“In the summer of 2013 I did Birthright Israel and I loved it. When the 10th day came, I was so sad because I thought I would never be able to do this trip again, so when I returned home I looked into a Hillel program called MIT, which stands for Madriach or Madricha, which is a leader in Hebrew, in Training. Last summer, I led a trip. I was the youngest leader and our bus got merged at the airport because of the war. I originally had the 18-22 year old Montrealers, and now I had 18-27 year olds from all over Canada. Half of the participants were older than me!

On the trip, I told this story that I like. It’s about a king who sent his servant on a mission. Long story short, the servant had to find an item that would make a happy man sad and a sad man happy. The servant is like, ‘what is this item? What could possibly do that?’ He found this ring, which said ~gansay ya voh~, which is Hebrew for “this too shall pass.” The message is that the sad times will pass and you’ll have happy times, but the happy times will pass and you’ll have sad times as well. I told this story on the first Shabbat in Israel and I said, ‘you know, this trip shall pass so it’s really important that you come here and find what you’re looking for and make the most of the experience.’ I think the story really unified us as a group.”

Category: People