Studying in Israel

BY NOAH DRUCKER

THE DETAILS

For the fall semester of 2020 (September to December) I went to Alexander Muss High School in Israel (AMHSI). The school is located in Hod Hasharon, which is only a short drive from Tel Aviv. I’m not sure how many students attend in normal non COVID circumstances but this year there were 74 of us, everyone there was from America, except me. There were two courses that every student had to take, Israel studies/Jewish history and Hebrew. The rest of the classes were up to you. For a school with less than 100 kids there were an impressive number of options, four history courses, six math courses, two languages (excluding Hebrew), three English courses, six science courses, and others I’m probably forgetting.

THE EXPERIENCE

Because of the current COVID crisis we had to do a two-week quarantine as soon as we arrived in Israel. There was a small amount of online school, but the program didn’t properly start until we got out of isolation. Once we were out of isolation, we had a few hours to move into our new rooms, get acquainted with our new roommates, and then get on the bus for our fi rst fi eld trip into Israel. Out of all the teaching staff we defi nitely spent the most time with our Israel studies teachers. They were the ones who led us during all the fi eld trips and taught us about the signifi cance of all the places we went and things we saw. In general, we were really close to all our teachers, partly because of the small class sizes, and partly because of the sheer amount of time we spent with them. By the end of the trip, I really felt like I knew all of them, and they knew me.

THE IMPACT ON ME

The four months I spent in Israel at AMHSI have been some of the best months of my life. At points it felt like I was just going to an extended summer camp in Israel. I think the time, bonds, and life-long friendships I made at Muss can be best described by a quote from Winne the Pooh of all things, “we didn’t realize we were making memories; we just knew we were having fun.” One of my favorite memories which is a perfect example of this was when we summited Masada. Me and the group of guys I was hiking with were the fi rst ones to get to the top, and when we got there it felt like we had conquered the world. That wasn’t the best part though. Because it was cloudy, we didn’t get the opportunity to see the famous Masada sunrise, what we got was better. For a little context there are only a handful of days in a year when it rains on Masada. So when someone made the joke that it might start raining, we started doing a rain dance, and it actually started to rain! As goofy as it sounds, the hours we spent at Masada were some of the best of the whole trip.

My time in Israel also had a huge impact on my Jewish identity. From my experience I sometimes fi nd it hard to have a genuine and meaningful connection to Judaism. Especially here where the community is small and we’re surrounded by people who aren’t Jewish. I remember in Hebrew school that sometimes I found myself having a hard time caring about the historical material being taught. Because they were just stories from thousands of years ago that have no effect on my life today. But in Israel when you could actually go to the scene of these stories and walk the same paths and roads that the profi ts and modern heroes did, it suddenly seemed so much more real.

Last of all, I would like to give a huge thank you to the Atlantic Jewish Council for awarding me a Miasnik-Rein Scholarship to support my participation in this program. You have truly made a difference to my life, and I know that your continued support of Atlantic Canadian young adults’ participation in similar programs will make a difference for many in the future.