Year Course My Year in Israel: Charlie Spiegel

There’s this theory in quantum physics that our universe is just a small fraction of the entire cosmic picture; That the dimension we live in is just one of an infinite number of narratives that trace their way through the sands of time, each slightly different than the rest.  There is no limit to what these differences could be. It might be something huge, like all of us having seven toes, or something no one would ever notice, like water being a different shade of blue, but either way it leaves our reality changed. These changes, in turn, would lead to more divergent storylines, where sandal companies play a much larger role in global politics and Crayola has an entirely new subsection of blue crayons. This pattern will continue like the ripples of a pebble dropping into a stream; while initially faint, they create more and more of a reaction as time goes on. What I am here to tell you, my fellow year coursers, is that this is one of those moments, and that all of you are those blue crayons and seven-toed sandals that are going to make a difference in the world.

This world we live in, from the air we breathe to the mind-numbingly complex ways that our bodies interact with the world, is at our disposal. We are agents of change, the catalysts that will carry our world from one dimension to the next. We can create, we can destroy, we can live and we can hate and we can do anything we want, because we are capable and we are human. We have the strongest power in the world: the power to choose who we are and what we want to do. We have the power to physically change the reality we live in to make it a better place.

We chose to come on Year Course instead of going directly to college, and that changed the world.  Some of us might already be able to see how it has changed our individual worlds, but only time will show us how it has changed the entire world. Will it affect our educational choices?  Our career choices?  Or life choices?  This year in Israel, this Year Course experience?  The MDA course or going to Yemin Orde or falling in love with a person or a city or a beach or the entire country?  Every experience we chose to enjoy or ignore this year, it all changed us and shaped us into the Jews and Zionists and humans that we are right now, and it will keep on affecting us as we move forward, and that will affect the people we meet and so on, through the sands of time.

I understand this is a lot to take in, so even if only half of what I said resonated with you, I’m glad I could say anything to you at all.I hope each and every one of you appreciates that we are at this junction in our lives, isn’t afraid to embrace the moment, and strives to make as many ripples as they possibly can in this thing we call life.Things are going to be different when we get home, so we might as well hit the gates running.