I grew up in Marblehead, where the Jewish community had its own Israeli shaliach (emissary) who organized Israel programming for us. This included a summer trip to Israel for high school kids.
I signed up for the “Let’s Go Israel” (LGI) trip with my two best friends and another 20 or so kids that I knew either from our Jewish Community Center preschool or Hebrew school. We met several times throughout the year preceding the trip to learn about Israel—its history, its people, its culture and the land.
About a week before we left, in preparation for the hiking we’d be doing, we all climbed Mount Washington to see “Lake in the Clouds,” a mesmerizing mountain lake surrounded by lush forests and dramatic cliffs. A friend and I happily took up the rear, climbing and singing in the rain. Alas, when we got to the summit, due to the stormy weather, there was no view! But I remember we slept in triple bunk beds, piled one on top of the other, and we finally bonded as a group.
In July 1985, we flew to Israel. I’m not sure I can describe fully how I felt when we landed. It was hot, really hot. I spotted signs in Hebrew, a language which, until then, I had only seen in a prayer book or on the kosher for Passover Bazooka gum, which my mother let us buy at the local kosher market.
Our program was designed for us to live on Kibbutz Gadot for three weeks and then travel for three weeks. While we were unpacking, the kibbutz kids came out to meet us. I don’t remember how it happened or who broke the ice, but I do remember we became instant best friends. We spent many nights drinking on the roof of their dorm-style rooms, hiding from our counselors.
In those days, kibbutz kids didn’t live with their parents. When they were small, they lived together in a Children’s House and, as teens, they had the freedom to live with their peers. They visited with their parents after school and sometimes had dinner with them in the communal dining hall. It seemed like heaven!
I remember being thin and tan and walking everywhere barefoot. I felt like I belonged. I stayed up late, partied a lot and slacked off at my job weeding cotton. Though we lived on the kibbutz for three short weeks—working on some days, taking tiyulim (day trips) on others and hanging out at the pool—it felt like a lifetime.
We understood for the first time that we Jews lived a very privileged life in the U.S. While our new Israeli friends had one more year of high school before they would be drafted into the army, we were going to continue our party at “Anywhere” University the following year. That had an enormous impact on me.
Our Israeli friends would say to us, “You’re Jewish, why don’t you live in Israel? You need to come live here. You need to learn Hebrew.” One day, an American friend’s older brother came to the kibbutz in his army uniform. Having been on the LGI trip years before, he had returned to Israel to join the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). He spoke fluent Hebrew. I decided then and there that I was going to come back and learn to speak Hebrew too.
After I finished high school, I attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I had to take a language and, of course, I signed up for Hebrew. Two years later, I went back to Israel to study at Haifa University. Always the kibbutznik, I signed up for the two-month Ulpan (intense Hebrew class) on Kibbutz Beit Haemek, which is north of Haifa.
A few nights into my kibbutz experience, a handsome Israeli soldier showed up to see me. It was Danny—my kibbutz boyfriend from 1985. We had a lot of fun reminiscing. I was glad to have the chance later on during my stay in Israel to go back to Gadot and see some of my old friendsand to speak Hebrew with them!
One of my early jobs out of college involved promoting Israel on college campuses. It gave me the opportunity to travel to Israel five times in three years. Sometimes I led trips and other times I visited for work-related business. In February 1993, while on a business trip, I lined up a future job at the Jewish Agency and agreed to take over a friend’s apartment lease in the fall. I was leading a high school trip to Israel that summer and just planned not to go home.
In March 1993, I re-met my camp boyfriend, and it was love at “second sight.” I had my personal “sliding doors” moment. I chose Mike and our potential life together and have never looked back. We agreed that we’d try to spend a year or a summer together in Israel with our future children.
We had our kids in 1999 and 2002, but I didn’t get back to Israel until 2009 when I was selected to be a fellow with the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Program, whose mission is to provide emerging leaders with an intensive Jewish learning experience in Israel.
When I arrived in Israel, I discovered that my beloved country had changed—and matured. I was even more in love with the people, the sights, the sounds and that feeling of being home. When I returned to the U.S., I told Mike, “It’s time to take the kids to Israel.” In 2011, we did! Since that family trip, I have been back to Israel almost every year—sometimes twice a year—filling my cup and fulfilling my desire to spend time there.
Today, I’m a volunteer with Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America. As national chair of Hadassah Evolve Engagement, I have the great privilege of taking women to Israel through Evolve, our young women’s program.
In the winter of 2023, I became a “snowbird”—spending six weeks in Tel Aviv and fulfilling my lifelong dream of living (albeit part-time) in Israel.
Our Evolve Engagement team had planned to bring 50 women to Israel, on two different trips, in October 2023. After the massacre on Oct. 7 and the subsequent Hamas-Israel war, our trips were postponed. But in February 2024, we put together a “Heart to Heart Mission” to give young women the chance to bear witness to the war’s atrocities and to support our brothers and sisters in their trauma.
After my first few nights in Israel—before the mission officially began—I wrote these words:
Each night I wake up to the sound of pouring rain. My window is open to counter the heat of the apartment. From my bed I see the lights and rooftops of the Tel Aviv neighborhood extending toward the sea.
It’s as though God is saturating this land with holy water to wash away the blood and tears of the Jewish people.
I’m not sleeping in fear of a siren and a run down four flights of stairs to the safe room—although there has been no siren since I arrived.
I’m fearful of a potential missile from Lebanon, which the inevitable war may send to destroy the city of Tel Aviv.
Tomorrow begins our quest for truth. Why are we here? Why are people thanking me for being here?
The third-degree burns on our souls may never heal. May we be the balm that soothes the ache as we sit and listen, holding space for the stories that the survivors have to share.
During the Heart to Heart Mission, we visited Kibbutz Be’eri, the Nova music festival site and Hostage Square. We spent time with Israeli women and heard their stories. We visited Israelis who had been displaced from their homes in northern Israel and were now living in a hotel. Everyone I met seemed “OK” until I scratched the surface with a question or a look. The tears would flow, and they’d share their experience of Oct. 7.
It’s worse than the aftermath of 9/11 here in the States. Israel is such a small country; everyone knows someone who was murdered by Hamas or kidnapped to Gaza or has since died fighting in the war.
What was quite unexpected, and yet I think happens to everyone who has traveled to Israel since that fateful day, my Israeli friends helped to heal my heart. I can only hope I had some small part in healing theirs.
Jody Comins is a member of the Hadassah Writers’ Circle, a dynamic and diverse writing group for leaders and members to express their thoughts and feelings about all the things Hadassah does to make the world a better place, to celebrate their personal Hadassah journeys and to share their Jewish values, family traditions and interpretations of Jewish texts. Since 2019, the Hadassah Writers’ Circle has published nearly 450 columns in the Times of Israel Blog and other Jewish media outlets. Interested? Please contact hwc@hadassah.org.
This post has been contributed by a third party. The opinions, facts and any media content are presented solely by the author, and JewishBoston assumes no responsibility for them. Want to add your voice to the conversation? Publish your own post here. MORE
