Birthright trips to Israel are a common part of the early adult years of many American Jews. On those trips, young Jews can explore Israeli culture and find a connection with the country and its people.
But earlier this month, a group of 38 young Jews, a majority of whom either attend Towson University or are from the Baltimore area, got a look into another aspect of the Israeli experience when the Israel-Iran conflict broke out at the end of their trip, leading to nights in bomb shelters and a winding road home.
The trip started off normally, with students leaving from Baltimore on June 4 and arriving in Israel on the morning of June 5. From there, the group went through its activities as planned.
But on June 12, when the group was in Jerusalem, students noticed that the Western Wall was closed off. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been there several hours before Israel launched the first attacks into Iran, according to Rabbi Mendy Rivkin from the Chabad Jewish Center of Towson.
Rivkin was one of the leaders of the trip and said that the group was woken up around 3 a.m. on June 13 by a text letting them know that Iran had been attacked and warning them that they might need to find a bomb shelter.
“There was no attack that night. The first attacks happened during Shabbat dinner. The next night, there were two during Shabbat dinner but the first one locked us down. [The government] said, ‘Hey, no more activity.’ The state put in some security measures, and we had to stay in the hotel. The shelter was in the basement of the hotel,” Rivkin said.
Josh Segal, a recent graduate from Towson who was on the trip, said that the group was prepared and had gone to the grocery store for food and water. He added that everyone in the group was new to this experience.
“Obviously, going to Israel, we know that it [missile attacks] are a possibility, given everything that’s going on, and everyone there is kind of used to it. It’s not weird to them, but to people who have never had to go through something like that before, it’s definitely a unique experience,” Segal said.
For Rivkin and other leaders, the time in the shelter and coordinating everyone’s safety was “an exercise in keeping everyone in good spirits,” to keep people calm and prevent panic from spreading through the group.
Rivkin said there was lots of singing in the shelter, activities like coloring books, some wine and really doing whatever they could to keep people in a good mental state, and he added that his group did spectacularly.
“Our group was really a cohesive group. They had each other’s backs. There were, at times, some kids who struggled a little bit, and they had each other’s backs and they helped them. For the most part, it was kind of a beautiful experience in a weird way,” Rivkin said. “For a lot of them, it was fully understanding what it means to be Israeli.”
Rivkin said that the group was stuck in the hotel from Shabbat through 4:30 a.m. on June 17, when the Birthright organizers collected people on trips that had missed their flights and loaded around 2,000 kids on a boat to Cyprus.
From there, a Chabad house in Cyprus welcomed the travelers and accommodated them while organizers worked out arranging travel back home.
Rivkin said that the Chabad house brought in around 1,500 people and gave them food and shelter, which he said was a perfect example of the way the Jewish community globally functions to help Jews in need.
“The amount of kids that I heard say literally on the phone, ‘Mom, I’m at Chabad. We’re fine.’ It’s an address that we know they’re going to take care of us. It was a feeling of Jewish community [where] I’m in this random country, but there’s a Chabad. The rabbi doesn’t speak English, the staff don’t speak English, but we know it’s like the Chabad that we have on campus or at home,” Rivkin said.
The group was able to charter a plane to Milan, Italy, out of Cyprus on June 19 and catch commercial flights from there back to the U.S. Despite the challenges and anxiety that came with the trip, Segal said that his experience did nothing but further his excitement to return in the future.
“One of the biggest takeaways was how resilient everyone there is, because this is, unfortunately, how daily life has been for the last year and a half, where any minute, they could be at work, or they could be walking around somewhere, and then they get an alert that they have to go to a bomb shelter,” Segal said.
He added that everything began to sink in after returning home, where he thought back to a time just a few days prior he had been sitting in a bomb shelter as missiles rained overhead.
Rivkin said that while the situation was unexpected and concerning at times, it became a moment of connection for the kids to the people in Israel.
“They realized what their peers in Israel are going through, where their lives are disrupted. And I think it was a positive educational experience. While it’s not something anybody would have signed up for ahead of time, I think they’re all better for it,” Rivkin said.
