MSH students get a world view from IDF reservists

A fire alarm interrupted the beginning of the program, but the message that two Israel Defense Forces reservists wanted to share with a group of Midreshet Shalhevet High School students on Oct. 19, appears to have been received.

MSH students gathered in the chapel and listened attentively to Yuval, a 25-year-old law student and Ilan, 28, speak about their lives, as part of the Stand With Us tour that annually visits college campuses, churches, high schools and synagogues across the U.S. This year the tour is Oct. 14 to 28. Ilan is also the director of SWU Espanol that aims to develop leaders in Central and South America.

Punctuating her Israeli accent with such American words as “cool” and “amazing,” Yuval recounted her childhood in Israel, becoming a dancer and then after gaining a substantial amount of independence traveling on her own, her lifestyle was altered.

“Then my parents became stressed, they didn’t want me to go to crowded places and not to go to rehearsal,” she said. It was 2000, the start of the Second Intifada, an Arab war on Israel. It was the first time she said she felt afraid.

Yuval continued dancing and at 17 was part of a dance group that captured first place in a competition in Barcelona. A year later, she entered the mandatory military service in Israel, administering tests to soldiers who went to be part of an elite rescue unit.

After serving, Yuval traveled on her own to Central and South America and was a volunteer with a group that renovated a school and taught English and math to children in Tanzania. “Be kind, volunteer, meet new people and not just from your religion, love is bigger, stronger than hate,” she said.

Born in Venezuela, Ilan also felt the sting of anti-Semitism. First he heard about the Holocaust first-hand from his grandmother, then when he was 12, “Judios Go Home!” and other bias graffiti was scrawled on the outside walls of the Jewish Community Center he attended. “It was the first time I felt my identity as Jew was being attacked,” said Ilan, whose mother is Jewish and father is Christian.

At 20, Ilan moved to Israel. He served in the IDF’s humanitarian and civil affairs unit helping Palestinian civilians. He told the story of when Mohammad D’adu was 3, when suffered burns on 100 percent of his body when a scalding pot of jelly fell on him. “The doctor told his father to ‘dig the grave,’” Ilan said. Doctors in Israel saved the boy’s life. Still recovering, Mohammed is now 4. “People don’t know about these kinds of stories,”

Ilan and Yuval said that they wanted the MSH students to learn how to be advocates for Israel and be aware that differences and conflicts might exist between people and nations but might possibly be overcome through a greater understanding of each other’s diversity.

Sophomores Ayala Fader and Leah Cohen said they related to the speakers’ experiences. “I really felt connected to the story about the Palestinian boy,” Fader said. “It shows that the Israelis are not just about the Jews, no matter what religion you are they will take you in and take care of you.”

“The story I felt most connected to is the anti-Semitic attack on the JCC, because it really felt like a direct threat to me as a Jewish person and even though it didn’t happen to me, I really connected with it and understood how he felt, especially since he had grandparents who went through the Holocaust,” Cohen said.