By Rachel Appell
I recently had the opportunity to visit Israel as a member of Cohort XII of the Merrin Teen Professional Fellowship. Throughout our 10-day journey, which took 10 other Fellows and me to sites across the country, we learned so much, asked lots of questions, and contemplated challenging issues—made all the more so by the events of October 7 and the ongoing war. What follows is an abbreviated, lightly edited version of some of my thoughts and reflections throughout our travels.
Day 2: On the way to our hotel, we stopped at the Mt. Avnon Lookout. It is an incredible feeling to exist in a place that feels so expansive. We are so small in the grand scheme of life and yet we survive. I believe that Moses and his followers felt that way during their time in the desert and we continue to feel it today, which is why the Jewish people are still here, surviving.
Day 3: Yesterday I pondered the fact that humans are so small. Today I saw how big we are and how we can turn horrors and tragedies into something wonderful. We walked the grounds of the Nova Festival. Hundreds of men and women who were just starting their lives were brutally attacked and murdered because they chose to attend a music festival. I walked where these people lost their lives, looking up at the beautiful display that their friends, families, and fellow Israelis made in their honor. Each of the fallen has their photograph and name on a memorial and has had a tree planted in their memory. There is now new life in a place where lives were destroyed.
Day 6: “Gradually, we rejoined the cycle of life, but we never recovered.”
I read this quote today in Yad Vashem. The Jewish people face this every day. We compartmentalize, we find ways to cope. But the trauma of our collective memory stays with us and will never disappear.
Last night, Iran attacked the state of Israel for the first time in history. They sent 320 missiles and drones and the IDF took down 220 of them. The other 100 were taken down by Israel’s allies: The United States, Jordan, England, and France. According to our tour educator Abraham, last night was the first time in history these countries actively came to the defense of Israel.
Our group of 14 (11 Fellows, two trip leaders, and our in-person guard, Omer) stayed together throughout the evening. We returned to the hotel from dinner and received an update from JCC Association as well as Omer’s security company. We played pool, drank wine, played cards, and waited. When a siren went off near our location, we went down to the shelter in the basement of the hotel and waited there. Around 2:30 a.m., after getting another update, we made our way to bed.
Not once during the night did I feel afraid, unsafe, or unprotected.
Day 9: On Wednesday morning, we took a walking tour of Tel Aviv and discussed the adolescent pioneers who founded the city of Tel Aviv and the modern values of the city.
I am continually in awe of the power of young people. It is easy to forget that teens hold the future of our world in their hands. I hope that the next time modern society brushes off their ideas or calls them ignorant and inexperienced, we take a moment to remember that we were them once too. Everything we have created in the world that is extraordinary is the product of a teenager who dreamed.
Day 10: We awoke early on our last morning and ventured to an eggplant farm to volunteer. After October 7, the country went into shock and a large portion of the population was either evacuated from their homes or joined the war effort. Farms that lost laboring hands were swarmed by tens of thousands of volunteers willing and eager to help.
Israelis are facing their greatest war yet and so are the Jewish people. The Holocaust is not yet in our distant past and it is easy to feel afraid when we are confronting the highest levels of antisemitism in recent memory. But if I learned one thing in the past 10 days, it is that the Jewish community has a bond that cannot be broken. Whether we are Jewish or not, religious or secular, conservative or liberal, we are all part of the same story.
I am grateful to my Merrin Cohort XII Fellows and the amazing professionals who led this trip. I’ve learned so much from each of them during the experience we shared. There is a reason we were all selected for this program and a reason we felt such an intense connection with each other from our very first meeting last year. I believe we will be part of each other’s lives long after this trip is over and that, together, we represent the future of the JCC Movement. I am so glad to have been in Israel at this moment, and I am even more glad that I was there with all of them.
Rachel Appell is the after school, youth, and teen program coordinator at JCC Rockland in West Nyack, N.Y. She kept this unabridged travel journal throughout her time in Israel.
Learn more about the Merrin Teen Professional Fellowship and other JCC Talent cohort offerings for JCC professionals and lay leaders.
Reader Interactions