Special interest month is an incredible time on Year Course, and arguably one of the best experiences of the whole year. After eight months of volunteering and courses, of ulpan Hebrew classes, trips around Israel and the world, workshops, seminars, after learning to save lives with Magen David Adom, practicing army skills on Marva, and making the desert bloom at Kibbutz Ketura, after having fun and gaining 100 new friends, there’s only one thing left to do: enjoy Israel!

For one entire month, Year Coursers get to simply experience everything this incredible country has to offer them, whether it’s meaningful volunteer work, surfing the waves off Tel Aviv, hiking and camping from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediterannean, or exploring the desert near the Dead Sea.

This year we had an amazing addition to Special Interest Month: Rabbi Adam’s Road Trip. Year Coursers are currently spending one whole week with Rabbi Adam Drucker, Director of Jewish Life on Year Course, who hand-picked his favorite spots all around the country and is introducing Year Coursers to some of Israel’s best-kept secrets. We’re only a couple days in and can’t wait to see what the rest of the week has in store.

Rabbi Adam made aliyah from the UK nearly four years ago with his family, and in that time has built a wonderful collection of places to visit in Israel. Each spot gives chanichim (participants) a chance to explore, appreciate and engage with a different aspect of Israel – agriculture, Zionist history, nature, preservation projects, industry, and of course food!

Rabbi Adam’s Road Trip highlights include:

• Strawberry picking in Gedera
• Stalactite caves in the Judaean lowlands
• Chocolate and wine tasting at Tishbi Winery
• Atlit, where Jewish refugees were held by the British before Israel was founded
• Numerous parks and hikes

Learn more about Year Course in Israel

Our meaningful and important trip to Poland got off to a great start. Getting the chance to visit some of the places we have learned about all our lives has been very impactful for all the chanichim.

We landed in Warsaw early in the morning and headed to the Museum of Polish Jewish History, where we learned all about the unique history of Jews in Poland. We then headed to several burial grounds, including the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery and the site of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising memorials. One highlight from the day was participating in a ceremony run by Mia Milewich, Talia Pomp, and Sophia Prieto in front of the Rappaport Memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto.

Our second day was a much more emotionally taxing day. After touring the small village of Tykocin, including the town synagogue, we walked through a forest nearby to a clearing where a mass grave lies. Each chanich received a slip of paper with the name of a Jew from Tykocin who is buried there. It was an eye-opening experience. Afterwards, we traveled all the way to the Treblinka death camp, a camp that was completely destroyed and is memorialized with a display of 17,000 stones with the engraved names of villages where Jews who were brought to the camp came from. The chanichim got a chance to find the names of villages they recognized, we lit a candle and said Mourner’s Kaddish and the Hatikva, and it was meaningful for all involved.

In Lublin on our third day, we got to explore some remnants of Jewish life, including a yeshiva and a synagogue that had existed in the Lublin Ghetto. We brought Jewish life back into the yeshiva, singing “המלאך הגואל” and breathing some Jewish spirit back into the room. Afterwards, we went to the Majdanek concentration camp and did a complete tour. We had a short ceremony after our tour run by David Matz, Zoe Winger and Tania Blanga that helped the chanichim contextualize what we had just seen.

Our fourth day led us to Lezajsk, where we learned about Rebbe Elimelech in his tomb, and celebrated his life afterwards at a small “tisch” with two types of kugel and soup. Our moods changed from joyous to thankful as we trekked through an alleyway to a barn where Jews were hidden by a righteous among the nations family. We learned about how gentiles risked their lives to save Jews, and we got to see the inside of the barn where the families were hidden. Our last stop of the day was to a mass grave where children were killed. We shared a meaningful moment as we heard stories of children in the Holocaust.

In early February, nearly two dozen Year Course participants traveled on a three-week trip to Rwanda – learning about and experiencing the country through an unprecedented exchange with the students at The Agahozo Shalom Youth Village, founded in 2007 by Year Course alumnus Anne Heyman z”l who left behind an incredible legacy of partnership and community when she passed away in 2014. The village was modeled after the Israeli youth village Yemin-Orde, and was built in an effort to respond to the overwhelming number of orphans living in Rwanda as a result of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

The Year Course excursion to Rwanda is unique in its depth and implementation, serving as a learning and cultural exchange trip rather than a service tour. While there are certainly aspects of service and volunteering, the goal of the experience is to create an environment of growth and conversation not only for Year Coursers, but for students at ASYV as well. Thankfully, the village has grown far more self-sufficient since its founding. While the first Year Course visits centered around completing major projects in the village – painting murals, building water tanks, creating a new library – today’s Year Coursers spend more time bonding with their Rwandan counterparts, and perhaps as importantly, learning a different way to live. Coming to Rwanda, for many Year Coursers, is to confront for the first time in their lives a world completely unlike their own – a world that, though rich in culture and community, lacks many of the ‘comforts’ that Year Coursers may take for granted, both emotional and physical.

Jenn Greenspan and Noah Furman, two Year Coursers from Texas, knew they wanted to take part in the Rwanda trip when they first signed up for Year Course. The two are lifelong Judaeans, having attended CYJ-Texas and Camp Tel Yehudah before returning to CYJ-Texas as counselors, where this coming summer they will bring their Year Course experience home to camp after participating in the Camp Leadership Track.

From the beginning of Year Course in September until the trip in February, participants discuss and learn about the Rwandan Genocide in depth, as well as elaborate on Rwandan culture, history and traditions. Aside from better understanding the country and people they are going to visit, participants learn intensively about the genocide before going, because as Jenn and Noah describe, very little of the trip itself deals directly with the genocide – Rwandans are generally reluctant to talk about it. “When someone started to talk about the genocide, you’d hold your breath,” Jenn said. “I didn’t want to ask about it directly, so if someone decided to bring it up, I knew it was going to be important.”

On Sunday, 12 Jewish females embarked on a journey of a lifetime. Arriving in the Mumbai International Airport we were filled with excitement for this trip but, in the back of our minds we could not dodge the nervous feeling of having no idea what to expect. We knew how different the culture would be, but we were not sure entirely how. Coming from various locations in the US and North West London, we have a preconceived notion of how someone lives in the western world. But when asked about the average life of someone in Mumbai, we would not be able to tell you too much. For a lot of us, on of the reasons why we traveled here was too witness the living practices of people here and learn more about Indian culture.

“I came on this trip to experience a culture that is completely foreign to me and take the lessons I learn from it home and have it affect the way I learn and see the world around me,” says Anna Stewart of Yama, from West Chester, Pennsylvania.

After spending five days here, we have learned around 30 phrases in Hindi from a GPM staff named Dennis Moses. After studying Hebrew for 5 months, we were shocked that something could stretch our brains farther than that. Hindi is an incredibly challenging but beautiful language. Dennis was incredibly patient with us as we butchered the sounds and spoke the words extremely incorrectly in our American and British Accents. From those few lessons alone we learned something amazing about the people of India. It is an extremely welcoming and kind country. The people here are eager to help and welcome you into their community.

The Gabriel Project Staff have been especially helpful showing us around Mumbai, giving us advice on how to cope with spicy food, and answering any questions we have about India. A very special thanks to Denis, Dov, David, Leron, Jacob and Rachel for making this experience so much more enriching. The Gabriel Project Mumbai is our entire reason for being here and having a life changing experience.

GPM is an organization that aims to help reduce poverty in the slums of Mumbai by educating its citizens along with providing them with clean water, health care, and hygiene products. We spent three days learning about life how GPM executes its mission and how we can responsibly assist them in making the Slums a more liveable place for its residents. On Friday we went and visited the Slums of Kalwa, and witnessed all of the projects GPM runs.Previous

Their women’s empowerment program was especially touching for us. “It was amazing to see empowerment of woman being encouraged by the Gabriel Project Mumbai that service particularly spoke to me” Maddy Duchen of Yama from Northwest London. Eve Laub of Kedma from West Hartford Connecticut spoke about how happy the residents of Kalwa are “Going to the slums was eye opening. These kids had so little yet were greeting us with open arms. A simple wave or “hello” put a huge smile on their faces. I never knew people could be this happy”. After seeing the operations of GPM today, we are incredibly excited to teach the children on Monday and Tuesday and continue to engage in Indian culture over the weekend and spend shabbat with the thriving Jewish Community of Mumbai.

Chanti (Peace) From India

Julia Keizler, Maddy Duchen, Lydia Sheldon, Jenna Uhr, Mia Milewich, Eve Laub, Shelby Sheck, Netanya Ronn, Eve Baliff, Anna Stewart, Miriam Morris, and our wonderful Madricha Ayala

Learn more about Year Course’s global trips and tracks

Hello from Israel! I wanted to share a short idea on this weeks Torah portion, Ki Tavo, as we enter the last Shabbat before our Year Course journey begins.

With the Israelites on the cusp of entering the land of Israel and the 40 years of wandering almost over, they are told that once the land has been settled the farmers must “take the first of every fruit…put it in a basket and go to the place that your God, will choose” (Devarim 26:2). This Mitzvah is known as bikkurim and required the first fruits of the harvest to be brought to the tabernacle, and then eventually the Temple, as soon as the land had been settled.

Having this command juxtaposed with the moment the land was settled seems strange at first because one would assume there were more pressing issues at hand. However, by looking at the Mitzvah closely we can begin to gain an understanding as to why this was a priority for the Children of Israel.

The commandment to bring the first fruits was more than just a ritual sacrifice but symbolic of the Jewish people’s new reality in the Land of Israel. Once they entered Israel, the Jewish people went from being wanderers and victims to masters of their own destiny in their own land. This gave them the opportunity to function as individuals within a society and fulfil the potential they were destined for since the days of Abraham. By taking the literal fruits of the land and offering them to God, the Jewish people were demonstrating that they were now able to thrive in the promised land, recognising its potential, and showing a sense of gratitude for what they had been given.

It’s interesting to note that many Zionist thinkers pinpoint this particular portion of the Torah as mirroring the creation of the state of Israel and everything that came with it, due to the seismic change in our peoples reality.

It also seems appropriate that this portion falls as your journey in Israel is about to begin. The start of Year Course is an extremely exciting time with so many opportunities for you to live, learn and grow in our homeland. I hope that you are able to maximise each and everyday you are here, while showing gratitude to all those that have brought you to this incredible time and place in your lives.

To echo what Moses says to the Jewish people at the end of Ki Tavo, that once they enter Israel they will have “a heart to know, eyes to see and ears to hear” (Devarim 29:3), may you all also have experiences of lifetime that are only possible in this unique and incredible country.

Shabbat shalom and looking forward to meeting and learning with you all,

Rabbi Adam Drucker

By Gaby Faigenblat, Machon ’18 Participant

This week was insane! We did so much I don’t even know where to start. One of the most challenging things I had to do this week was wake up at 4 am to hike Masada. It was exhausting to have to hike with only 5 hours of sleep. As challenging as that was I learned a lot from it, most importantly that there is a lot more to Israel than meets the eye. I learned this while doing a street photography workshop with a man named Jonnie. He told us to go up to Israelis on the street and ask them what they love and what they hate about Israel and all the answers were so diverse. It really opened my eyes to how locals really see the land us diaspora Jews see as perfect. We also went to the Dead Sea and we got to put the mud on our faces and it felt amazing. We got so many cute pictures, and after I washed it off my skin was softer than anything I have ever felt in my life. This week was so much fun and I can’t wait to see what next week brings!

So they don’t miss out on all the opportunities that life offers

Traveling allows you to experience and become a part of a different culture

Giving Circle is the concept of a group of philanthropists coming together and creating a pool of money, which is later given as a grant to an individual or organization.

First, we decided what our causes would be — Children, Poverty, Education, and Science.

We then had applicants apply to our grant, and we set up meetings with those we saw fit.

Having this experience truly changed me in multiple ways. My family has always been very big on Philanthropy, but since I wasn’t in charge of any money I was rarely involved in the decision making. Now that I have had this opportunity, I have a bigger grasp on what Non-Profit organizations are and how I can involve myself with them.

Another thing I did not know anything about — Overhead. Overhead is basically the expenses that go towards things like electricity, water bills, paying for staff, and so on. Some people say that they would rather their money go to something more hands on and visible, but I believe that whatever cause the organization needs the money for is a just reason and should be granted said money.

We did a few visits, one to a farm a little north, and one to an organization in southern tel aviv that works with marginalized communities that have immigrated to Israel. We also visited a robotics class that basically has the same principles as the farm, which is working with underprivileged kids after they are done with school for the day.

I specifically enjoyed the visit with the farm, because the leader gave us an in depth presentation on the organization, their statistics, their budget, what they need the money for, and much more!

We also were visited by an organization called IMAGINE that works with children on the autistic spectrum. This organization helps kids from highly functioning autism to living in hospitals how to make music with different technological gadgets. I loved learning about them, seeing what they do, and I appreciated the way they presented to us.

Giving Circle is an amazing opportunity for Year Course participants and the community of Israel. I truly believe that the giving circle is a great addition to Israeli society and I am so proud to be apart of it. The concept itself is wonderful, and ours specifically has been great. I have learned so much about myself and the community.

In regards to our reading of To Heal A Fractured World, Chapter 3 states that those who count as impoverished hold certain circumstances. One example is someone who only has 200 zuzim or less. The chapter says that God takes care of the poor, because they are equal to rich people other than their status. God rewards those who help the poor. I believe that this is important knowledge to know, although I don’t necesarily agree about the God part. My belief in God is not the traiditional jewish belief, although besides that, I think it is more important to believe in the idea of a person helping a person rather than a higher force “looking over” those who need it. When do we see poor people getting help? From other people, not an unseen entity. But some could argue that God is who sent the person to help, so it really just depends on your beliefs.

Chapter 6 explains that housing is a basic human right according to Judaism, and that a society that does not take that value into consideration is corrupt and unjust. Those who are fortunate  have an obligation to help those who are not, and in order to have a well functioning community everyone within it must have a stable living situation. I agree with this immensely. In my opinion, it is very important for our community to support each other and live as one rather than unequal, as if some are better than others. No one is better than anyone else, some people just have better fortune in life. As stated in the book, “adequate housing, according to these texts, must not only provide shelter, but must also allow for a dignified life.” The text also states that “by saying that housing is a basic human need, included in the category of tzedakah, we simultaneously say that individuals and the society as a whole are obligated to provide housing to those who need it.” I believe this quote defines the entire point of this chapter.

An article on “thelifeyoucansave.org” states “The scale of poverty is immense and we seem powerless to stop it. Such despair is understandable, but the facts tell a very different story. While poverty is indeed extreme and widespread, it is easy to forget just how many people there are in the developed world, and how powerful our pocket change can become when pooled together.”  

Reading this confirms how I feel about this issue, and as shown in the video you can see that while many care, many neglect to actually give. I believe this is because people feel they won’t change anything. But every penny counts.

I joined Giving Circle because of the principles I just stated. In all honesty, taking this class has opened my eyes to possibly majoring in Non-Profit administration in college. The organizations we met with were all so interesting and made me really glad to know they exist and are working so diligently to better the world. I believe that us, as Jews, and especially as fortunate ones, are obligated to help America and Israel as much as possible. Love is truly the only thing that helps this world go around; and this is a huge way to show it. Everyone is just trying to live life, and those who aren’t as lucky as others deserve the help they can get!

https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/learn-more/why-donate

https://www.justgiving.com/piliontrust

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvWjhp62zhM

 -Marley Lerner, Year Course 2017-2018

This year on Year Course we’re changing things up a bit, and giving you the opportunity to experience Year Course from a first person perspective. Between the different classes and trips, the community, and diversity of the participants, our Ambassadors are going to be the new lenses of Year Course. With half of them starting in Kedma and half of them starting in Yama there will be a great equal view of all aspects of the program.

I would like to introduce you to Year Course 17-18’s Social Media Ambassadors

Jordan Pressel: From New Jersey, he loves taking photos and exploring the non-touristy attractions, so people following his social media will see the major sites and attractions, but also some lesser known (but just as cool) places! He is relatively new the Young Judaea movement although has already experienced the welcoming community and wants to encourage those who are considering getting involved with YJ that Year Course is one of the friendliest and warm environments. Follow his Instagram @jspressel36

Noa Krakow: Coming from Pennsylvania, she has been a part of the Young Judaea throughout her life and couldn’t imagine her life without this community. She would like to share her experiences and everything that she has learned with others. She wants to inspire others while living in Israel and believe that Year Course will provide her with the stage to show off Israel’s diversity, opportunity, and beauty to the rest of the world. Follow her Instagram @naokrakow

Estee Segan: Sunny Florida, she comes to Year Course as someone who has been one to cherish the moment and revel in its treasures. Whether those treasures are a lesson, an experience, a tool for the future, or a milestone; the treasures that important moments in our lives provide to us are essential in developing the story of who we are. She intends to appreciate every moment during her Year Course experience and will exploit the positive nature of each event that Year Course provides for them. She is excited to provide a platform of memories that help develop the story of who she and her peers will become on this amazing journey, so that they can look back and see how far they’ve come. Follow her Instagram @esteesegan

Elena Smith: Joining Year Course from Connecticut, Elena has always loved taking photographs and making memories. Her goals as one of our Year Course Social Media Ambassadors is to document the different adventures and memories that she and her fellow year coursers create. Something that they can look back on a share with the world their travels throughout their Israeli journey. You can follow her Instagram @the.elena.smith as well as her photo blog at mytinylegacies.wordpress.com