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On March 1, I arrived in Israel to visit the 87 teenagers I had brought there just five weeks earlier. Within hours, the world turned upside-down.
I’m the director of admissions for URJ Heller High in Israel, an American accredited high school on a kibbutz just outside Jerusalem. Each semester dozens of Jewish teens leave their home schools for Israel, where in addition to the usual math and chemistry and literature, they study Jewish history and Hebrew. The whole country is their classroom.
For students and staff alike, it is an exciting experience, academically and physically rigorous … and this semester, more than a little nerve-wracking.
Read the rest of this piece on nj.com.
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