The Rebirth of Hadracha in Cape Town – Bnei Akiva

By Nathan Esra

Hadracha is a tour program in Israel for Grade 10 students, run by Bnei Akiva.

Having grown up in the Jewish community of Johannesburg, I had always taken it for granted that in Grade 10, anyone would be able to go on this program to Israel (there were roughly 150 grade 10 students that attended Israel programs with me in 2010). After moving to Cape Town however, the reality was very different. Last year we were able to send six Grade 10 channichim on Hadracha, which was a great success considering that we hadn’t sent any channichim for the previous four years. We still were not competing with Johannesburg however, who were able to send roughly 100 channichim to Israel compared to Cape Town’s six.

We knew that something had to be done to give more Grade 10 channichim the amazing opportunity to experience Israel in high school and thus Sayeret Morasha was born!

Sayeret (which translates to elite) Morasha (which is the name of the current Grade 10 shichvah) is the groundbreaking leadership program that is proving to be the change that Bnei Akiva Cape Town needed. The program runs throughout the year and entails well thought out, educational tochniot and inspirational Shabbatonim, which all build up to and continue with the Hadracha tour. It has been an amazing and exhilarating experience to be part of the team that builds a program of this kind and we could not be more excited to say that in its pilot year, we have 16 channichim that are part of the Sayeret Morasha program and 21 channichim that have signed up for Hadracha! The program is well underway and this was written of our recent Shabbaton by Dalia Blecher, a Sayeret Morasha channie,

“Sayeret Morasha is made up of the most amazing group of channies and Maddies within Cape Town. As part of the leadership program pertaining to Sayeret Morasha we had the opportunity to spend a Shabbat with the Jewish community of Constantia. This Shabbaton was unbelievably run by our madrichim and will not be forgotten. The community members of Constantia were as excited as us (extremely) to be sharing this experience. They welcomed us into their community with open arms and made the experience unbelievable. The tochniot that our madrichim prepared for us were both enjoyable and insightful, teaching us about our potential and recognizing it in others throughout the shabbaton in a fun and seamless way. We cannot wait to continue this leadership program and eventually become leaders of Bnei Akiva ourselves. Sayeret Morasha has immense potential that we are ecstatic to discover as a shichva with the help of the shlichot, our madrichim and most of all each other. “

Hadarcha leaves for Israel on 29 July and we are all excited to see where Sayeret Morasha goes. There are indeed exciting times ahead for Bnei Akiva Cape Town.

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