Reflecting on my time in Israel: My experience is more than hiding in bomb shelters
Last April, I took a risk: I unenrolled from Whitman and moved halfway across the world to Israel. I took a risk by moving to a country where COVID restrictions no longer applied, although I was still vulnerable to the virus. I took a risk by leaving my family to live in a region with a seven-hour time difference, one that would make our communication harder than it had ever been before. I took a risk by enrolling in an Israeli-American school where I only knew a single other student in attendance. There was one risk, however, that I never could’ve foreseen — war. My first month in Israel felt like a dream; counselors and teachers held our hands as they showed us the best of what Israel had to offer. I experienced the luxuries of a fascinating culture, one defined by mixed religions, ethnicities and traditions. I ate spectacular Middle Eastern food and traveled through beautiful landscapes covered with mountains and lined with beaches. I even got to experience in-person learning again, while my friends back home were still stuck on Zoom. In my many years of traditional schooling, I was never more inclined to learn in a classroom than I was in Israel. The human connection, which Zoom had lacked, made my
20
The sun setting over the Kineret (Sea of Galilee) in the north.
On a water-hike in the northeast of Israel, the Golan Heights.
classes far more engaging, and my Israeli teachers better prepared me for the coming senior year in just nine weeks than a virtual Whitman had during the first three-quarters of my junior year. I thoroughly enjoyed all that my Israeli schooling system had to offer, but one class stood out to me the most. Every day, I’d begin my schedule with a two-hour Israeli studies course, where I learned about Jewish history, my history, through a thousand-year timeline that covered everything from the biblical era to the modern-day Jewish diaspora. And on days when I didn’t have school, I’d travel to historic sites across the country with my Israeli studies class to learn about events that took place — quite literally — beneath our feet. No class, no unit, no subject, had ever awed me as much as this. All of the risks I’d taken for the trip seemed to be paying off, but as May approached, news of the Sheikh Jarrah conflict in Jerusalem slightly unnerved me and my friends. Our Israeli peers reassured us that no violence would reach Tel Aviv, and that it’d be extraordinary if we were to be in any imminent danger. The next week, the extraordinary became my reality. And before I could process the rapid development of hostility between Israeli and
