Engineering a Stronger Future for Israel

Since October 7, uncertainty has become a constant part of life in Israel. For many young Israelis, that has meant moving repeatedly between two demanding worlds: classrooms, laboratories, and exams on one side, and military service on the other.

During my first year studying electrical engineering at Bar-Ilan University, I spent most of the year in military service. At the time, my reserve duty was organized in shifts, and I was expected to complete roughly 240 hours of service each month. For four or five days a week, my routine often meant attending lectures from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., then beginning a military shift at 4 p.m. and finishing around 11 p.m.

There was very little room for things to go wrong. And, of course, things often did.

During another period of service, when I was stationed in northern Israel, I remember one day when I had eight straight hours of classes planned. A power shortage meant I could not connect for several hours, and shortly afterward we were called into an unexpected military drill. By the end of the day, I had missed all eight hours of lectures. The next morning, more classes were already beginning.

That experience captures what studying during reserve duty often felt like. Falling behind could happen in a single day, while catching up could take much longer. I depended heavily on friends who sent me notes and helped me understand what I had missed. I also depended on understanding from both my commanders and my university.

That support made an enormous difference.

During another unexpected call-up, this time during the fighting with Iran, I received a phone call from a faculty member at Bar-Ilan. He did not call to discuss an assignment or an exam. He called simply to ask what I needed and to assure me that the university would do whatever it could to help me continue.

That conversation stayed with me.

When you are trying to balance military service with a demanding engineering degree, it is easy to feel that you are constantly choosing which responsibility to disappoint. Knowing that the people around me understood the situation allowed me to keep going.

At the end of that first year, I was fortunate to earn a place on the dean’s honor list. I was proud of the achievement, but more than anything, I felt grateful. Despite everything that had happened, I had still been given the opportunity to study at the highest level and continue building the future I wanted for myself.

My military service has also changed the way I think about engineering.

Before the war, chip design was an area that interested me academically. During my service, I saw firsthand the extraordinary technologies developed by Israeli industry and the difference that advanced engineering can make in real situations. It made the field feel much less abstract.

Today, I am entering my fourth year of electrical engineering at Bar-Ilan and working as a digital design student at Samsung’s research and development center in Israel, where I work on camera chips and learn from experienced engineers around me. I am still at the beginning of my career, and right now my goal is simple: to learn as much as I possibly can.

In time, I hope to use that knowledge to help advance Israel’s technology industry.

The past few years have also taught me that none of this happens alone.

My wife has been one of the people who made it possible for me to continue. While pursuing her own degree in psychology, she was always there to listen when things became difficult. More than that, during periods when my attention was divided almost entirely between my studies and military duty, she took responsibility for much of what needed to be done at home so that I could focus on getting through both.

That kind of support is easy to overlook when telling a story about academic success or military service, but for me it has been essential.

From outside Israel, much of what people see understandably focuses on war, fear, uncertainty, and division. Those things are part of our reality. But they are not the whole reality.

What I see around me is also a generation of young Israelis who are optimistic, ambitious, and determined to contribute. We are serving, studying, working, building careers, starting families, and thinking seriously about what kind of country we want to help create.

We do not know exactly what the coming years will look like. I certainly do not know exactly where my own career will take me.

But I do know what I want to do with the opportunities I have been given.

I want to continue learning, become the best engineer I can be, and eventually use that knowledge to help build technologies that move Israel forward.

The future may be uncertain. Our willingness to build it is not.