The Foreign Students

by Samuel Mirsky

It was motzei Shabbat, Jan. 24, and the anteroom of Newark Liberty International Airport echoed with the words, “v’shavu banim l’gvulam” (and sons returned to their borders); bemused tourists looked on bemusedly, security personnel looked on concernedly and 14 young Jews took the first step in the experience of a lifetime.

This experience was none other than the MTA/Makor Chaim student exchange program, the newest addition to the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy’s (MTA) repertoire of student programs and activities. This program entailed the exchange of 10 American sophomores from MTA with four Israeli juniors from the Rav Adin Steinsaltz Makor Chaim High School for Boys in Kfar Etzion, located in Gush Etzion.
Rabbi Mark Gottlieb, head of school at the Manhattan-based yeshiva,

originally conceived the concept for this program more than five years ago while working as an educator in a Boston school. His idea was to “...expose our boys to serious religious, cultural and intellectual growth in ways unimagined for the typical Modern Orthodox 10th grader.” Tova Rosenberg, the program director, added. “I envisioned it to be a life-changing experience.”

After a grueling selection process replete with an application and interviews, 10 of MTA’s finest were selected to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Following our selection MTA provided two intensive classes in conversational Hebrew and two classes of Navi, the Prophets, taught in Hebrew.
Despite the fact that I had been to Israel before I had never gone as an Israeli student and therefore didn’t know what to expect. One of the steps that I took in my mental preparation was to consider what life would be like in a yeshiva tichonit, yeshiva high school, in the land of our forefathers. I developed the assumption that the social scene and high school pressures would be like they are in American schools, thankfully this proved to be false.

Commencement day arrived. We, the exchange students, gathered in the lobby of Newark airport and met, for the first time, our Israeli counterparts. They had come to see us off. They began dancing in a large circle singing “v’shavu banim l’gvulam” and soon we all joined in. It was at that moment that we unwittingly experienced one of the real tenets of Makor Chaim, a term that we would affectionately call bli’tz, an acronym for “bli tziniyut,” without cynicism. After airport personnel shut down our joyous celebration of our return to the homeland, we said goodbye to our parents and our American lifestyle and said hello to the life of an exchange student.

During our two months in Israel we experienced the land of our forefathers as both the proverbial American tourists and as Israelis who had just found our way home. Not only were we able to experience true Israeli life by living with the students in the on-campus dorms, but we also spent time exploring sites of Israel that tourists do not usually visit, such as Givat Ha’Lamed Hay, the valley commemorating the 35 martyrs from Kibbutz Etzion.

In the interest of sparing the reader’s time this narrative on the trip will have to be cut short and the crux of the story elucidated. This crux is visible in the essential differences between a school like MTA and a yeshiva like Makor Chaim. This difference was centered in the specific way that Makor Chaim helps its students to experience Hashem.

Makor Chaim is an open environment in which to learn and to grow Jewishly. The school is not, as most day schools are, one community in a constrictive bubble with a certain derech, or way, that controls how people connect with Hashem and his Torah. Rather it is comparable to a community of small, individual bubbles wherein everyone is experiencing Orthodox Judaism and Hashem in their own divergent ways and are fully accepted into the community despite the fact that their views are not necessarily fully in sync with those in charge.

Another aspect of Makor Chaim that makes it different from all other yeshivas is the atmosphere of bli’tz. The lack of cynicism in Makor Chaim is what allows the students to grow without peer pressure to change the way that they are. This atmosphere is achieved through an intense regimen of honesty and trust. It is what really allows one to see oneself as an entity unto itself, but at the same time part of a group.

“The dynamic combination of bli’tz and Makor Chaim’s tremendous level of social acceptance is what allows the Makor Chaim students to observe Judaism in their own idiosyncratic way,” said Shua Brick, a sophomore exchange student from MTA. This allows for everyone to become not what others want them to be, but what they themselves really want to be.

One of the ways that bli’tz is manifested in Makor Chaim is in weekly student meetings. They gather before Shabbat and sit in some semblance of a circle; they then begin to discuss the parashah of the week and how it relates to them as individuals. The students come to bare their souls and true to the bli’tz form, their peers do not judge them or ridicule them for their feelings or their willingness to make themselves vulnerable to the group. The group is then able to accept everyone for who they are and together grow to reach new heights; even people who begin the gathering as outsiders end it as friends.
“The Makor Chaim exchange program has been simply transformative for both our boys studying abroad and our own environment of learning right here on campus,” wrote Rabbi Gottlieb in a recent e-mail. “The culture of pnimiut, deep spiritual focus, and purpose-driven living, joyous song and dance, and ongoing reflection on the permanent things, which are the hallmark of the Makor Chaim experience, are now a growing part of the MTA culture.”

Students and teachers resoundingly declared the exchange program a success. “By playing an active role in the Chabakook lifestyle I was able to experience the enthusiasm [for Torah] in everyday life and the effect that it has on modern living,” said Daniel Goffstein, a sophomore at MTA. (Chabakook is a Jewish philosophy that is essentially a combination of the individual philosophies of the Chabad movement, Breslov, the philosophies of Rav Kook, as well as the philosophy of Rav Shlomo Carlebach).
A group of 10 individuals left for Israel and a closer group of 10 individuals returned; all changed but all in their own ways. Speaking for myself, this trip had the most resounding effect on my personal connection to Hashem. I always knew, as the song says, “Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere...” but after this experience I now have more of a sense that the Creator is always with me, and on my side, no matter what.

Samuel Mirsky is a sophomore at the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy in Manhattan.

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