PARDES CHANA, Israel — Gabi was eight years old when police officers arrived at his home. He didn’t understand why they were taking him away from his mother. All he knew was that everything for him was about to change.
“I heard a siren and like police officers barging in, and they wanted to take me,” Gabi recalls. “I was like, why are they doing that? My mom is good. I don’t understand.”
Within hours, he arrived at Neve Michael Children’s Home, a residential facility in central Israel that has been taking in the country’s most vulnerable children for more than 80 years. It was there, in what the staff calls the Emergency Crisis Center, that Gabi took his first steps toward a different kind of life.
Today, Gabi is a professional musician who served in the elite IDF Orchestra. But his journey from that broken, confused eight-year-old to a contributing member of Israeli society required years of intensive support—therapy, education, mentorship, and something harder to quantify: the belief that he mattered.
Neve Michael houses more than 400 children at any given time, all referred by Israel’s Ministry of Welfare or the courts. They come from situations of abuse, neglect, and trauma severe enough that the state has deemed them unsafe in their own homes. Unlike typical orphanages, Neve Michael is what its staff calls Israel’s only multidisciplinary children’s home, providing not just housing but daily therapeutic care, educational tutoring, art and music therapy, and life-skills preparation that continues until age 25.
The results are striking. Ninety-five percent of Neve Michael graduates serve in the Israel Defense Forces or National Service, and 99 percent become employed, contributing members of society—outcomes that stand in sharp contrast to the dysfunction many experienced before arrival.
But there’s a funding problem. Government support covers roughly 75 percent of basic costs: food, housing, and safety. Everything else—therapy sessions, educational enrichment, the music program that changed Gabi’s life, even birthday celebrations—depends on private donations.
“Many of these children have never celebrated a birthday,” explains one longtime volunteer who has worked with Neve Michael since making aliyah in 1968. The organization maintains what it calls the Birthday Room, where each child can choose a gift and experience, perhaps for the first time, the feeling of being valued.
For Gabi, the turning point came through music. A volunteer had started a music program at Neve Michael, and Gabi noticed a saxophone in the corner. “I grew attached to it so much that I was like, ‘Wow, I really want to pursue music,'” he says. He practiced obsessively, becoming known around campus as “Gabi the musician.”
Years later, he auditioned for Tzlilei Hadfes Moretal, the IDF’s prestigious music program. When he called his mother with the news that he’d been accepted, her response was muted: “Ah, okay, mazel tov.”
“I so much wanted my mother to jump on a table, to be proud, to sing and dance, to say ‘Wow,'” Gabi remembers. Instead, it was the Neve Michael staff who celebrated—who had, in effect, become his family.
The organization now runs its Bar and Bat Mitzvah program for about 25 children annually, complete with weekly workshops on Jewish values, heritage trips across Israel, and celebrations at the Western Wall. Program sponsors are asked to contribute $1,800, though donations of any size help fund the work.
Israel365 is currently raising funds for Neve Michael. Anyone who donates is doing more than providing charity—they’re investing in Israel’s next generation of teachers, soldiers, and leaders.
“This place gave me that, and I will never feel alone ever again,” Gabi says. “It was like a little family.”
If you feel called to help Neve Michael, you can learn more and donate here.
