Dor Haba is a Hebrew-Arabic youth worship ministry in Israel, founded by Tal Rosenfeld who lives in Jerusalem with her husband Adam and their eight children, ages 8 through 19. The family attends Melech HaMelachim Congregation in Jerusalem (King of King’s Hebrew-speaking congregation), which they have been a part of since 2001.
Dor Haba began in 2016 as a part of the 24/7 worship and prayer ministry, Succat Hallel in Jerusalem and takes its inspiration from 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
The main goal of the ministry is to encourage worship and praise of the God of Israel in corporate prayer that involves both Arabs and Jews. This is done through weekly prayer “watches” (Isa 62:6) in the Succat Hallel prayer room. Every week, Tal and a team of volunteers help children, ages 4 through 12, to lead four hours of prayer and worship, and teenagers – ages 13 to 18 – to lead five hours of worship and prayer.
The Dor Haba Camp is an annual week-long summer camp where Arab and Jewish teenagers learn how to pray using scripture and spontaneous worship. They also collaborate to lead worship, write songs, record them and use their artistic talents together for the Gospel. They produce music videos and worship music – written or translated into Hebrew and Arabic – and original indigenous songs written by the younger generation in Israel. The vision behind the summer camp is to see young worshippers, intercessors, filmmakers, photographers and musicians employ the gifts that God has given them and partner together at a young age to witness the advancement of His kingdom in their communities.
When asked how the vision of the Dor Haba ministry was born, Tal first shared how, as a young teenager in Belgium, she was deeply impacted at music training camps run by believers from Bristol, UK. She said that she, and the other teenagers from her congregation, were so blessed that this team cared about them and poured into their lives at such a key age, encouraging them to use their gifts and talents for God and to be a light in their generation.
At the age of 15 and 16, after she had been through a difficult and lonely time of moving schools and country, Tal began to cry out to God for His help and His presence. She said He answered her and helped her, and she began writing songs and praying more. She said that scripture, prayer and the Lord’s presence in worship as she would play guitar in her room are what got her through those difficult teenage years. As a result, she said she wants to encourage young people to press into God’s presence through prayer and reading His Word, as well as to encourage them to be a part of God’s story and not just their own, advancing His kingdom here on earth in creative ways, using their gifts and talents together.
As a teenager, the youth leader in her local congregation encouraged Tal and other youth to lead bible studies, share their testimonies and organize outreach events. All of this, she said, helped them grow in leadership.
The ministry’s name Hebrew name, Dor Haba, means “Next Generation” and in Arabic, the word is Jil Saéd which means “Rising Generation.”
Tal is a strong believer in letting young people take initiative, implement ideas and form teams for various outreach projects, as long as they show spiritual maturity and are with adult accountability and supervision. Her favorite part of the Dor Haba camp is the night when the teenagers, themselves, lead a night of worship and prayer from the stage, choosing their own prayer topics and scriptures to read from as they pray.
In addition to international adult volunteers and local guest speakers, musicians, and songwriters, young Jewish and Arab youth leaders ages 19 to 25 (most of them who met each other at the earlier Dor Haba camps as teenagers) help train the 13- to18-year-olds in their worship teams at the Dor Haba Summer Camp and the teenagers who come to Dor Haba, in turn, help train the 7- to 13-year-olds to form teams for worship and prayer at the Kids’ camps.
The goal, Tal explained, is to encourage each generation to give to the other and for Jewish and Arab believers to use the gifts that God has given them, partnering together at a young age to witness the advancement of His kingdom in their region.
In addition to the National Youth gatherings and Youth/Kids camps, Dor Haba also offers Young Adult weekends for ages 18 to 25 and Training and Outreach in various cities around Israel and the West Bank. Training Days are devoted to the subjects of worship, prayer, and media and are done in partnership with local congregations for the youth in their region. Dor Haba National Youth Gatherings are devoted to interceding together on behalf of their people, nation, and generation.
The week-long Dor Haba Camp in the summer brings together Arab and Jewish Messianic youth from Israel and the West Bank to worship, intercede in prayer and use media and the arts together to shine the light of Yeshua throughout their generation.
Also, a part of Dor Haba is “The Voice of One Calling,” a collaboration of young worship leaders, songwriters, and musicians from Israel and the West Bank, who desire to reflect the saving and forgiving power that only the blood of Yeshua can bring between them through songs, both original and translated.
Dor Haba also manages an online song chord sheet library for Hebrew and Arabic songs, short scripture video projects produced by the youth, youth Bible podcasts and a graphic booklet for outreach illustrated by the youth. These elements are a part of the Dor Haba Collaborative.
Dor Haba Collaborative began during the Covid-19 pandemic, when in-person conferences were not possible. The ministry discovered that creative projects were being developed online more and more and in smaller meetings. As a result, the youth were able to continue collaborating together throughout the year of on-and-off forced lockdowns.
Tal shared some of her background during a recent interview with Kehila News Israel.
She was born in the United States to Assemblies of God pastor, Rick Ridings, and his wife Patricia. When she was 3 years old and her younger sister was six months, her father sold their Arkansas home and they moved overseas to travel and minister in partnership with Youth with a Mission (YWAM).
“We lived in a camper van for two years and traveled through Eastern Europe, Burma, Russia, India, Korea, and China,” Tal recalled. “I have childhood memories of my parents smuggling in Bibles to the believers in China, exchanging suitcases full of Bibles at the airport, and things like that.”
“In India, I remember kids chasing after our Volkswagen camper van and we would stop, give them snacks, pull out the guitar to play some worship and tell them Bible stories. They really loved it!”
After witnessing many miracles of healing and deliverance, Tal said she learned, at a very young age, “that God is real and that there is power in the name of Yeshua.”
“I remember crying and deciding I wanted to receive the Lord inside our camper van one day. My parents led me in a prayer and we had communion.
Soon after, Tal began to attend kindergarten at the YWAM base in Lausanne, Switzerland, which was taught in French. Her father, who had studied French in high school and college, began speaking French to her which came in handy when they moved to Brussels a year later. At that time, Rick served as a pastor to a French and Flemish church. They lived in a small apartment under the church and her parents also ran a Bible school in the building.
Tal mostly grew up in Belgium, where she finished high school. By that time she was performing in an alternative/indie rock band called “Theodore,” recording and touring around Europe. She had developed a real heart for the youth. A year later, she felt that it was time for her to go to college to study music, as well as directing for theater arts and film.
But God led her in a different direction and she began studying Broadcast Media and Communications at Temple University in Philadelphia. This training would come in handy in later years when she produced a TV show for young people with Richard Ayal Freiden in Jerusalem.
Tal’s work with Freiden, and with the Katsir (Harvest) youth camps and her own youth music camps for the next four years, deepened her love for Israeli youth, which eventually led to her creating Dor Haba under the auspices of her parent’s ministry, Succat Hallel.
In 2007, after Succat Hallel had been operating 24/7 for 3 years, they began hosting a national youth and young adult conference called Elav, specifically for reconciliation between Arab and Jewish young people.
Elav provided a place where young people could come together for three days, seek the Lord, receive teachings and be in an atmosphere of corporate worship and prayer. Hundreds of young people came from all over Israel and from the West Bank and Gaza. “My heart quickly went out to the Arab youth,” said Tal, “and I noticed they have a special gifting, calling and place in God’s heart.
“There were worship teams who led times of worship in Hebrew and others who led in Arabic. The first year I led in Hebrew, but the second year, I really had on my heart to incorporate Hebrew and Arabic together in the same worship set. I asked our friends if they would help in this venture.”
They mixed arab instruments like the Oud and darbuka, with traditional Jewish violin. Out of this collaboration came the “Voice of One Calling” album and the song, ‘Bo Yeshua’ (Come Yeshua), where we sang back and forth in Hebrew and Arabic, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’
“Friendships began to bud and grow as we worked on this project and made music together,” Tal said. “It was going a step further than reconciliation and into our hearts being knit together and into doing kingdom work together. This is something that I wanted teenagers and the younger generation to experience as well.”
Tal “longed for the younger generation of local Hebrew-speaking kids and teenagers to really get a heart and vision for prayer and intimacy with the Lord and for 24/7 worship and prayer.”
When her youngest child was out of diapers, her husband Adam encouraged her to run with the vision God had put in heart: To raise up young intercessors and worshippers and to bring young Jews and Arabs together to collaborate in creative work for the Kingdom.
Tal said a ‘generation’ in the Bible is not a 10-year span of a people, as we tend to use the word today. Rather it is a 40, 70, or even 100-year span.
“God is waiting for a hungry generation, one who will knock on the door in prayer and intercession and one who will fast and pray for their people and their land. ‘Next Generation’ or Dor Haba is about a generation on the earth, young and old, who are ready and willing to go the extra mile, to stay the extra hour of the night and pray. Just like Yeshua wanted His disciples to do with Him. It’s about developing a lifestyle of prayer, worship, fasting, and intimacy with the Lord through reading His word and waiting on His presence. And from that place of intimacy with God, just like Yeshua showed us through His example, to then go and be a light in the world, impacting the culture through the creativity He’s given us.”
Tal believes that “God wants to take [the Arab and Israeli youth] beyond just reconciliation into a true continuing relationship and collaboration on a regular basis so they can together be a light for Yeshua in this region of the world.”
“We want to see the harvest but I believe it will only be birthed by an entire generation of people on the earth, young and old who are persistent in intercessory prayer. I believe the younger generation is fully capable of walking in this priestly calling, following in the footsteps of Yeshua.”