For years, the Kiryat Menachem chapter of the Ezra Youth Movement met in an old underground public shelter.
On Thursday night, its children chanted the name of the man who helped get them out of it, danced with him and lifted him onto their shoulders.
The occasion was the dedication of the chapter’s new two-story clubhouse in southwestern Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Municipality built it, with funding from “Building With Israel,” a business club run by the Dutch branch of Christians for Israel. Mayor Moshe Lion, Deputy Mayor Aryeh King and a delegation of Dutch donors attended.
The speeches came later. The children came first.
The new Ezra Youth Movement club house in Kiryat Menachem. Photo courtesy of the Jerusalem Foundation
Not a polite thank-you
The ceremony began in the courtyard, with loud music playing and some 50 to 60 children, aged roughly 10 to 16, lined along an exterior stairway.
As the Dutch guests made their way down, the kids gave them high-fives and called out their thanks in broken English. Several stepped out of line to approach individual donors, thanking them personally and trying to strike up a conversation.
Israeli youth excitedly thank their Dutch Christian benefactors. Photo by Ryan Jones
Then Roger van Oordt, head of the Dutch delegation, started down the stairs.
The children began chanting his name: “Roger! Roger!” When he reached the bottom, they danced with him and hoisted him onto their shoulders.
The celebration didn’t stop when the event moved indoors. The children cheered loudly through the speeches and kept breaking into spontaneous song.
Dedication ceremonies usually come with a polite, rehearsed thank-you from the people who benefit. This was not that. These kids were overjoyed. The movement clearly plays a large part in their lives, and now it finally has a proper home.
Roger van Oordt is lifted up onto the shoulders of Jerusalem’s youth. Photo by Ryan Jones
Outgrowing the shelter
Ezra is a religious-Zionist youth movement that educates children and teens in the spirit of Torah, responsibility and love for the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. It runs more than 70 branches nationwide, with over 1,200 counselors and roughly 20,000 participants. Some 4,000 of them are in Jerusalem, and the new building will serve more than 400.
Until now, the Kiryat Menachem chapter met in the old shelter on the same property. The Jerusalem Foundation, which partnered on the project, describes that space as small and deteriorated, lacking accessibility, adequate activity space and appropriate facilities for year-round programming. The effort to replace it took a decade.
The old facility was no longer suitable to serve the children of Kiryat Menachem. Photo by Ryan Jones
Sara Ha’etzni Cohen, deputy chair of the community administration for southwestern Jerusalem’s neighborhoods, explained what the old space had meant during the war.
“During the war, this was a place of peace and quiet for the children, but it was not suitable in the condition it was in, and so this [new facility] means a lot to us,” she told the Dutch guests.
In Israel, a public shelter doubling as a youth hall is hardly unusual. That is precisely the problem.
The new building has much larger activity space, new meeting rooms, bathrooms on both floors, improved accessibility and landscaped grounds.
Lion was clear about how it came together. “This building was built by the municipality, but it could not have been done without the help of our partners at Christians for Israel,” he said. “The youth of today will build Israel, and so we must build up our youth.”
Mayor Moshe Lion thanks the Dutch Christian delegates for partnering with Jerusalem. Photo by Ryan Jones
The deputy mayor’s remark
The most striking words came from King.
He told the audience that Jews pray for the Third Temple, and he pointed to the prophet’s promise, in Isaiah 56:7, that it will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Seeing Christians come from the Netherlands, he said, gave him the feeling that the prophecy is already beginning to be fulfilled, because the nations are coming to Jerusalem to worship.
King courted some controversy with Christians in 2023 when he declined to condemn isolated attacks on Christians in Jerusalem, explaining at the time that “we support tourism, but not missionaries.”
The Dutch did not come to preach. They came to build. Their witness was in their actions, and that resonated with King.
Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King says the partnership with Christians is a fulfillment of prophecy. Photo by Ryan Jones
Friends who show up
Arik Grebelsky, who became president of the Jerusalem Foundation in January 2025, said he attends a Christians for Israel event in the Netherlands every year and brings them another Jerusalem initiative that needs backing.
“You can’t know what it’s like for me as an Israeli to come to the Netherlands to an event there and see large Israeli flags,” he told the Dutch guests. “And now you are here investing in our youth.”
Ha’etzni Cohen put it in starker terms. “As we face antisemitism around the world, your friendship is not taken for granted,” she said. “The impact that you have had on our children will last for generations.”
Van Oordt answered with Scripture. He serves as Israel’s honorary consul in the Netherlands, and his late father, Karel, founded Christians for Israel in 1979.
“Zechariah says that the children will play in the streets of Jerusalem,” he said, referring to Zechariah 8:5. “It’s happening today and we are so thankful to be a part of it.”
“It is a great privilege for us to help you rebuild Jerusalem as you await the great day of redemption,” he added. “The return of the Jewish people to the land is the greatest miracle of our age. The nations will try to curse what is happening, but they cannot overcome the Almighty One of Israel.”
Roger van Oordt of Christians for Israel addresses the opening ceremony of the new Ezra Youth Movement club house in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Menachem neighborhood. Photo by Ryan Jones
Let us rise and build
The building’s plaque carries a line from Nehemiah 2:18: “Let us rise and build.”
It is a fitting verse for a movement named Ezra. Ezra and Nehemiah led the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. Nehemiah’s account also shows the nations taking both sides.
A Persian king, Artaxerxes, supplied the timber for Jerusalem’s gates (Nehemiah 2:8). One verse after the call to build, Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem stood by and laughed at the builders (Nehemiah 2:19).
Nehemiah did not need the gentiles to build. The work was Israel’s. But the nations still had to choose which part they would play.
The children of Kiryat Menachem now have a new home, and they know who helped them build it.
On Thursday night, they returned the favor.
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