Rhianna Bongart
Year Course 2018-2019

Joining FZY in 2016, Year Course was a name thrown around a few times over our four-week trip to Israel, but quite frankly, it didn’t mean anything to me. The idea of taking a year out before I went to University was never something I had planned on, nor thought about before, but during my continued involvement in FZY, it became something I considered more and more. Since my first visit to Israel, my love for this amazing place has only grown stronger and stronger. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone to hear about my plans to move to Israel soon after I graduated University. It was always the plan to finish up a-levels, get a degree, then come here, I mean, what other way was there to do it? That was the thing everyone did, school, university, then onto the big wide world. The dreaded conversation starter of ‘Hi Mum and Dad, I don’t want to go to University next year!’ was how my year course journey initially began.

This year has been an absolute rollercoaster. I’m sure I can speak on behalf of most people, if not everyone, to say I didn’t entirely know what I was getting myself into the day I arrived in Israel. How does one actually prepare to go away from the comfort of home for 9 months? It isn’t an amount of time you can easily measure. How on earth did I pack-up my entire life into two suitcases? Personally it was one of the hardest things to do. Why didn’t my Mum let me bring the same shoes in 3 different colours? I’m sure I would have worn them all…at least once anyway! And most importantly, who are these people I’m literally going to be living on top of for the next 9 months?

One thing that was a struggle was keeping updated on everything back home, everyone’s started at University, got a whole new group of friends, more gossip than a text can hold, but when is there time to sit have these conversations with 15 people that I took for granted every day? Thankfully, time difference was on my side, but these aren’t the usually holiday catch up calls where you made one friend by the pool. These are catch ups with 20 new names thrown into every conversation, my best friend still gets confused between who’s Sydney and who’s Shayli, me trying to explain the floor plan of Beit Hillel, and why on earth it sounds like there’s a riot outside, which to be fair, there usually was in my apartment, thank you Tut Front! This mad-house we call Year Course became our reality, became our lives, and honestly, I don’t know how on earth it has gone so fast.

My personal Year Course journey taught me a lot about myself. It taught me that following the generic path that suits most people isn’t necessarily what I wanted to follow, that I wanted something different and there was no reason to do something just to please others.

Spending this year with such a diverse group of people really has taught me a lot of things, one awfully important one being that maybe my standards of cleaning are slightly, ever so slightly, too high. Everyone had something to offer, every single person brought something to the table that made this group of people who we are, and I honestly couldn’t be more thankful for that.

My personal Year Course journey taught me a lot about myself. It taught me that following the generic path that suits most people isn’t necessarily what I wanted to follow, that I wanted something different and there was no reason to do something just to please others. A month into Year Course I started looking around at different options, things I could do and paths I could take, if I did take the step to make aliyah. Every single person had a different opinion, and every single person had valid points about why their programme would suit me best. Constantly replaying in my head was the conversation I had with my Dad before I left London, him saying ‘I worry about sending you if you aren’t going to come home’ and me replying with, ‘What do you mean?! I have a place at University, of course I’m coming back’… oops, sorry Dad! Thankfully, I had the biggest support team here, from conversations with Joel about programmes, and with Amit and Ilana about jobs in the army, and the tzofim who were more excited than I was about the prospect, I made the decision that next year I won’t be attending University and I will be making aliyah.

Following that decision came a few weeks of really hard phone calls, telling my nearest and dearest that I’d be back for a few months and then I’m off to join a foreign army and live in a country a 5 hour flight away, and thank goodness I had people around me to hold my hand, and cry with me, there were a lot of tears. Since then, everything I have done has shown me that I have made the correct decision. It is also so comforting for my parents to know that if anything were to happen here, I have a support system just as big as I do at home, ready to help if I need anything. Think about it, Ilana and I already have friday night dinner plans, Amit will definitely miss taking me to the doctor for my continuous ear problems that I’m sure will continue, and Elior already offered to do my washing if I’m in Jerusalem- I’m completely sorted!

Sometimes differing from the norm is needed, it works for some, it doesn’t work for others. Without Year Course, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to change my plans, I wouldn’t have a new group of friends, and I certainly wouldn’t have all the memories from this year. So here’s a thank you, to all of you here today, for making my Year Course journey what it has been. I can’t wait to see what amazing things everyone will achieve in the future, and remember, you’ll always have a home in Israel.

Gia Blum
Year Course 2018-2019

Reaching the end of our Year Course is an emotional time for all of us. It’s hard to think about leaving everything we’ve known for the past 9 months. Our homes, friends and routines.

Being at the end makes you think a lot about the beginning. I have a request for my fellow Year Coursers: take a second to think about your first day on Year Course – the first time you met the people that would become your best friends, the first time you slept next to your roommate, your first family dinner. Take a second to remember the person you were on that day, how scared and excited you were for the next 9 months.

All of us found Year Course differently. Some of us grew up knowing we would go because our parents or siblings did, some of us went to Young Judaea camp, and some of us thought we needed some time off after high school. For me, Year Course came in a completely random way.

I grew up in Kentucky. We’re a Jewish family, but it is not a Jewish environment at all. I was the only Jewish kid in my class, and I didn’t know anything about what it meant to be Jewish. I tried. I remember as a 10 year old Googling what it meant to be Jewish, but I never really got it. I started working at my local JCC in 2016, and two years later, my boss, who was also Jewish, invited me to join a March of the Living delegation. “Why not?” I thought – it seemed like one of my last chances to do something really Jewish. By the time I went on the trip, I had already committed to college, but that week I spent in Israel opened my eyes to something I’d never seen before. On the very last day, as I stood at the Kotel, I called my mom and told her I was postponing college and coming to Israel for a year. It didn’t go over well. I couldn’t explain why I made the choice I did, it was impulsive and irrational, but I knew I couldn’t leave behind something that made me so happy.

I’m leaving Year Course a different person than I started in one very specific way: when I arrived in Israel this past September, I wasn’t actually, legally, halachically Jewish. I had found this out while applying to other gap year programs after returning from March of the Living, and had been rejected because my mother is not Jewish. Even though I was raised Jewish, and even though it was a part of who I was, I was rejected from a Jewish gap year program. That rejection led me to Young Judaea Year Course, and to Rabbi Adam Drucker, Year Course’s Director of Jewish Life, who for the nine months of this program helped me study to convert so that a Jewish organization could never again tell me that I’m not Jewish. And so, as of May 19, 2019, under all the laws and rules, just like I always knew I was, I officially converted to Judaism.

I spent a lot of this year wondering what will happen when I leave the bubble of this gap year, but Year Course taught me that wherever you are, whether you’re going to college, or joining the IDF, or taking more time off, you can thrive if you have the right people behind you.

For the past nine months, I thought that finding Israel, finding Year Course, would be the thing that changed my life. I thought I had found what made me happy. There is nothing like living in Israel! We have all made memories for a lifetime. But what I have realized is that the reason this year was the best year of my life, was not only the place – it was the people.  What really changed my life wasn’t moving across the world, it wasn’t living in the Middle East. My roommates changed my life. My (Garin Atid) scout, Adi, changed my life. Meeting Rabbi Adam, that changed my life.

I spent a lot of this year wondering what will happen when I leave the bubble of this gap year, but Year Course taught me that wherever you are, whether you’re going to college, or joining the IDF, or taking more time off, you can thrive if you have the right people behind you. I know that if next year I have people anything like the people I’ve met this year, I’ll be just fine.

During my life-changing moments and study sessions with Rabbi Adam, he taught me something that I will remember forever, that I believe gives me insight into how we move on from this year and still make sure it wasn’t just a set of isolated experiences that has no connection to the rest of our lives.

Rabbi Adam taught me that whenever we finish a chapter or section of Jewish learning, there is a tradition to say the Aramaic phrase Hadran Aluch, which translates to “we will return to you.” Usually when we complete a piece of learning or a significant chapter in our lives ends, we naturally wish to move on and begin to tackle the next challenge or explore the next adventure. What can sometimes happen is that although we may have gained from the learning we undertook and enjoyed it in the moment, our elation at its conclusion causes us to close it off and forget why we loved it while we were in the moment. Hadran Aluch comes to remind us that although one should be proud of their achievement, the course of study only means something if we internalize it, and consciously “return to it” as we continue with our lives.

This lesson is something which we can all reflect on Year Course 2018-19 comes to a close. Although the program is over, the experiences we had, the lessons we have learned, the real people we met,  and the family we made will live on in us far beyond this year.