Year Course has made me more religiously and spiritually connected to Judaism

By: Zachary Adler

I come from a modern orthodox background- I went to a Jewish day school and attended synagogue regularly so I didn’t really know what to expect when I came on Year Course. I expected most participants to be reform or conservative, to not be very religious, but this experience was actually the opposite of what I thought it would be. All of my roommates went to Jewish day schools, most of them were modern orthodox. We did Shabbat dinners together, lit Chanuka candles in the apartment, celebrated every single holiday together.

During Special Interest Month a few of my close friends and I spent a week in yeshiva at Aish HaTorah in a program called Aish Discovery. There we learned about G-d, philosophy, minor Jewish texts, and while we were there we really took advantage of the beit midrash. I’ve never felt more religiously and spiritually connected than I did in Israel.