Zack Goldman

A year ago I would have never thought that I would be sitting on my bed writing about living at a boarding school in Israel.  So much has changed over the past three months and the amount that I have learnt about myself and about my heritage still amazes me.  I feel as if somehow I have jumped in time and have lived for way more than my 17 years.

Some might think that traveling to Israel for a semester would be very difficult!  In fact, coming to Israel at 17 years old for the second semester of my junior year was not as difficult a choice for my family and me as some people might assume. I had given a lot of thought about going away for a semester and knew that living abroad would be a great experience.

Zack Goldman (sitting in front of his tent) takes a break at the Nachal Amud campsite, while on the Muss High School’s four-day “Yam L’Yam” hike from the shore of the Mediterranean to the Kineret (Sea of Galilee).

My family and I did some research and discovered the Alexander Muss High School in Israel (AMHSI). For the past 42 years, AMHSI has welcomed over 20,000 high school students to Israel.  There are many options and participants can individualize their Israel experience. Since I chose to go during the school year, I am keeping up with my general studies classes as if I were at home.

After three months I can tell you that AMHSI has been a great fit! Almost as soon as I arrived I felt right at home. Imagine a group of American students being greeted by 50 Israeli high school students who all wanted to be our friends. They met us with flowers, snacks and smiles. It was a little overwhelming, but just what I needed to help me settle in to my new life at the Eshel Hanassi School near Beersheva.

I have learned so much!  We are learning about the history of Israel both in the classroom and at the actual places where an event occurred. I have seen and lived 4000 years of history as I have walked along ancient pathways in Jerusalem, hiked through caves, biked in the desert, and floated in the Dead Sea. I remembered the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust while in Poland, and returned to Israel to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut. Like my new Israeli friends, I too spent a week in Gadna, the IDF’s week-long familiarization program for high-schoolers.

Before coming to study in Israel, I really did not feel a connection to my Jewish roots. Don’t get me wrong, I attended Hebrew school consistently until my bar mitzvah and went to synagogue on all of the major holidays, but I did both of these because I felt as if they were requirements and not because I wanted to. The reason that I felt this way was because I never truly understood what made the Jewish religion distinct and how the religion got to where it is today. After learning for three months straight about the history of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Israel from the very beginning until today, I now feel as if I can truly connect myself to the religion and wholeheartedly voice my opinions. Another thing that really makes the program special is the group visits all of the places we learn about, making the history feel real and not just feel like a story.

Even without the Jewish education aspect, being able to live away from parents and with roommates for four months at such a young age really makes you mature a lot faster and learn way more about yourself than you would by just living at home and going to regular high school. Taking the Jewish education piece into consideration however is what makes the program irreplaceable.

Tonight, sitting here on my bed I feel like I am a different person than I was three months ago. I now have a different outlook on life and on the role that Judaism plays in my life. I am not promising that I am going to become a devoted Jew and visit synagogue any more than I was previously; however, I will no longer feel as if I am visiting out of requirement. I now feel as if a part of me is no longer missing, and that is a great feeling.

Zackary Goldman lives in West Hartford, where he attends the Kingswood Oxford School.

 For more information about the AMHSI program, call (617) 438-8775 or email dklein@amhsi.org. 
 

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