Sar-El in January

When the war between Israel and Gaza broke out, I was enjoying a Shabbat bike tour with my family through the mostly deserted Saturday morning streets of Jerusalem. Though our tour guide got a phone call informing him that something was up in Gaza and we needed to be careful, it wouldn't be until later that night that we learned anything about the air strikes. Of course, the conflict didn't really impact our ride, except for a barricade between East and West Jerusalem on the top of Mount Scopus that forced us and a tour bus to turn around (you should have seen the U-Turn).

Anyway, the bike ride stands as one of the only moments in the past couple of weeks in which the invasion of Gaza hasn't had a direct impact on my life. Between heated conversations, activities with our madrichim, lectures and talks from guest speakers, and discussions in the classroom, the conflict has had a large presence.

On top of all of that, today I had the pleasure of working with Sar-El, the volunteer program in Israel that is currently spearheading the war effort and using hundreds of volunteers on army bases around the country. Many chanichim from other sections are currently living on these bases and have been for the past few weeks. But, because my section has classes that we can't miss, we haven't been able to volunteer with Sar-El. However, on a one-day basis, about 30 of us were allowed to miss school, travel to the food-packaging army base about an hour north of Jerusalem, and help out.

When we arrived at the packaging warehouse we were thrown into positions on an assembly line and quickly shown what to do. Such jobs are never very hard, but that didn't stop the first few minutes from being very chaotic indeed. I was kept busy folding down the flaps of the boxed lunches and swiping them through the automatic inker that stamped on the date. Eventually we found our groove, just in time for lunch.

After lunch we traded in our boxed lunches for snack bags, spending the last three hours packing chips and chocolate bars.

The experience was really important to me. I've been struggling with the invasion of Gaza, especially after facing heavy criticism of Israel from friends back home, and have been searching for some sort of answer to what I think about all of this and how I believe it should turn out. Of course, I didn't necessarily find that answer by spending hours packing food in boxes. But I did see a cohesive group of American teenagers united at least by their support for the Israelis their age who are currently on the front lines. Supporting your troops is something you can always and should always do, no matter how you feel about the war they are fighting.