Israelcraft

My grandparents immigrated from Russia and Poland to the New York around 1900. My parents met at Brooklyn College; started their family on the East Coast, and moved to Albany, California in 1945, as my father was offered a job in San Francisco.

I was born in 1946, and raised in Berkeley, California, where I later went to the University of California.

I moved to Seattle, Washington in 1971.

In Seattle, there weren’t many social service jobs to be had and many applicants for every position. In Berkeley, while studying for my Master’s of Criminology, I had had a part time job as a juvenile probation officer.
I was interested in drug addiction, and started volunteering in a methadone clinic. After some time I started getting paid, but it wasn’t enough. 

Grant projects were what was available that paid.  These were one year government grants that were renewable if successful. I found a position finding alternatives to incarceration; such as treatment program or halfway house and a job. I would work up an individual plan for each of my clients and present it in court at sentencing. 

In order to do this, I had to familiarize myself with all the drug treatment facilities in the Seattle area.

Julius Young, was, at the time, the head of Seadrunar; the only drug treatment facility in King county that wasn’t receiving government funds; and the only honest one.

When I first met him, Julius was around forty-five; black, blind in one eye, with a fifth grade education. He had spent a good part of his life in prison. Sometime during that time, he returned to Christianity, and started rehabilitating other prisoners addicted to drugs. After some years, he was released from prison, though the authorities had earlier planned on keeping him for life. To his credit, while he was directing Seadrunar, he got his highschool diploma and also married Patty who went through his program.

Julius was familiar with the people in the Seattle drug treatment community and helped me navigate my way through it.

My job was problematic. The director was incompetent, and my supervisor was a middle-aged ex-priest who had married an ex-nun, and he didn’t know anything about courts or prison.

I had two great friends on that job; ex-prisoners, who had my back. Frank was one. Another was Jack London, who had the same name as the American author of dog stories. This Jack London was around fifty; married to a Japanese woman. He was round, warm; a bit shady-looking. I bought a second hand car shortly after I started working there and Jack signed as my guarantor.

He and Frank went out of their way to defend me.

Julius would call me every few weeks, and listen patiently to anything I had to say and steer me in the right direction. He had an abundance of common sense and knew what people needed.

So I had three very unlikely guardian angels.

After I got to know all the drug-related programs and facilities and personnel in the county, I realized clients could be better served if the staff members of the various facilities and drug related agencies were acquainted with one another.

I had some flexibility and room for innovation, so I organized a weekend retreat for them, with some panel discussions and activities aimed at getting them acquainted. I arranged rides for the participants. That’s when I learnt that Julius was never alone and preferred to be surrounded by people. He had spent so many years in prison, in close contact, he just couldn’t be alone.

So Julius was very well suited to living in Seadrunar (Seattle Drug and Narcotics Center); the treatment facility that he founded and directed. It was located in a three story building in a low-rent neighborhood with accomodations for about twenty. The treatment program was organized in stages and took one to two years to complete.
Most of the drug addicts on the program were in their twenties. They had abominable habits; couldn’t complete a job, and didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.

Julius believed that people need religion or something spiritual in their lives, as well as work and exercise. Seadrunar got their bodies and souls in shape, steered them toward their roots, and taught them how to do a proper job.

At about this time I realized that I needed to strengthen my own roots and get a spiritual connection. My parents had divorced and my family had fallen apart. And I had felt forced to leave Berkeley, and wasn’t prepared for it.

I found a synagogue and joined the choir; and had an instant family.

Jewish services include a prayer, Next year in Jerusalem.

I had spent four months in Israel after my first year at university studying Hebrew and working; but it had been a difficult time for me, and I had put Israel out of my mind.

I began to reconsider after I got my Masters degree in 1972, and between jobs in Seattle, I took a course in spoken Hebrew at the University of Washington and made inquiries about job possibilities in Israel.

I got one other grant job in Seattle organizing Block Watches in neighborhoods.

On January 15, 1975 I left for Israel.