How the Most Impactful Year Never Really Leaves You

Tomorrow, after nine months of not being home, my brother will return from his year in Israel. His year of transformation, new friends, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and feeling the magic of the land of Israel. He will come back, and he and I will share a deeper understanding of each other. 

I have a vivid memory of weeks after I returned from my gap year. Annoyed with how much I spoke about seminary, he blurted out the words “if you love Israel so much why don’t you just go back there!” “All I want is to go back there,” I replied angrily.  

I remember coming back from my year in Israel two years ago and the sadness that came with it. In the weeks leading up to the last day of seminary, I would extend my nightly walks in the nearby kibbutz in an effort to slow down time, and really take in what was around me. I couldn’t talk about the end. It was too painful. I was saying goodbye to too much. I was saying goodbye to my friends, my teachers and rabbeim, the beautiful campus that began to feel like home, and I felt like I was saying goodbye to the best version of myself. I have always felt happier and more care-free in Israel, and that, along with not really having any responsibilities, being on a spiritual high 24/7, and being surrounded by some of my best friends every day really felt like I was saying goodbye to everything good in life. 

Coming home and facing reality was hard. I worked as a camp counselor that summer and had to put on a happy and energetic face every day, even though those emotions were the last thing I was truly feeling. I was grieving a year of meaning, growth, and connection, and there was no space to process it fully. 

I thought starting college would be a fresh start, a new chapter that would heal me. In some ways, it was – but not immediately. Being transported to a new place with new people and expectations didn’t erase the longing I carried with me on a daily basis. It didn’t undo the sadness I hadn’t yet faced. I made friends. I took interesting classes. I smiled. But still, I missed the old friends who felt like family, the feeling of being spiritually full, and the simplicity of a year when my whole focus was on growth and having fun. 

Eventually, something shifted. I stopped trying to recreate my year in Israel and started allowing myself to build something new in my current life chapter. I found new people who brought out new parts of me, and I rediscovered joy in different forms. 

Last year, while all of this was happening, I found an excerpt of something I had written during the last week of my year in seminary: 

“The older I get, the faster time goes by, and the more I realize that all good things must come to an end, but in a way, the good never ends, it just manifests itself in different ways.” 

I went on to write about the ache of saying goodbye. I wrote about my last day of camp as a child, when the buses pulled away and the rain always seemed to fall while sad music played over the loudspeaker. I wrote about my first trip to Israel the summer before senior year, and how badly I wished Moshiach would come so I wouldn’t have to leave. I wrote about how returning home was disorienting, how the people I loved were suddenly far away from me, but how the memories clung to me and gave me strength during the challenges of senior year. 

Reading those words now, two years after returning from my gap year, I realize how much I already understood back then. At 18, I had no idea what college would look like, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t believe how much I would learn to love it. I had no idea who I would become in the future, or how my year in Israel would stick with me forever. But I did understand something crucial: that experiences don’t end. They evolve. And so do we. 

Back then, I wrote:

“I’ve laughed the same way whether it be at 2 a.m. in a camp cabin or in a kibbutz hotel up north. I’ve been equally as scared steering a canoe in the Ottawa river and scaling the Arbel cliffs. I’ve loved Shabbat just as much in my seminary dorm as I did the first time I spent it at the Kotel. I’ve found my people in every chapter.”

These words echo the fact that love, connection and true happiness aren’t bound by time, place or space. These feelings are carried with us forever, and we bring them forward in each different stage of life. 

While things have drastically changed in the two years since I left my gap year in Israel, some things – the ones that matter – have stayed the same. My friendships have remained, just expressed in different forms. Instead of seeing each other every day, we now share the occasional 90 minute phone call. It might not be the same action, but the feelings that come along with talking to each other, and the way we still laugh are as special as if we were talking in our dorm at night. Going on the bus to Tel Aviv together becomes going on a trip to a city you’ve never been to because your friend from seminary lives there and it’s time for a visit. It means planning travel to attend each other’s weddings, and supporting each other through different stages of life. 

While these friendships remain, moving on is healthy and allowing space for new people and adventures to enter your life is the only way you will get past the feeling of longing for what once was. 

As I wrote back then, but I realize is even more true today: 

“Saying goodbye to people and moving on doesn’t mean you are abandoning your past experiences and relationships, it just means you are adding more and more people to the repertoire of people you love and will love in your lifetime.”

Tomorrow my brother will come home. He – and many other students coming home from their Israel gap year – may not be ready to let go of this past year. He might feel like nothing ahead could ever compare to the fun, the learning, the excitement and the abundance of goodness that the gap year provides. And maybe that’s true. Nothing is quite the same as the year in Israel. But that doesn’t mean the future won’t be just as good, just as rich and just as meaningful. 

The good doesn’t disappear. It only transforms and evolves.

And maybe learning that is the most beautiful part of growing up.