Just One Week: Sacks-Herenstein Birthright Trip to Israel
30 YU students circle the aisles of EL AL Flight LY011 en route to JFK airport. Some hop into each other’s seats to schmooze while others linger in the back of the aircraft, where there is standing space and a stock of seltzer cans. The flight attendants are slightly agitated.
Students return to their seats and resort to communicating via group text message through the interconnected airplane screens. Messages begin to pop up like “44A has joined” and “What’s black and white and red all over?” and “I heard the Y-Studs are on our flight … do we think it’s weird if I ask for an autograph?”
These students are returning from an Israel trip co-sponsored by Birthright and the Sacks-Herenstein Center, in which they spent the week volunteering, traveling the country and meeting Israelis from many different sectors of Israeli society. In the wake of Oct. 7, Birthright expanded its programming to include volunteer trips catered not only to Jews who have never been to Israel, but also to those who have spent extended time there. Nearly all of the YU students on this particular trip spent at least one year learning in yeshiva or seminary in Israel, and all were looking for an opportunity to come back.
Rosa Marks (SCW ‘28) was not in Israel on Oct. 7, and even during her year in seminary, she often felt that she was watching another’s story from the sidelines. Going on this trip was an opportunity for her to connect with Israelis and deepen her sense of ahavas yisrael, love for the Jewish people.
“My experience was very much strengthened by the fact that I was spending hours on a bus with people who I didn’t previously know,” Marks shared with The Commentator. “It created a parallel experience, where I was open to connecting with Am Yisrael broadly because I was connecting with new friends at the same time.”
Aliza Abrams Konig and Rabbi Josh Blass led and organized the trip, filling it with impactful programming and tag-teaming recreational activities and panels. Abrams Konig has been running similar trips for twenty years, and she introduced nearly all of the speakers by sharing a personal connection with them. She later joked with the group that she is, in fact, only friends with very cool people.
The first of these speakers was a woman named Shira Lankin Sheps, a practicing therapist and published writer who made aliyah with her family in 2018. She spoke to the group shortly after they landed in Israel, and framed the upcoming week by describing the many ways in which Israelis have been impacted by prolonged war. She reminded the group that it is our job to connect with the people we meet and listen to the stories we hear, but not to adopt the pain of others as our own.
Her speech resonated with many of the students as they encountered different speakers throughout the week. On Wednesday, the group travelled south and spent an afternoon in Shlomit, a little moshav bordering the southern tip of Gaza. They heard from a local named Tamar, who told the experience of her beloved community on, and in the aftermath of, Oct. 7. She exuded a sense of inner strength and grace, but also of distinct sadness, as she spoke of the young men in the Shlomit security team who lost their lives defending the moshav. When she and her husband first married, they moved south out of a sense of idealism and a love for the land. Following Oct. 7, though, they were forced to pack up and leave for months.
Tamar described how her son has multiple friends in his class who are orphans, whose fathers died while fending off Hamas terrorists. “That’s crazy,” she said. “But it’s the reality that our children are growing up with.” Incredibly, she concluded with a sense of hope, that she has faith in the strength and resilience of her children and their generation.
Another message of courageous hope came from Netanel and Michal Lipschutz, the parents of Yair Lipschutz, a chayal who was severely injured in Gaza. When Yair’s parents arrived at the hospital following his injury, the doctor told them, “Your son arrived here more dead than alive; now he is more alive than dead.”
In the days, weeks and months following his injury, Yair made a steady and miraculous recovery. He celebrated small victories, like the ability to light Chanukah candles and make the bracha of shehechiyanu. Supported by his parents, his siblings and his wife (who discovered she was pregnant the morning of Yair’s injury), Yair pushed himself tirelessly in order to regain his strength. He set his sights on being able to walk the 5K in the Jerusalem Marathon. Ultimately, though, as his father shared, “Yair didn’t walk the 5K. He ran it.”
Sara Cohen (SCW ‘25) was one of the staff leaders on the trip, and she was deeply impacted by Netanel and Michal’s speech. She described the sheer sense of sacrifice of this family, in which one son was recovering from a severe injury, another was on the battleground in Gaza and the father was in and out of reserve duty. “We’ve done as much as we can from abroad,” Cohen told The Commentator, “but it doesn’t compare to the sacrifices these people have made.”
Another aspect of the trip involved hands-on activities and volunteer work. In Shlomit, the group helped build a nature center for the community. On Tuesday afternoon, they ran a carnival for children whose fathers serve in miluim. With OneFamily Fund, they joined families affected by terror in building backyard benches, and on Friday morning, they visited patients at Shaare Zedek Hospital with small “pekelech” (candy bags) and pre-Shabbos ruach.
The entire group spent Shabbos together in the heart of Jerusalem, with singing that began with Kabbalat Shabbat at the kotel and seemed to continue until the sun set over the mirpeset (balcony) of the hotel on Saturday night. In continuation of a series labelled “bus medrash” by Rabbi Blass, students shared words of Torah as Shabbos came to a close.
The group went out for a celebratory melaveh malka dinner at Papagaio, where they feasted on garlic bread, were serenaded by melodica music and mosh-pitted to “ein shum yeush.” Every member of the group shared a reflection on the trip, and these reflections continue to circle in my head in the days following my return to the U.S. and the beginning of a new semester.
One takeaway for many students was how precious and fleeting life can be. Jonathan Werta (YC ‘26) told The Commentator that visiting the Nova site and reading about the many people who were brutally murdered there created a mindset shift for him. “We always expect life to go well, but you really never know,” Werta said. “Now when I walk around I am appreciative for what I have, more than before.”
What I’ve realized is that encountering greatness — in many forms and in many people — is both a privilege and a call to action. It renews us with an appreciation for what we have, while reminding us of the people who sacrificed for that to be the case. It charges us with an obligation to live life with deeper joy and greater intentionality.
Photo Caption: Closing dinner at Papagaio
Photo Credit: Aliza Abrams Konig
