Benjamin Tabib – Garin Tirat Tzvi 2017

Garin Tzabar is a second family but feels no lesser than one’s own. My name is Benjamin Tabib and with the help of Garin Tzabar I made Aliyah in December 2017. Even prior to that, Garin Tzabar had been there to support me. The process started with me meeting the organizers who were lovely, motivated and highly informative as to how the process would play out. Next came the seminars. During the seminars, me and the other tzabarnikim got to know one each other, talk about past experiences, discuss our reasons for reaching out to Garin Tzabar and just have a great time together. The seminars were also filled with informative activities run by the organizers about the IDF, Israel and the Garin Tzabar process. This was a fun and a great period to improve on our Hebrew before making the leap to Israel. In Israel, I was assigned to Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi. There, for three months, I learnt a ton about the IDF, immigration process, Israel as a country and improved my Hebrew. My new organizers from the kibbutz helped streamline a bunch of processes such as making an Israeli bank account, acquiring an Israeli ID and drafting. The Hebrew classes were a lot of fun and drafting alongside the amazing people I got to know gave me a gratifying feeling. I felt like I was really leaving my comfort zone with this move and everyone around me was nothing but supportive which was unbelievably reassuring. The organizers at my kibbutz chose our host families after getting to know us over the first month within the kibbutz, and every family each one of us got to know were amazing for each one of us. We’d spend the shabbat nights sitting together, holding fun and interesting discussions and sharing army stories. This became a tradition in our Kibbutz. Whenever hardships came up within the army, I never felt like I had no one I could turn to, and that uplifted me. I remember the rakazim going out of their way to help me acquire the appropriate forms and signatures in order to reunite with my family in Australia for a month, and help me through the tough period of corona when morale was low. The kibbutz was just an amazing place filled with inspiration, wisdom and help and I rejoiced every weekend I got back there.

As of writing this, I am one month after being released from the army, and I’ve moved out of the kibbutz for work, but I still manage to find myself catching the buses back to the Kibbutz to reunite with the amazing people and lifelong friends that helped me realize myself and my capabilities. Thanks to Garin Tzabar, I have become more fulfilled and have grown a newer and healthier view on life and about the multitude of ways that I can approach it. A big thank you to Garin Tzabar, a family to me in the truest sense.