Community Support Group Libuvim, or My Friend’s House

«Libuvim»
meeting on June 18, 2005

Moshe and Miriam Navon and their children: Eyal, Daniel, Tuvia and Eliyahu

Community Support Group Libuvim, or My Friend’s House, was established a year ago in a small settlement Kfar Adumim, in the Judean Desert located 15 minutes’ ride from Jerusalem.

in the Judean Desert

The group attracts those who cherish every moment of contact with their kids.

“In all weekdays, our dad and mom are stolen from us by their jobs and chores,” says Tuvia Navon. “One Saturday, my brothers and I decided to return them to us. Since then, we are impatiently waiting for Shabbat to come and to bring us its guests.”

“Once dad came late from his job, and immediately rushed to the computer, to do his other work. He even didn’t hear when I called him to see the scarecrow which I had built in the yard.”

“I came to mom in the kitchen and told her that I hate dad’s jobs,” Eyal Navon says. –

– On Shabbat we had a lot of friends. We made a performance and brought the guests to watch it just from their meal. In the darkened room, the Ninja Turtle defeated the Monster. The adults were conquered. They surrendered. Now, every Shabbat they play with us different games.”

This time we had wonderful guests. My Friend’s House has magic: it turns all its guests into hosts. Meet our new friends-hosts: Michael Polsky and Larissa Rosenkevich. Now they are hosting Libuvim in their Internet Studio for Naïve Creativity which belongs to the Korzcak House in Jerusalem.

How it happened:
On June 18, 2005, the Libuvim inhabitants gathered in the drawing-room in order to meet the new friends-hosts of the Magic House in the Desert. This time the kids decided to meet Shabbat in the old way. After the Almighty, blessed be His name, had driven the dad and the mom from Paradise, the children faced a hard task: to bring the overworked parents back to the World of Paradisiacal Bliss.

Every child was engaged in locating their missing from Paradise mom and dad; the kids were guided by wise prompting of Michael and Larissa. To achieve this, the kids got from a Magic Basket surprises, wrapped in beautiful wrappings. There were buttons, stones, shells, little elephants, cats and cows, pieces of bark and dried flowers. By suggestion of our friend, art teacher Elena Makarova, they had to be turned into Paradisiacal Gardens by means of modeling clay. Thus, the kids learned to open the Mystery of Plain Things lying under their feet. Seen like this, a piece of our homely routine world can become an irreplaceable particle of the Lost Paradise.

The next step was to build the Paradise from separate compositions. The children saw that their individual discoveries could acquire new meanings confronted with those of the others. Everyone created his or her unique world on a piece of carton. When the worlds had been put together, they all of a sudden became a mosaic of Paradise, and then came the third stage of the Miraculous Shabbat, which was.

According to the initial idea of parents themselves, children had to allocate to their parents roles in the Paradisiacal Garden. Someone could become a butterfly, another a shining sun… By this the kids could see their parents in an unusual and wonderful paradisiacal lighting. But Libuvim is a magic House which is not planned like a bus schedule. So the parents’ return to the Paradise of Lost Childhood happened not according to a plan, but according to the rhythm of the tired parents’ hearts.

Everybody sat down in the drawing-room. The time for talks and songs came.
How Lovely are your tents, O Jacob, …
My God the soul You have given me is pure…
Blessed the One who has mercy on the earth and on all beings …

The Torah’s Section “Behaalotha” starts with description of how Levites served at the Tabernacle. The sons of Israel dedicate the Levites to G-d instead of their first-borns, so that they would help the priests to make sacrifices (see Bamidbar 8):

But, further in this Section, another opportunity of people’s approaching G-d appears:

The spirit of G-d that was upon Moses, G-d put upon the seventy elders, and they should bear the burden of the people with you (see Bamidbar 11):

The conversation of the grownups ended with a question:
What really opens parents and children a way to family harmony, to the small family paradise? Is it victims, concessions or creative inspiration?