Birthright IsREALLY Cool

On January 4-15 2016, a group of students from Towson University and Rowan University embarked on a awesome adventure to Israel on Birthright.  We floated in the Dead Sea, saw the beautiful nature of Israel ranging from deserts to greenery, touched the Western Wall, got a glimpse in the modern politics, and more. We found that Israel is certainly cannot be summed up in one sentence, one blog post, or even ten days in Israel. But here are the thoughts of some students.

If you have any questions about Birthright or Israel, feel free to talk to our Israel fellow Lee Cohen or ask some of our participants about their experience. Check out more pictures at Towson University Hillel Facebook page.

What were your first thoughts when you landed?

My first thoughts were how beautiful the land was and how everything seemed so surreal that we’re actually here. –Danielle Koval, Towson University

Does it have wifi? Where are we in relation to the rest of the country, the rest of the world? Try to kind of reorient myself to figure out where I am and see where to go from there. –Andrew Kalash, Rowan University

It was kind of amazing. I’ve been out of the country a couple times before in my life but it always felt like I was going away, somewhere else. When you come to Israel especially being Jewish and having a large Jewish population here, it’s unbelievable. It kind of just feels like for once you’re the majority and it feels like you’re at home, you know, and there’s a lot of people that relate to you. –Ethan Brandt-Gallant, Rowan University

Wait a minute this is actually a new place. Getting the first whiff of air and being like ‘okay I’m not on the airplane anymore…This is different but at the same time the same; it’s just another city. Landing in Tel Aviv, I was immediately struck that there were going to be a lot of similarities, and I was really excited. –Leora Match, Towson University

What was your favorite experience?

I liked all of them so far, but favorite: going to the Syrian border and seeing. You could see the history before… so seeing the Syrian outpost on the other side of the Golan Heights, seeing where the border is today and the history behind it was awesome. –Andrew Kalash, Rowan University

We got to explore some caves that were built during the time of the Hannukkah story and they were massive. Just this extensive network of winding pathways and big rooms would be connected by these tiny little nicks in the wall that you had to crawl through and it was really fun just getting to explore…we got to then sift through caves that had not yet been sorted and we found pottery shards and bones and little pieces of charcoal. And we were the first ones to have touched many of these artifacts in over 2000 years, so that was really cool. –Leora Match, Towson University

My favorite experience would have to be going to the western wall. I’d like to preface that by saying that I’m not really religious, but touching the wall and experiencing what thousands have done before me and my ancestors…it gave me a special connection to God that I’ve never felt before. So that was interesting. –Ethan Brandt-Gallant, Rowan University

How do you think your Birthright experience will affect you?

I feel really connected to Israel in a way that I never imagined I would. And the personal experience with the stories I’ve been learning my entire life will just give me such a more rich appreciation when I go back and learn about all of these stories again and go to celebrate the holidays that are connected to these stories and these places because I’ve seen them with my own eyes and I’ve walked on the paths. –Leora Match, Towson University

It’s definitely changed my perspective on Israel as a whole. I always just looked at it as ‘oh it’s Israel. It’s just another country in the world but you know there’s a lot of Jews there so cool’, but now it’s like a second home. Now I have more firsthand experience on some of the political issues now so when people start talking against Israel I can make a case in point for it. I’m not really trying to change everyone’s opinion, but give facts.  –Ethan Brandt-Gallant, Rowan University

For one, I‘ve got start planning my next trip. –Andrew Kalash, Rowan University