CESJDS 2018 students spoke eloquently about their teachers, Akiva Gersh and Elhanan Brown, during their end of session banquet. Take a look at what they wrote:

A couple weeks ago, I was reminded of something my teacher at AMHSI, Reuven Spero, once said: “you can’t experience a culture by going somewhere and staying in a fancy hotel for a week or two. If you really want to get to know a culture, live with a host family for a year. Do what they do, eat the local food, speak the local language, etc.”

It’s eighty degrees out. The air outside smells like citrus and sweet perfume, and flowers cover the highway. Not flowers you see here, but big exotic flowers that are vibrant and blooming and can be seen miles away. The scenery flies by as the car zooms along the road at the average speed limit of 80. When the car stops we walk into a garden filled with orange trees the same sweet smelling flowers that were all over the country. In the middle of winter it felt like I was in a summer paradise, with warm days and beautiful gardens and beaches with the most blue ocean water I have ever seen. For two months I lived in this land that resembled a Utopia, visiting the north and south, climbing mountains and playing in sand dunes in the desert.

Before coming to Israel, I would have identified myself as a Jewish American rather than an American Jew. I used to feel more connected to my nationality because I didn’t really understand how much my ancestors fought to remain Jewish and allow for me to be Jewish today. The Jews were constantly fighting Hellenism, both its culture and its reign. In Kislev during the year 165, the Jews reclaimed The Temple after fighting for it for many years. They won despite the odds and the candles of the menorah symbolize this miraculous military victory. The candles represent the Jewish people and the oil represents the Jewish energy that somehow managed to persist.