We are coming to the end of our amazing semester at Alexander Muss High School in Israel. We only have a little more than a week left, and we are all beginning or already have begun studying for all our finals which are this week. It has been a great semester, where we got to experience a huge number of things and also got to learn so many things about Israel and Judaism, and in all of this, we experienced it with great friends, madrichim, and also teachers. Before coming on the semester in Israel, I thought a lot about some goals I would love to achieve, and in my opinion, I did achieves most or even all of them.

A goal I put for myself, that I think I achieved well enough, was growing up as a person and learning to become more independent. I think, that living alone in dorms, with all the responsibilities being on you, and not having your parents behind you always saying what to do, has helped me grow a lot and also made me much more independent. You learn to clean your stuff all the time, find time to do everything you need, like homework, exercise, as well as hanging out with friends.

Another goal that I achieved during the semester here, was learning about the Jewish history, and all the things the Jews went through during those times. With the help of Aubrey, our amazing core class teacher, we learned a huge number of years of Jewish history in great detail, in only four months. We learned how they were enslaved, living in the diaspora, being attacked, and until finally getting their Jewish state, but still getting attacked by all the people that hate the Jews.

A last goal that I also achieved was finding my Jewish identity and learning more about it. With our Jewish history class, I learned how many of the Jews came into being, with different groups, like the Ashkenazic or Sephardic, and even in more detail, the Levy, Israel, and Cohanim. With learning all about our roots, I think it made me a bit more religious, and changed a lot of my thoughts on the Jewish religion and my way of following it. Overall, in the past four months, I learned and experienced so many things, that I never would have thought I would have.