About Us

The Jerusalem Hills Therapeutic Centers - JHTC (formerly the J.W.I. Residential Treatment Center) was established in 1943, more than sixty-seven years ago. Since then, its three facilities – the Children's Home, the Kemper Group House and the Goldie Kassell Center – have established themselves  and have achieved unprecedented success in rehabilitating and mainstreaming the majority of more than one thousand graduates back into Israel's normative society.  The JHTC"s success lies in its unique therapy programs and outreach projects that have won international acclaim.

The Children of Teheran

In 1943, a group of 800 children reached the shores of Atlit, the first group of Holocaust survivors to reach Palestine from Nazi- occupied Europe.  Their journey began in 1939, when their families fled from Nazi-occupied Poland to Russia. The children suffered four years of wandering, marked by fear, hunger, cold and disease. The children were separated from their parents under various circumstances: some were orphaned, others were placed in hiding by their parents with Christian families and orphanages in the hope to save their lives. In 1942, disguised as non-Jewish Polish refugees, Jewish children placed in Christian orphanages in Poland succeeded in following General Anders's Polish army-in-exile as it made its way to the British mandated Middle East to fight alongside the allies. In Teheran, the children were rescued by Jewish Agency workers and sent by ship, train and on foot to the land of Israel. Thus, this group of children was dubbed The Children of Teheran.

The first Children's Home

A group of twenty-five children, who were severely traumatized, could not be integrated into the absorption frameworks available at the time. In an effort to address their unique needs, the B'nai B'rith Jerusalem Lodge generously agreed to house these 25 children in the care of experienced childcare professionals, led by Yehuda Dux. Thus in 1943, the Children's Home was established on the second floor of the B'nai B'rith youth hostel on Ethiopia Street in Jerusalem. From here it embarked on its mission to rehabilitate and mainstream traumatized immigrant and Israeli children and youth.

Nearly 70 years of healing and mainstreaming at-risk children and youth

In 1950, B'nai B'rith Women of America (later to become Jewish Women International) took upon themselves the funding and operation of the facility. The organization purchased a 20-dunam tract of land in the tranquil Bayit Vagan neighborhood of Jerusalem and constructed a new Children's Home campus that opened there in 1956 and continued its operation at that location until 2009. Children's cottages were built on campus along with a school of special education.

For over fifty years, the Children's Home continued to develop and expand its internationally acclaimed unique treatment program. The "Beit Hannah" Group House for adolescent boys opened on Ethiopia Street – the historical site of the Home's beginnings – in 1985. In 1999, the Goldie Kassell Center was established as an outpatient venue, to help address the needs of Jerusalem's population.

New locations, new campus

In 2008, the Group House relocated to a spacious villa in the quiet residential neighborhood of Gilo on the outskirts of Jerusalem, thanks to a generous gift of the Kemper Family, England. That same year, the Goldie Kassell Center set up expanded operations in the more easily accessible Malkha neighborhood of central Jerusalem. In March 2009, the Children's Home moved to its beautiful new campus in the picturesque Judean Hills just west of Jerusalem.

The move to a new campus brought with it a change of name as well. The Jewish Women International organization bestowed ownership of the land to the JHTC amutah, thus beginning a new era and the coinage of the "Jerusalem Hills Therapeutic Centers" replacing the much-renowned RTC name.