'The air is better there', Dallas students return to U.S. from studies in Israel

  To [one Dallas student], everything about Israel was amazing.

"If you want to get across how I feel, just tell people [that] I see why we have to support Israel now ­anyway, anyhow, on any trip or donating any money. Just support somehow!" [the student] said. "Even breathing the air there was better."

[The student] and [two other] North Texan students returned from Israel last month after studying there for three months. The three are juniors at the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, N.C.

"My whole life people have told me how beautiful Israel is. How important Israel is to our people. How the 'Israel' experience is mag­ical,” said [one]. "I heard them but until now part of me thinks their expressions didn't even come close.”

The North Texans and 36 AHA classmates spent three months in Israel as part of the school's cur­riculum. The program includes class time in both core secular studies and Judaic studies at the Alexander Muss High School near Tel Aviv.

For the last couple of weeks of the tour, AHA professors Richard Smith and Tammy Williams joined their students to learn firsthand what kind of education was being shared.

"A major part of our mission at this school is to be 'pro-Israel;" said AHA principal Howard Kaplan. "This is an unbelievable chance for them to be challenged to have 4,000 years of history at their fingertips just moments after a class session."

"Fingertips" isn't an understate­ment.

"I loved looking down at the earth and realizing this was the earth of Israel” said [one student], "where the Jews of thousands of years ago fought, died, struggled and survived. That dirt was this dirt.  My dirt."

Trips around the country included visits to Eilat, Ein Gedi, Sefat, Sde Boker, Masada, Ashkelon, the Kin­neret and Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

"Being in Jerusalem taught me so much,” said [the student]. "I wanted to bring home the feeling of the singing on Shabbat."

[Another student] said it was amazing to be studying about Israel one day, then visiting the place of those studies the next.

"It's almost surreal,” agreed [the student]. "Classes are really intense, sometimes for 4-1/2 hours at a time, but every­thing is just so inspiring and inter­esting, you can't help but be really involved."

The students also participated in Gadna, which introduces teens to the experience of army life.

"There isn't anything I don't know about an M-16,” [one student] said most confidently. "Over the course of the week, during lessons and tar­get practice, I learned how to respect the machine. Not a normal experience for a high school student, and I'll never have reason to hold one again, but it was incredible."

Students also participated in the Yam v' Yam three-day hike from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediter­ranean Sea. Considered a "rite of pas­sage,” the hike reinforces the students' connection to their land and their people.

"One of the many things I loved about being in Israel;' said [one student], "is that everyone is Jewish. It wasn't like these people were in, someone else's country. This was their, our, country and it felt like it everywhere."

All three students agree that they always felt safe. Gideon Meiry, a for­mer official with EI Al airlines, is on staff at AHA and traveled with the students. "Security is on everyone's mind," said Kaplan. "However are tightly connected to the Israeli government and we have their assurance that our students are safe.”

AHA students are provided with their own bus throughout their visit "I never felt scared even for a sec­ond,” said [one student].

"In the past, our people wanted so badly to be in Israel and yet, for whatever reason, they just couldn't,” he said. "Now we have the freedom and many people don't go. Israel is an integral part of every Jew. It's what we are based on and who we are."

Calling the experience 1,000 times better than he ever expected, [one student] said, "I'm glad I go to a school, and have parents who send me to that school, that makes Israel a pri­ority. Every Jewish school should fol­low."

A native Israeli whose parents brought her to the States when she was a baby, [another student] said it was dif­ficult to leave. "I truly felt that Israel was my home and it was almost unsettling to have to return to the U.S. I felt that the feelings and expe­riences I had just couldn't be duplicated in any other place."

At a "welcome home" assembly, in Greensboro, AHA founder Chico Sabbah was pleased. "These students brought me to tears with the beau­tiful way they recalled their expe­riences. They really are like my grand­children; and this joy was 'shepping nachas.’”

Back