By Rabbi Loren Sykes, Director of Israel Immersives
Being at Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday and seeing your teens emerge from passport control, baggage claim, and their PCR tests was exhilarating! We were finally able to say, “Welcome home!” to our first teens on NFTY in Israel trips, following a nearly two-year pause. Although exhausted after a long day of travel, their excitement and anticipation were palpable. It was so nice to meet many of the participants and to hear the enthusiasm in their voices as they told me where they were from and whether this was their first trip to Israel. Within two hours of arrival, they were on their buses and off to their first hotel. Like our pre-trip webinar and our virtual staff training week, arrival day was a true “Shehecheyanu” moment; a chance to celebrate renewal, resilience, and reaching this moment after nearly a year-and-a-half since the start of the global pandemic.
During the next four weeks, your teens will learn about historic and modern Israel. They will have the chance to walk in the ruins of what many scholars believe to be King David’s palace in Jerusalem and visit the Peres Center for Innovation; a place that celebrates Israel’s ongoing contributions to the world of high-tech from new mobile apps like Waze to innovations in water management and agriculture. They will learn about the ancient Israelite residents of the fertile crescent, encounter great and mystical rabbis from the Middle Ages in Safed, and get to know Israeli peers who will join their group for a portion of the summer. They will learn about the blessings and the challenges of modern Israel. Most importantly, they will find their place in the multiple layers, perspectives, and narratives we know as “The Jewish Story.”
In this week’s Jewish story, the Torah portion of Balak, we read one of the most famous blessings our ancestors received and that we often sing at the start of our Shabbat and weekday morning prayers, “Ma Tovu.” Sent by the Moabite king, Bilaam, to curse the Israelites, the prophet, Balak is unable to do so and, instead, is compelled to bless our ancient ancestor. Looking down from the peaks of Peor, Balak announces:
Ma tovu ohalecha Ya’akov! Mish’k’no’techa Yisrael!
How lovely are your tents, O Jacob! Your dwelling places, O Israel!
By this point, the Israelites have been wandering in the desert for quite some time. They have gone from being individual slaves with tribal connections to becoming one people; a community. They have shared experiences and memories, as well as a shared language. There is beauty in a community with long established roots, common customs, and familiar stories. Seeing the beauty in what might be mistaken as chaos, Balak finds the words to bless, rather than curse, the children of Israel.
When teens arrive in Israel as part of a camp cohort, whether or not they are from the same session, they share a lot in common. From nicknames and inside jokes to beloved counselors – madrichim – to favorite memories. These shared experiences make the start of the trip much easier for them in terms of socialization. It is easy to see the beauty in the collective memory of a group of campers.
Having just arrived in Israel, our teens are only now starting to see the beauty of the home and dwelling place of the Jewish People: the land, people, and the State of Israel. Yesterday, they visited the Haas and Sherover Promenade, also known as the Tayelet Armon HaNatziv. The Promenade has an exceptional view of the Old City and almost all of Jerusalem and is a great point from which to orient the group. In addition, the Tayyelet is one of the shared spaces in Jerusalem where Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians come to barbecue, exercise, and hang out. Often sitting in small circles around portable grills, families end up interacting all the time whether to borrow salt or spices for the food on the grill or to return the errant frisbee or soccer ball. From there, they went to Ben Yehuda Street, a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem that is a must for every group that visits Israel.
Today, the groups are visiting the archaeological dig known as Ir David, the City of David, and the Kotel or Western Wall and learning about Jerusalem during the First Temple Period. On Sunday, they will learn about the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE. Later in the day, they will then visit and swim in the Dead Sea. On Monday, they will go to the top of Masada, learn about the failure of the Jewish revolt, and then head on to Eilat.
By the end of their first week in Israel, your teen will have seen Israel from the hills of Jerusalem to the valleys of the Dead Sea, from the heights of Masada to the Gulf of Aqaba. They will have gained a little perspective of what it must have been like to wander in the desert and, in the solitude of the desert, I hope they will be able to say the blessing, “Ma Tovu Ohalekha Ya’akov, Mishkenotecha Yisrael,” to celebrate the beauty and the warmth of Israel.
