyone respected his character.”
Jerry Narron was an MLB catcher for three teams from 1979 to 1987 — in his first season, serving as backup to Thurman Munson, he became the starting catcher the day after Munson died in a plane crash in August 1979. He was traded to the Seattle Mariners four months later, released in 1982, signed by the California Angels, released again in 1987, signed once more by the Mariners, and retired as a player in 1989.
He went on to coach and manage for the Orioles, Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Rangers and Cincinnati Reds, and served as a World Baseball Classic coach for Team Israel in 2017, 2023, and 2026.
Religion has always played an important part in her father’s life and career — he was involved with “baseball chapel” throughout, where each team had a pastor for regular Bible study and work with families — and Israel has always mattered to him too.
“He really loves Israel because of his own faith,” said Mitchell, noting one of the proudest moments of his career was coaching Team Israel. He carried that role with the same humility that defined the rest of his career: “If there was an Israeli or Jew who needed his spot on the team, he would have stepped down.”
Faith, Israel, and the Work Ahead
Religion plays a similarly central role in Callie’s own life. In our conversation, she frequently reached for biblical phrases and both Jewish and Christian religious concepts. “I am a baseball evangelist,” she said. “My work is my tikkun olam (repairing the world) — baseball made my whole life make sense.”
Mitchell writes for Kindred Grace, an online community for Christian women covering faith, identity and relationships, and posts regular updates on Israel through her YouTube channel, Callie Mitchell — I Will Not Keep Silent.
Long before moving to Israel in 2009, she studied Hebrew Scripture during college at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a rabbi-professor who — noting how often she asked for makeup work to travel and watch her father’s teams — eventually put together the connection between her last name and a Red Sox bench coach named Narron.
Mitchell feels lucky that she and her family get to live out their life in a city and country where the Bible stories she knew and loved took place.
And for Callie, the stakes of the work go well beyond keeping a youth sports program alive. “I’m from a family of nine professional ballplayers, and I plan on producing top athletes in Jerusalem,” she said. “We’re going to have fun together, but we’re also going to work on fundamentals the correct way and be a community that truly knows the game. It will take some time, but this is where we’re going.”
She said it herself, earlier in our conversation: she is not just building a baseball program. She is a culture maker. The rest, she is convinced, will follow.
It is the same conviction that turned fewer than a dozen balls and two remaining coaches into a program chasing something bigger than survival.
“Jerusalem is where baseball goes to die,” David Weiss had once told her.
Tell that to the seventy-five kids playing in the house that Callie built — in a city that’s been rebuilding its houses for over three thousand years.
At Ezra Schwartz Memorial Field in Ra’anana, a young and deeply rooted Israel U19 squad pushed the Americans to seven games — a measure of how far the program has come
Israel’s U19 baseball team came within one win of doing something it had done only once before in Maccabiah history: beating Team USA. Playing at Ezra Schwartz Memorial Field in Ra’anana, the Blue and White jumped out to a stunning 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series before the Stars and Stripes clawed back, tying it at 3-3 and then taking the decisive Game 7, 5-1, to capture the gold medal.
It was a heartbreaking finish for the Sabras. But for a program that has historically been overmatched by the Americans, taking the powerhouse USA squad to a seventh and deciding game is itself a landmark — and a sign of just how much Israeli baseball has grown.
The Maccabiah Games — often called the “Jewish Olympics” — is a quadrennial multi-sport competition held in Israel, bringing together Jewish athletes from around the world alongside Israeli athletes of all backgrounds. First held in Tel Aviv in 1932, the Maccabiah has been recognized by the International Olympic Committee as a regional sports event since 1960, and has generally run every four years since 1953, typically the year after the Olympic Games.
This year marked the 22nd Maccabiah, running from July 1 through July 13 at venues across Israel. Originally scheduled for the summer of 2025, it was postponed a full year after the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. Held under the theme “More Than Ever,” the Games were widely described as the largest Jewish gathering in Israel since October 7, 2023, drawing thousands of athletes from dozens of countries to compete in more than 40 sports — making it, by athlete count, the second-largest sporting event in the world, trailing only the Olympics.
The Maccabiah has also served as a launching pad for the professional careers of several players and coaches, including current Israel Baseball Americas CEO Nate Fish and Baltimore Orioles pitcher Dean Kremer, who have represented Israel as coach and player, respectively, at multiple World Baseball Classics.
“It was my introduction to Israel baseball,” Kremer said. “The Maccabiah provided me a platform, and my career took off from there.”
Fish coached Kremer to a gold medal for Team USA at the 2013 Maccabiah, an accomplishment that proved to be another stepping stone in his pursuit to grow the game of baseball in Israel.
“It introduced me to baseball in Israel, which has really become my life’s work,” Fish said. “You don’t realize it often in life, at the time, that the experience that you’re having is going to lead to another experience and another experience and when you look back at the body of work from 20 years you realize how important it was.”
Team USA has been nearly unbeatable at Maccabiah baseball across the Games’ history, with only a small handful of losses on record. In fact, prior to this year it only fell once to Israel, which came all the way back in 2013, with Team USA still earning the gold medal. That backdrop is what made this year’s 3-1 Israeli lead so significant, and why, even in a losing effort, Israel’s coaches and players left Ra’anana with their heads held high.
Wayne Stofsky, Team USA’s head coach — who played twice in the NCAA College World Series and also coached the team at the 2022 Maccabiah — didn’t take the series win for granted.
“I didn’t expect to win. I knew it would be competitive,” said Stofsky, who pointed to Israel’s deeper pitching staff and stronger infield, noting there are now a handful of Israeli players capable of competing at the Division 3 level in American college baseball.
Arnie Fielkow, Maccabi USA’s baseball co-chair, was similarly impressed.
“I am very proud of Israel Baseball,” said Fielkow, who himself competed in basketball in the 1997 Maccabiah Games. “Their improvement in play is unbelievable.”
Parents and spectators packed the stands at Ezra Schwartz Memorial Field, cheering not only for a winner but also for what the series represented: the continued growth of youth baseball throughout Israel.
Most of the 22 players on Israel’s U19 roster train together in the Israel Baseball Academy, an intensive, year-round development program for elite Jewish and Israeli ballplayers ages six to 23. Run by Israel Baseball, the program provides professional coaching, pro-style workouts, and a talent pipeline into the Israeli national program. Its players and coaches are a tight-knit group who have competed together for the past four years, largely coming from Petah Tikvah, Ashdod, Modi’in, Beit Shemesh, and Ra’anana.
Many participants are children of immigrants from the United States; some were born in Israel, others made Aliyah just a year or two ago. For many families, continuing a sport their children already loved back home eased the transition to a new country.
Daniel Herez of Ashkelon may be the player with the greatest exposure to high-level baseball prior to joining the team — and he faced the steepest language hurdle of anyone on the roster after moving to Israel from Venezuela in 2020.
“I didn’t know a word of Hebrew or English when I came here,” he admitted.
Herez, who has since learned both languages and commutes from Ashkelon to Ra’anana two to three times per week to train — sometimes sleeping over at teammates’ homes — was playing in his first Maccabiah.
“It is an amazing feeling seeing crowds like that at our games and at the Opening Ceremonies,” he said.
Shai Eichler, 17, of Beit Shemesh, started Game 6 of the series. He was born in Israel to parents who made Aliyah from Long Island, New York. He first tried out for the team “for fun” as a sixth grader, and doesn’t sugarcoat how it went.
“I sucked — but I threw really hard! I couldn’t throw a strike but I threw hard” he said.
Eichler — who after his first tryout was initially put on a development track to refine his control — has loved pitching in front of his family, and called the Maccabiah experience “a lot of fun” overall. He hasn’t decided yet whether or not he will serve in the Israel Defense Forces, but hopes to be considered for Division 1 college baseball in the USA.
Yosef Spilman, 17, of Modi’in, made Aliyah with his family two and a half years ago from Silver Spring, Maryland. He has played baseball his “whole life,” including at Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, Maryland and at a local Washington, D.C.-area league, so continuing in Israel meant a lot to him.
Spilman says nothing back in the U.S. compares to what he’s experienced both with the Maccabiah Games and with playing internationally for Team Israel.
“It is such a cool experience,” Spilman said. “It is not like a thing you could get in America — flying to other countries, having the Israel name on your chest and playing with other Jews — it is just an amazing experience!”
Spilman’s parents watched from the stands throughout the series. His mother, Shira Spilman, said baseball made their move to Israel easier.
“We connected with Israel Baseball before we moved here — and we chose to move to a city with a baseball team,” she said. “For (Yosef), it has been amazing. This is where he has tons of friends.”
Freddy Bain, Team Israel’s head coach, shares a similar Israel transition. Having played baseball as a child in Los Angeles, baseball gave him what he calls a “soft landing” when he arrived in Israel in 2010.
“I didn’t expect good baseball here — it exceeded my expectations,” said Bain, who went on to represent Israel on the national team six times, including in Italy, the United States, and the 2017 Maccabiah Games.
Now as this year’s Maccabiah Games head coach, Bain is proud of how long his current group has played together. Losing the decisive seventh game after leading the series was a hard way to finish, but Bain refused to call it a disappointment.
“They show up prepared, they are not individuals, and they want to compete for each other. They understand that they are playing for what is on their jersey — Israel,” he said. “The players were disappointed — but the experience was not a disappointment.”
“Within a game, it is hard to see the big picture,” Bain added. “Afterwards, you can see what it is all about — it is a celebration of world Jewry.”
Bain’s words — that the Maccabiah Games are, at their core, “a celebration of world Jewry” — took on added weight during the series itself. Before one of the games, the two teams sat together in the stands to hear from Yoav Schwartz, the Ra’anana-based uncle of Ezra Schwartz, the 18-year-old American killed by terrorists on November 18, 2015 while volunteering during a gap year in Israel. Yoav shared that Ezra, a Sharon, Massachusetts native, had emailed the Israel Association of Baseball (IAB) just a day before he was killed, hoping to find a way to play while he was in the country for the year. Ezra’s family and community later built the field where this year’s series was played in his memory — Yoav spent years fundraising for it, with support from the Jewish National Fund and the IAB, before it opened in 2017.
A day earlier, both teams had gathered in the same stands to hear Debbie Ziering share the story of her son, Aryeh, among the first Israeli soldiers killed in action in southern Israel on October 7th.
For the players on both sides — and the parents and coaches around them — the Maccabiah was never just about the scoreboard. It was a chance to represent their countries, meet Jewish peers from across the globe, and — hearing both families’ stories back to back at the same field where they’d spent the week competing — to be reminded of something bigger than any final score.
That much was obvious less than a day later. When the Israeli team arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport for their flight to Italy and the U-18 European Championship, many players were trading messages on their phones with their American counterparts.
“The American kids are a great group of kids,” Bain said. “It is nice seeing the kids interact and trading gear — even after seven intense games.”
For Fish, the Maccabiah has become a foundational symbol of Israel Baseball’s growth — reflecting not only how far the program has come, but also how competitive it can be with the best in the world.
“I would love to have a whole new wave of American guys [from the Maccabiah Games] who are joining the national team program and a whole new wave of Israeli kids who are getting good enough to play for the senior national team in the Olympics and World Baseball Classic,” Fish said.
Bike4Chai Ride supports Chai Lifeline and Camp Simcha, which provide overnight summer camping in a medically supportive environment.
When more than 700 cyclists from around the world crossed what organizers call “The World’s Greatest Finish Line” and entered Camp Simcha in Sullivan County, N.Y., on July 30 after riding up to 180 miles over two days in the annual Bike4Chai fundraiser, they were greeted by hundreds of cheering counselors, staff members, volunteers, family members—and, most important, children battling cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
The riders knew that Camp Simcha’s world-class programs and specialized medical care are made possible by the funds they raise each year.
“This isn’t about crossing a finish line on pavement; it’s about arriving for children who need us,” said Rabbi Simcha Scholar, CEO of Chai Lifeline. “Every mile ridden and every dollar raised helps ensure that families facing serious illness have a community standing beside them. When our riders arrive at Camp Simcha, they see exactly why they ride. They’ve helped create hope.”
Funds raised through Bike4Chai support Chai Lifeline’s broad range of services, including professional case management, meal delivery to hospitals and homes, transportation to medical appointments, emergency financial assistance, insurance advocacy, crisis intervention, trauma response, the i-Shine afterschool program, Camp Simcha and Camp Simcha Special, and dozens of additional initiatives serving families year-round.
Scholar told JNS that Chai Lifeline, one of the world’s largest Jewish organizations serving children with serious illnesses, assists some 6,000 families each day through offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel, benefiting an estimated 35,000 people.
“The entire family suffers where there is illness,” Scholar said. “We assess needs and offer a holistic, practical approach, from something as simple as providing dinner to arranging an appointment with a top doctor.”
‘The only place where peyot and ponytails meet’
For Scholar, Camp Simcha’s greatest achievement is creating a place where children from every background can simply be children.
“It is the only place left in this world where peyot [sidelocks] and ponytails meet—and are very happy with each other,” he said.
“We don’t have different divisions, titles, political parties or philosophies. We have one philosophy called ‘loving our fellow person.’”
Camp Simcha serves children battling cancer as well as those living with lifelong illnesses.
“We deal with sick children, but we believe that a sick child is a normal child going through an illness,” Scholar said.
“Cancer has a beginning and an end, which is sometimes great and sometimes tragic. Children with lifelong illnesses—we have to teach them how to be regular kids.”
The camp cares for children with more than 80 different medical conditions each summer.
“We don’t use the word ‘disability’ at Camp Simcha,” Scholar added. “We use the term ‘different ability.’ We all have different abilities. Some run to get to a destination, some walk and some roll.”
Scholar describes Camp Simcha as “Disneyland in New York,” with a level of medical support unmatched by most summer camps.
The camp is staffed by doctors and nurses, provides transportation free of charge, maintains an ambulance on site and can arrange emergency helicopter transport to a hospital if necessary.
A lifeline for Israeli children
Each summer, up to 90 campers from Israel attend Camp Simcha for a two-week session.
Scholar noted that overnight camping is less common in Israel than in North America, but said he has long believed it was important to give Israeli children the opportunity to experience Camp Simcha.
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, that mission has taken on even greater significance.
Many of the Israeli campers come from communities near the Gaza border and northern Israel that have endured years of rocket attacks and, more recently, the trauma of war.
“So camp is a reprieve,” Scholar said. “It is therapeutic. It is a lifeline for them. It gives them a sense of hope and a future.”
For two weeks, he said, children can set aside hospital visits, medical treatments and the stresses of daily life and simply enjoy being kids.
‘You’re a VIP for two weeks’
For Shimon Yarbiv, a 23-year-old yeshivah student from Bnei Brak, Camp Simcha has become much more than a summer camp.
After undergoing chemotherapy for cancer discovered in his shoulder, Yarbiv recently returned home from his third summer at Camp Simcha.
“At camp, you’re a VIP for two weeks,” he told JNS.
His days were filled with swimming, boating and sports, while special activities included baking, making havdalah candles and mezuzot, and evening performances by well-known Jewish entertainers. One highlight was performing on stage with singer Avraham Fried.
Yarbiv also appreciated the special attention given to the Israeli delegation, including a shopping trip to the American Dream mall in New Jersey, the second largest in the U.S after the Mall of America in Minnesota.
With a laugh, he recalled that the Israelis quickly made their presence felt.
“We made the most balagan,” he said, using the Hebrew word for “chaos.” “When everyone else was sitting on chairs, the Israelis were jumping off them and dancing.”
For Scholar, stories such as Yarbiv’s are the reason Camp Simcha exists.
“Our job is to make them normal,” he said. “To take a child going through this difficulty, and a family going through this crisis, and help them return to their regular lives.”
Through Chai Lifeline’s year-round programs, families receive emotional, medical and practical support before, during and after treatment.
For the cyclists who completed Bike4Chai, the cheering crowds at the finish line in Glen Spey, N.Y., were more than a celebration of endurance. They were a reminder that every mile ridden and every dollar raised helps children like Yarbiv—and thousands of other families around the world—find hope, healing and, if only for two weeks, the chance to simply be children again.
