8/17/2008 - Bringing the World to a Spare Bedroom
By Ellen Schur Brown
Cleveland Jewish News
Local Jewish families host AFS students, and all get a lifelong cultural experience
Adrienne Yelsky was approaching 40 when she started thinking about having another child. In the ensuing 20 years, she’s had 11.
Lanny Yelsky, Adrienne’s husband, reasoned that a one-year commitment to an AFS foreign exchange student was better than going back to diapers and 20 years of tantrums through college tuition. The Yelskys have two grown children, but they also like having young people in the house. Thus, their involvement in AFS - 11 times and counting.
Gonzalo Oyarzun, the Yelskys’ athletic and musical AFS student from Santiago, Chile, returned home in July with a newfound appreciation for ketchup and a taste for Jewish delicacies like chicken soup and gefilte fish. The latter is thanks to the culinary talents of Adrienne’s stepmother Celia Steinhoff, the bubbe who hosts holiday celebrations.
“What’s really cool” about hosting an AFS student, says Gonzalo’s AFS father Lanny, “is to see your own city and country from a different point of view. We get to see what we do well and what we don’t as a community and a culture.” For example, AFS students take the Rapid everywhere because Cleveland is safe compared with their home cities. Gonzalo Oyarzun from Chile with his AFS family, Adrienne and Lanny Yelsky and their granddaughter Maddie, 4-1/2.
Although he had never heard of Cleveland before this year, Gonzalo immediately decided “Cleveland is awesome,” based on a driving tour of downtown and seeing the Terminal Tower, the stadiums and the lake. “We don’t have those kinds of buildings in Santiago,” he explained in an interview with his host family shortly before returning home. It’s a huge city, but they don’t build tall buildings because of earthquakes.
Attending Cleveland Heights High School was another culture shock for Gonzalo. It’s much bigger than his K-12 school at home, where electives are few. There are no sports in his Chilean school, but at Heights he played on the lacrosse team and earned a letter for swimming.
Schools in Chile don’t assign homework, he insists, although he and the five other Heights exchange students are going home with good grades, mostly A’s. Gonzalo’s AFS mother Adrienne teaches American history and “Lessons of the Holocaust” at the high school; she’s also the AFS club adviser.
“Another fringe benefit (of hosting an AFS student) is that we go on the best vacations any human being can imagine,” says Lanny. When they travel abroad to visit their former “sons” and “daughters,” they get to live as a local. The Yelskys have stayed in country homes in Chile, a ski chalet in Switzerland, and a motor home in Italy.
“We didn’t want an only child.”
David Effron of Beachwood wanted a big family. The number 10 came up in his interview with the CJN. “We had trouble getting pregnant and staying pregnant,” laments his wife Rachel Kabb-Effron.
Their first daughter Trudie was born seven years ago, but they didn’t want her to be an only child. They reasoned that a foreign exchange student from Germany could teach their daughter about sharing and approximate a big family. During the tenure of their second exchange student, a reserved Japanese girl, the Effrons’ daughter Mia, now 2, was born. The family just said goodbye to Rebecca Timmermans, their exchange daughter from Humbeek, Belgium.
Having an AFS student “changes the energy of the house, so it’s not a constant ‘Mommymommymommy,’” explains Rachel. Rebecca seldom babysat (when she did, the couple paid her), but she would play with the younger girls or take them for a walk. AFS recommends giving the students chores around the house to get them acclimated, so having a teen around was helpful.
That said, it’s still having a teenager in the house, laughs Rachel.
“Rebecca is an only child and a great debater,” said David. She kept her AFS parents on their toes. They had long discussions with the youngster about who is a good friend and who is not and about appropriate private time with boys. “I had to tell her she couldn’t have a boy in her bedroom with the door closed!” insists Rachel.
Ever the debater, Rebecca counters that compared with life in Europe, American culture is quite conservative.
“There are things people don’t like to talk about here, like teen pregnancy,” says Rebecca. While her parents at home in Belgium talk to her about drinking and relationships, parents of her friends here simply tell their children, “Just say no; don’t do that.” That, she observes, has the opposite effect of inspiring teens to try things out.
Although “Beachwood was totally not what I expected,” she exclaims n her Belgian teachers told her Ohio was a factory area n coming to the U.S. helped Rebecca learn more about her own family.
When Rebecca’s grandmother learned that Rebecca’s AFS family was Jewish, “My grandma started talking to me, and she knew a lot about Jewish people,” says Rebecca. “She taught me a Jewish song.”
Always curious about the Orthodox Jews she’d seen in Antwerp, Rebecca enjoyed going to Park Synagogue (Conservative) with her hosts.
Her favorite part of her AFS year, she adds, were her two “awesome little sisters.”
“It’s so important that Jewish people do this, to share what our lives are like,” says Rachel, confident that her AFS daughter is “half-Jewish now.” Rebecca, she says, will definitely tell her friends, “Oh, I lived with a Jewish family, and there’s nothing different about Jews.’”
Adding a little religious diversity
Bob Kimmelfield and his family were uncertain about hosting an AFS student for a year. After spending “a fantastic three-weeks” hosting a chaperone from a Serbian group visiting Shaker Heights High School, the Kimmelfields considered a longer commitment, providing everyone agreed. Then Carol Bell, an AFS volunteer, showed them the paperwork on Kartika Nurhayati from a suburb of Jakarta, Indonesia.
“She seemed delightful based on her paperwork, but they were having trouble finding a family to take her,” Kimmelfield explains. “My suspicion is (that) Muslims are harder to place.”
He’s right. A special program within AFS, Youth Exchange and Study (YES), seeks homes for Muslim students.
Kimmelfield is Jewish, his wife Margaret Krolikowski is Catholic and their three children, Bruce, Rebecca and Leon, have a firm grounding in both religions. Why not add a little more diversity with a Muslim AFS student, they reasoned.
“Best decision we’ve made in a long time,” says Kimmelfield. “Kartika was as delightful as her paperwork made it look like she’d be.”
How was it hosting a devout Muslim for a year?
“We’re vegetarians, so we’re not eating pork,” says Kimmelfield, noting that pork is also forbidden to Muslims.
Kartika always dressed modestly and wore the hijab (headscarf), but another Muslim exchange student this past year, Eylul Cildir, was more secular; she even competed on the swim team at Heights High wearing the uniform Speedo.
Kartika attended services at Congregation Bethaynu several times with her AFS dad, and she went to church with her AFS mom.
If she had any prejudices or misconceptions about Jews, says Kimmelfield, “she kept them to herself.”
“We talked a little about things in the Bible and their counterparts in the Koran,” continues Kimmelfield. The Koran mentions Abraham, Moses and Jesus “as great prophets who lived before Mohammed.”
Muslim friends from Margaret’s work and from school took Kartika to a mosque, although perhaps not as regularly as she would have liked. It took Kimmelfield until June to visit the mosque with his AFS daughter. “We were told to say ‘Salam Alaikum,’ so it was like saying ‘Shalom Aleichem,’” he says.
Apparently, Kartika noticed the similarities, too. “When I heard the lectures (sermons), I thought, ‘Oh, it’s actually, basically the same thing,’” she told a WCPN reporter for a segment that aired on ideastream.
“Purim was the best experience, because she got to see just how crazy and silly Jews could be,” adds Rebecca “Becca” Kimmelfield, 16. Becca plays baritone in Park Synagogue’s klezmer group, and she brought her family to the Megillah reading; Kartika, and Asuka, visiting Shaker Heights for three weeks from Japan, wore costumes from their respective home countries.
Kartika had a quintessential American high-school year n playing clarinet in Shaker’s marching band, carving pumpkins on Halloween, and attending prom. Rebecca says her best memories are just waking up in the mornings with Kartika there and the two of them walking to school together.
“Jews need to understand that Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation in the world, followed by India and then Pakistan,” explains Kimmelfield. “There are hundreds of millions of Muslims out there who are our friends, admire the U.S., and they’re good people.”
Reprinted courtesy of Cleveland Jewish News. This article was originally published here.
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