Frank Bentayou
Plain Dealer Reporter
Slender and dark-haired like her mother, Shifra Kal man steps forward to shake hands, meeting an adult visitor's gaze directly, his greeting -- "How are you?" -- with a simple response.
"Hi. I'm fine."
Standing straight in a white blouse and dark skirt, Shifra seemed poised beyond her 10 years.
But Jeaniene Kalman knows the anxiety her daughter harbors when she encounters new people.
Like all concerned parents, she and her husband, Michael, focus sharply on their oldest child's emotional and social needs. Family, therapists, teachers and a tutor trained to work with kids with special needs have sought for years to help Shifra break out from her shyness and reticence with outsiders.
This Monday, though, two patient teenage volunteers gently nudge her to brave further the scary world of social interaction.
Esti Fox, 15, and Ariana Bander, 16, sophomores at the Jewish Akiva High School in Beachwood and volunteers for Friendship Circle, spend an hour a week playing with Shifra at the Kalmans' Cleveland Heights home.
They talk and listen and work on projects, from cookie-making to arts and crafts, often drawing in Shifra's siblings, Gila, 5, and Rafi, 2.
The young volunteers and hundreds of other Jewish teenagers commit time and energy to this national program that matches them with younger kids who, like Shifra, need someone near their age to talk to, share with and model.
That's how Chabad Rabbi Yossi Marozov and his wife, Estie Marozov, envisioned the program they started here and have run, partly out of their University Heights home, for three years. Estie Marozov mobilizes and oversees nearly 100 area youth to connect with children whose disabilities interfere with the magical process of friend-making.
The Jewish Chabad movement in Cleveland gets local financial support for volunteer training sessions and appreciative perks (scarves, mugs, ski caps - all with the Friendship Circle logo) that special-needs families and volunteers receive.
'He can feel like
a regular kid'
A day before the girls' get-together, Andrew Sokolov, a lively 12-year-old diagnosed with autism, plays Monopoly at his Solon home with his Circle friends, Matt Hornstein, a junior at University School, and Josh Aizen, a junior at Solon High School.
In contrast to the calm art project at the Kalmans', where the girls fashion a pictorial fruit mobile with cut-out paper shapes, bright markers, red yarn and a wire coat hanger, the boys' game is more like rugby on the kitchen table.
Pastel Monopoly money flies across the board; Andrew pumps his arm with each roll of the dice, calling out the number; friendly, competitive jokes sail through the air.
Matt lands on Tennessee Avenue, improved with a hotel. "How much?" he asks.
Barry Sokolov, Andrew's father, hovering over and advising his son, inspects the deed, smiles wickedly and says, "$950."
"What?" Matt barks, tensing his face.
Josh, leaning over a diminishing cache of bills and mortgaged properties, says, "Andrew, you're killing us."
When the boys' hour-plus game ends, and the teenagers leave, the Sokolovs talk about the effect of the noisy games, the bowling outings, the neighborhood walks, the planned ice-skating afternoon.
"It's great for Andrew," Maureen Sokolov says. "He gets all this attention, but he's just another boy in the crowd. He can feel like a regular kid."
Jackie Schwartz, Andrew's private tutor who helps him with his schoolwork and more, agrees. "It's really important for autistic kids to spend time with normal kids. Andrew's come a long way since I first met him. His parents have fought for him to be mainstreamed in school and active with other kids. Friendship Circle is a good step."
Benefits to all
involved
Marozov says the benefit to the kids with special needs, "seems positive. But the other side is really important, too."
That's the effect that giving time - reliably meeting each week for an hour in Friendship Circle - has on volunteers. "They get so much pride and satisfaction out of befriending their children. It's . . . it's inspirational," the exuberant 30-year-old rabbi says.
A spiritual leader at the Chabad Synagogue in Beachwood, Marozov also has been pleased to see the program as a way to pull Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Jews together, sectors of the broader Jewish community that seldom mix.
Now operating in two dozen cities (including Columbus) in North America, Friendship Circle grew out of an effort Rabbi Levi Shemtov, national executive director, and his wife, Bassie, first started in Detroit a decade ago.
"We always wanted to set up a nonprofit to solve some of society's problems with friendship," he says in a telephone interview.
The couple looked for unmet needs in their community and found that many children suffer an isolation volunteers can salve. "And it's more natural for people to connect when they're around the same age," Shemtov says.
The Detroit-area group now has 400 volunteers, and the special-needs parents "say their kids are becoming so much more enriched."
The Marozovs have almost 100 volunteers in their program, they say, and they're eager to spread it beyond current boundaries.
With support from the Jewish community, Friendship Circle is buying a building from Workmen's Circle, a 105-year-old mutual aid society in South Euclid.
The society agreed to remain as a tenant for a couple of years, according to board member Neil Grossman, before moving into a new structure. Marozov thinks having its own space will facilitate Friendship Circle's expansion in Northeast Ohio.
The Marozovs and participants are excited about the program, though its effects remain unstudied. Shemtov acknowledged that "there is no scientific evidence that what we're doing advances these kids. But we know it does."
Dennis Drotar, a Cleveland psychologist and Case Western Reserve University medical school professor, agrees that, "on the face of it, this is a kind of attention children with special needs benefit from," but he adds that few psychologists have closely monitored the long-term effects of friendly encounters.
Shifra Kalman's experiences with her own small circle of friends have unfolded only within recent weeks. Still, watching the girls cut and color paper figs, apples and olives on a coffee table, her mother feels confident her daughter will break out of her shell.
Jeaniene Kalman smiles from the couch and whispers, "I think this is just what Shifra needs."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
fbentayou@plaind.com, 216-999-4116
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