As Shabbos is approaching my husband listens to his phone messages.

“They’re coming” he says.

“Who?”

“The Birthright students I pulled out of a left-wing Arab rally near Chevron last week.”

“Boys or girls?”

“Both.”

Oh no. I never mind boys because I just serve and clean and my husband does all the talking but what am I going to say to this group of girls when I’m feeling so tired? “You too can clean and cook and wear your scarf crooked”? I keep praying I’ll say the right things and have the right answers.

College students want answers. Their brains are used to working.

At 4:30 they knock. Covered in backpacks shawls and sandals they come in. Two girls and a boy. We immediately hit it off.

They tell us a little about themselves how they grew up on communes are farmers and learn in aNorth Carolinafarming college. I ply them with potato kugel.

One girl’s name is Lia but she asks how you really say it Lia or Leah?

The boy’s name is Sky but he says his mom calls him Shamayim.

The other girl is Hannah. Her sister’s name is Rachel Tova her other sister is Shaindy and her brother is Noach. She doesn’t even know these are Jewish names just that her grandmother who only spoke Yiddish had asked for them.

They get back onto the subject they spoke to my husband about that day near Chevron the Arab-Israeli Conflict spouting standard propaganda. My husband calmly answers them exactly as he did the day he met them. I mostly try to divert the conversation. My best try is “There are some things you can’t understand until you’re there. One is being a mother another is living inIsrael.” Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I say “Okay get in your last questions about politics because we have to wrap it up. On Shabbos we have Peace.”

Everyone’s happy to leave the battleground. The two girls light candles the boy goes to shul. When they come back we start the meal. Kiddush washing fish and Israeli salads. Then hot soup and matzoh balls. Our guests look petrified.

“There’s more food” they say holding their stomachs.

“This is just the beginning” I say. By the chicken and rice one girl’s on the couch the other’s on the porch getting fresh air. The boy keeps up.

We hear about Leah being the only white girl in her school in Tennessee. We learn more about Hannah and her Yiddish-speaking grandmother and how no one ever knew how some of the children got red hair because for some odd reason her grandmother’s head was always covered. We hear about Shamayim’s goal to make world peace. Hannah’s mother’s sheep farm. They get tastes of parshah Gemara and Rav Dessler. The night isn’t long enough.

The next morning I remember Hannah’s grandmother’s pain about her daughter going to live in a commune in the 60s and it hits so hard I start to cry. I take out a fresh-cut onion as a cover.

The girls come in to help. They look at the fish and salads already on the table.

“You eat like this everyday?” they ask.

“Just on Shabbos” I answer.

Another meal. We learn that Leah is going back to finish college that Shamayim’s doing his PhD in physics that Hannah’s grandmother now 89 was so happy to hear Hannah was going to Israel she just stood and clapped. Hannah had no pressing plans.

After Shabbos we call Bat Ayin a frum settlement of farming people that “just happens” to have a girls’ yeshivah that “just happens” to be starting a two-week series on “Farming and Torah.” Tomorrow.

The next morning the two girls and I are in a taxi to Bat Ayin.

We pull up next to two donkeys standing next to the yeshivah door — a mother and baby. Hannah goes in and I wait outside to make sure she wants to stay. She does. As we say goodbye the Judean Hills behind her I see her long journey ahead. The pain from breaking with home familiarity and family. And her grandmother clapping. I see the pull.