Now it’s Hannah’s turn

A granddaughter leaves for a year of study in Israel, carrying Alisa’s Hebrew name—and beginning her own journey of Jewish growth, independence and discovery.

Today my granddaughter Hannah left for Israel to begin her gap year.

That sentence is easy to write. The emotions that go with it are considerably harder to describe.

Hannah’s Hebrew name is Chana Michal Ahuva. Chana Michal was the Hebrew name of my daughter Alisa; Ahuva — “beloved” — was added for Hannah. So, there was already a connection between the two of them long before Hannah boarded the plane today.

This is hardly our family’s first experience sending a young person off to Israel. Children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews have made the trip. And over the years, through the Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund, our family has helped other young men and women spend extended periods studying there.

Still, every departure is different.

I have written before about something I noticed during Alisa’s six trips to Israel, beginning when she was 11. “We always enjoyed sending Alisa to Israel because every time she returned from Israel she came back not just a better Jew but a better person.”

I believed it then. I believe it even more strongly today.

There is something about living in Israel that cannot be reproduced in a classroom in New Jersey or New York.

A gap year certainly includes Torah learning, teachers, classes and organized programs. But much of the education takes place outside the classroom.

It happens when an 18-year-old has to figure out a bus route on her own. When she has to manage her money. When she misses a meal because she forgot that stores close early on Friday. When she has to decide how to spend a free afternoon without a parent asking where she is going and when she will be home.

There is a difference between visiting Israel with your parents and “living” in Israel.

Years ago I wrote about the thousands of American young people who travel to Israel for yeshiva, seminary, university and other programs. They “ride the buses; they go to the same restaurants, theaters and museums as Israelis.” They learn some Hebrew, encounter Israeli culture in all its wonderful and occasionally, OK frequently, maddening forms, and “every day they learn something new about what it means to be a member of an old tribe.”

That last phrase still resonates with me.

Because that is really what the year is about.

Our children leave America as Jewish teenagers. Somewhere along the way, many begin to understand that Judaism is not simply the religion their parents practice or the school they attended. They discover that they belong to a people with a language, a land, a history and, perhaps most importantly, a future.

And they begin to decide for themselves what place they want to have in that future.

Alisa understood that.

Her sixth and final trip to Israel began in December 1994. She had taken a leave from Brandeis University so she could spend six months studying at Nishmat in Israel. She deliberately did not choose a traditional gap-year structure. She wanted independence. She wanted to choose what she studied, live with friends and have the freedom to slip away to the Kotel to daven — and, as I once wrote, just as importantly, to watch people.

She was discovering who she was.

That is one of the great gifts Israel can give a young person.

Now it is Hannah’s turn.

She will spend this year in a beit midrasha program in Jerusalem. She will learn Torah. She will make new friends. She will undoubtedly have wonderful days and frustrating ones. She will learn things about Israel that delight her and things that annoy her.

And, with the luxury grandparents possess, I can observe the process without having to supervise it hour by hour.

When Hannah returns at the end of the year, I expect that the young woman who gets off the plane will be different from the one who boarded it today.

More independent. More confident. More certain about some things and perhaps less certain about others.

But if our family’s experience is any guide, she will return, as I once said of Alisa, “not just a better Jew, but a better person.”

Chana Michal Ahuva, with tears of joy in my eyes, I wish you a year of learning, growth, friendship, adventure and discovery.

And may you discover, in the land your namesake loved so deeply, a little more about who you are — and who you want to become