Diary of a Gap Year: Chapter Two

By Tova Kline

Well Israel lately has been pretty awesome.. minus one little problem my roommates and I have. This little problem is worse than anything you could ever imagine, that being bed bugs. I never thought anything could itch so much in my entire life. Bites everywhere on your body and a lot of moving out of your own room. Lucky for my room--the 6th room to have bed bugs--our program took care of us, paid for our laundry, and all around made sure we were OK.

Also lucky for us, we no longer have bed bugs (Yay, fumigation).

Idan Raichel

On a much better note, Israeli music is some of the best out there. Earlier this month, a few friends and I went to an Idan Raichel concert. Somehow we ended up getting to be in the front row, and it was an experience to say the least. Most of the attendees were, to my surprise, American girls. If you have never heard anything by The Idan Raichel Project, I suggest trying them out. It's much different from American pop music, but American pop doesn't touch the soul like a sitar or Idan's incredible voice can.

While at the concert and honestly just around Israel in general, I have run into so many friends of mine who are also here on gap year programs or in seminaries. However, the best experience I have had with this was at the concert running into a friend of mine who I haven't seen since I was in 7th grade.

While I'm in Jerusalem, I've been volunteering with the Lone Soldier Center, or in Hebrew, מרכז החייל בודדים. It's incredible working at the center, because it shows how much pride Jew's take in their state. A lone soldier is defined as a soldier who is in Israel and does not have any immediate family residing there.
At the Lone Soldier Center, I have had the joy of meeting men and women from all over the world including the USA, Canada, the UK, Finland, Morocco, Mexico, Ethiopia, Germany, South Africa, Australia and Russia. Lately, due to Operation Pillar of Defense we haven't seen many around because they have all been on base. However, due to the friendships I had made on previous excursions to Gaza, I always knew what was happening due to the soldiers who would call or Facebook me from base to make sure I was alright.
It's an ironic that the friends I should have been the most worried about, who were posting pictures of themselves writing messages on their grenades, sending me pictures of where a rocket hit their base, or calling me from their bomb shelter after a rocket hit their base, were most worried about me.

On a little bit of a more serious note regarding safety in Israel, everything is actually very safe. During the operation, Israel set up extra border security and would not allow under most circumstances civilians to go into areas that were less than 40 km from Gaza. Once rockets started hitting Tel Aviv areas, my program put a travel restriction there.

Only twice did rockets land in Jerusalem—once on Shabbat and another on a Wednesday afternoon—and I had the experience of hearing it explode.

Other than a few times when I heard sirens, life just went on as normal. That is how Israel works. You just keep living your life as you were before the attack. The reason Israel is so safe is because you can't go into many major civilian areas such as a mall or university without going through a metal detector first.

Funny story, though, about that Jerusalem Shabbat rocket...

It was my first experience with rockets and, well, really rocket sirens. I knew the procedure beforehand. The procedure starts out, as told by our Israeli Madrich Roni: "You have 90 seconds to get to a bomb shelter, I repeat 90 seconds. That's 1 minute and 30 seconds to run, no not run because someone will die, briskly walk down to the 3rd floor and hang out there for about 15 minutes. If you forget all of this, just watch what everyone else is doing and do that."

With that said, I knew what I had to do in the event of a siren. So, it's Shabbat and my friends and I decided
not to go to synagogue that night as we were all sitting by our phones waiting for calls from our friends on base. We hear a siren and, to my friends’ surprise, I just casually walk down the stairs. When I finally reached the bomb shelter, within the 90-second time frame, they asked me why I had been so calm. My response: "Guy's, it's only a tornado. There is nothing to be afraid of."

The siren sounded so much like a tornado siren, I had forgotten I was in Israel and that it was a rocket siren. Oops.

Thankfully for Thanksgiving this year, there was so much to be thankful for. Operation Pillar of Defense had ended, all of our friends were coming back from base, and we had a Thanksgiving feast here in Jerusalem with our program. There is a tradition within our program that all alumni who are living in Israel are welcome to join us for the evening activities. All in all, we had about 175 people including the 78 kids from my program. I saw friends from past years of Nativ and found out I'm friends with children of Nativ Alumni. During the meal, I was given an envelope with a note from my parents and another note from my sister.
Our director, Yossi said, "It's the one time of the year we can collectively make all the girls cry at once." He was right.

I'm still having an incredible time in Israel, I just wish time wasn't moving so fast. Hopefully, to the teens reading this blog, you seriously consider coming to Israel on a gap-year program, because it was the best decision I ever made. If you ever have questions, you can always contact me. And with that, I bid you a good day.