Ani Zocher:
Pilgrims' Stories

Etgar 2004,
by Beth Sussman, Hanegev

Each trip to Israel you embark on is different and unique. It will ultimately mean something very special to you each time you return to our homeland. That is what made this summer so amazing for me. In June, I left for USY's Etgar-Group 9. I found this trip, designed for USYers who have been to Israel before, to be such a rare, exceptional, and unthinkably fun experience because of our interaction with Israelis and Israeli life. We attended a concert with Israeli teenagers, hiked with Israelis from Camp Ramah Noam, and played with children in a developmental town in the Negev - just to name a few.

This interaction with Israelis came to a peak for me when Etgar spent Shabbat at Camp Ramah Noam, known as Hodayot to the campers that go there. We arrived at Hodayot on Friday afternoon, shortly before Shabbat. We met with some of the kids from B'reishit, their oldest age group, briefly before preparing for Shabbat. Friday night services took place outside, and I found myself sitting with some of the kids we had met from B'reishit. Kabbalat Shabbat was beautiful - not only were the services ruach filled, but we also were able to watch the magnificent Israeli sunset as we prayed. But I thought little else of this service until after we had finished praying. An Israeli guy who had been sitting next to me asked me how I knew all the tunes to the prayers. I had not even realized that the tunes they had sung were the same we used in USY. When I told this to my new Israeli friend, he looked at me with a shocked expression. He told me that it amazed him that we not only pray in the same language, but we also use the same tunes despite the thousands of miles that separate us.

The next Friday night we were back in Jerusalem. As I did Kabbalat Shabbat with Etgar, it made me smile to know that the kids at Hodayot were praying just as we did, despite their starkly different culture. If I didn't learn anything else this summer, I certainly learned that despite the abundance of differences between American life and Israeli life, there is an abundance of similarities as well. It is the similarities which bind us as family to the Israeli people. However, they are the differences which make Israel such a vibrant, unique community to be a part of. I was privilaged to see a small sliver of that community this summer and only pray that I may be a larger part of it in the future.

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