Local teen departs for Reform movement year program in Israel

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Jillian Abramson, 18, of Montclair, couldn’t bear to be away from Israel three extra days. So after spending just under two weeks at home after a summer in Israel, she departed again on Sept. 9, this time for Carmel, a Reform movement year program in Haifa. She was too impatient even to wait for the group’s official departure on Sept. 12.

Abramson, who graduated from Montclair High School in June, is one of seven students participating in the three-year-old program.

Once the province of the Orthodox, the so-called “gap-year” programs are becoming more popular among other Jewish streams. The Conservative movement started a similar program at its Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem in 2002 (although it has had another long-standing program, Nativ, for over 25 years). The nondenominational Hadassah-sponsored Young Judaea is posting a banner year, with 450 participants in its 50th anniversary year program, 2006-07.

Students enrolled in Carmel study secular subjects at the University of Haifa and religious topics at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa. They live in dormitories with students from around the world, take on volunteer projects, spend a month on a kibbutz in the Arava, and go on field trips around Israel.

Abramson, who has been to Israel “more times than I can count,” has felt “protective” of and connected to the land ever since hearing about it in religious school at Temple Ner Tamid, a Reform synagogue in Bloomfield.

Today, a highly identified Reform Jew, Abramson has participated in Reform movement youth groups, attended denominational camps, and toured Israel with the movement. But Abramson’s views on Israel set her apart from many Reform Jews. Unlike those whose politics are not always aligned with Israel, and even those who vocally opposed the war this summer, Abramson finds her own politics more closely aligned with religious Zionists. She believes the land is God-given. “Israel is not ours only because of a piece of paper. It’s also ours because it was given to us by God in the Torah,” she said in an interview from home just prior to her departure. And she did not support the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. “I’m probably the only Reform Jew who was against it,” she quipped.

Sitting in a stately home, the walls displaying original artwork, the rooms filled with antiques, and with a large dog on her lap, she said she misses little of the comforts of home when she is in Israel.

“Everything I need I have in Israel. And my parents come to visit,” she said.

Unlike many of her peers, she has not applied to American colleges. She isn’t sure she’ll return at all. “I’ve always dreamed of going to school in Israel. And I’ve always had it in my mind to make aliya,” she said, and added, “Knowing me, I know I might not want to leave.” So along with considering attending an Israeli university when the year is through, she’s also thinking about enlisting in the army. “It’s not fair for me to spend time there and talk about how important Israel is while I sit on my couch in Montclair.”

Abramson made her first trip to Israel at 14 years old. Prior to that, the family vacationed and traveled in Europe and elsewhere around the world. “But then my dad had his eyes opened. He realized there were more important things.”

Since then, the Abramsons, who have family in Jerusalem, have traveled there for every vacation. “I’ve gone two or three times every year,” Abramson said. On one of her trips, she had the surprise of a lifetime when she discovered her status as an Israeli citizen. Her mother, who moved from Poland to Israel and then to the United States as a young girl, retained her Israeli citizenship, although she had had no idea of her status. As a result, both of her children, Jillian and her younger brother, are automatically citizens. It was a border guard in Israel who told Abramson. “I can’t describe the feeling. I had tears in my eyes,” she said.

During her summer ulpan in Haifa, Abramson was awakened one morning to the sounds of an explosion, which she would later learn was the first Katyusha rocket landing in Haifa. “I woke up my roommate, Rachel. ‘Jill, you’re a hypochondriac,’” she recalled Rachel’s reaction. “Two seconds later, there was a siren and a loudspeaker telling us to report to the shelter. At first, I didn’t know what to think. It’s disorienting to wake up to a Katyusha as a alarm clock.” She said it was “surreal.” But, she added, “I didn’t have time to worry.” Eventually, she and the rest of the ulpan students moved to Jerusalem until the end of the war and the program, although she did get back to Haifa before departing. Her biggest fear all summer, she said, was that Carmel might cancel the program.

Asked what she will miss most when she leaves for Israel, she could think only of her dog, Axel, a 110-pound animal she calls “my puppy” in soft tones.

Mostly, she said, she can’t wait to get back to Israel.