I had only been in Israel for 16 days on October 7, living on a kibbutz north of Haifa. I was scared and confused, my parents even more so. After a few days, I was on a plane to London, leaving the gap year I had anticipated for years. Suddenly though it didn’t feel as important. Seeing the images and videos of the Hamas attack made me feel glad to be anywhere else.
In December, I was reunited with the rest of my friends and counselors in South Africa, where we worked at a camp for a month. After finishing the camp we had a ten-day break and I went to Spain to see my family. Just before leaving to return to Israel, I received the news that my madricha Rebecca, who had just returned to serve in reserves, passed away suddenly from sinusitis that led to a brain infection.
Rebecca Baruch was one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. She moved to Israel from the Netherlands alone at 18, serving in the IDF for five years as a commander in intelligence along the southern border. She was one of the many women who warned of a potential attack from Hamas. Rebecca was not only a role model to me, she was my friend. She was hilarious, kind, intelligent, and so strong. She inspired everyone around her. Losing her made me feel the consequences of war on a personal level. She was only 24 years old.
In January we returned to Israel. We were grieving, confused, and trying to adjust to life in a house with 21 people. Shopping, cooking, cleaning for ourselves, balancing a tight shared budget, and still trying to find joy in our life together. I didn’t feel like I had any right to joy, or a right to enjoy being in Israel. Nothing about it felt like something I wanted to be a part of. I didn’t want to celebrate war or killing, I didn’t like that seeing guns was a part of my everyday life. I went to Israel hoping to celebrate being Jewish, live with my friends communally, and get to grow as a person. Instead, I was confused about what being Jewish meant to me, what I was doing there, and I felt like I was being shrunk instead of growing.
In the next part of the program, we started volunteering in school, teaching English. I was very hesitant at first. Why should I, someone who doesn’t speak more than the most basic level of Hebrew, be qualified to teach young Israeli kids English? I wondered if they were interested in speaking a language that’s largely irrelevant to their day-to-day life.
The first week was hard. We commuted over two hours to Hadera to try and wrangle classes of screaming sixth graders into playing games, neither of us able to understand the other. Eventually, we got into a rhythm and started building relationships with the kids. We took them in small groups, talked to them about their lives, played basketball and soccer outside, and supported them through fights with their friends.
Most of the kids in Hadera don’t speak any English, aren’t citizens of any other country, and are low-income. Learning English opens doors for them, allows them to earn better degrees and jobs and access more resources. And when they feel the anger of the entire world on them, having someone from the outside tell them that they matter is crucial. Trying to understand what they were going through, validating their emotions, and truly listening to them not only supported them but brought purpose and meaning to my life. I finally felt like I could change something, even if it was just making a few kids smile.
That being said, it was still difficult. Choosing to have a relationship with Israel is a hard, painful choice every single day. Waking up in Israel and going to sleep in Israel, was hard, every single day. Existing amidst trauma and pain, violence and fear, loss and war, was hard. Most days I got up and tried to make sense of it. But some days I couldn’t get up. Some days the grief consumed me and filled my head with endless questions, debates, guilt, fear, and anger. Now that I’m home, I continue to struggle to make sense of it. I don’t have it all figured out. The only thing that feels clear now is that my thoughts don’t mean anything unless I do something with them.
