It's the beginning of the academic year at Migdal Ohr and 700 new students, all underprivileged Israeli children, are getting accustomed to life on the sprawling school campus in the middle of this dusty northern Israeli town. Meanwhile, in an office tucked away at one end of the campus, school founder Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman is hard at work.

As charity head, school principal, and chief rabbi, Grossman is trying to manage the needs of more than 6,000 underprivileged children in schools and orphanages throughout Migdal Ha'Emek, while also serving as the leading spiritual adviser to the entire community. As if that weren't enough, with the Israeli economy struggling, Grossman faces government funding cuts and rapidly growing numbers of needy students that are testing the limits of this enormous humanitarian operation that he built from scratch.

Grossman first arrived here in 1969. "I intended to stay for just a couple of months, volunteer, then go back," he says. At that time, he explains, Migdal Ha'Emek had become the biggest center for crime in Israel. There weren't enough schools, few jobs, and no social or leisure facilities. Many young people had turned to crime, drugs, and alcohol.

"When I arrived," Grossman recalls, "the only place I could find young people were in the town's discos. So I went there. Gradually they began to open up, to tell me about their lives and their problems. No one had ever asked them about their feelings, fears, and dreams before."

Grossman decided to stay, and he soon became known locally as the 'Disco Rabbi.' Befriending many young people, he learned that most had a close relative in jail.

Grossman believed he could prevent a new generation of children from entering a life of crime. Thus, Migdal Ohr (Tower of Light) was born. In 1973, Grossman opened his first junior high school for 18 local boys from broken homes. Today, Migdal Ohr's campuses occupy huge tracts of land in the hilltop town, with a teaching and social worker staff of roughly 800, 80 percent of whom are former Migdal Ohr pupils.

Of the 6,000 boys and girls attending one of Migdal Ohr's 18 schools and seven toddler day-care centers, 2,000 live permanently in the charity's dormitories, supported by a network of foster parents.

With violence rising at an alarming rate in Israeli schools and wider society, many educators and public institutions are now coming to learn from the successes of Migdal Ohr.

"Recently, 50 Israeli army officers were sent by the IDF Chief of Staff to learn how the rabbi is able to weave emotionally scarred, problematic children from varied ethnic backgrounds almost seamlessly into mainstream society," says Norma Balass of American Friends of Migdal Ohr in the USA. The army faces similar challenges in assimilating new soldiers who come from diverse backgrounds.

"Migdal Ohr's children are matriculating with much higher scores than the national average," Ms. Balass continues. "The schools are violence- and drug-free, despite the backgrounds of these children." With a graduation rate of 98 percent, the organization has had children go on to become doctors, lawyers, and even members of parliament.

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