Three months in, with creative solutions and tireless staff members, students are not only surviving, but even thriving

Photos: Pinchas Emanuel

No one was surprised by the Israeli government’s reluctance to admit tens of thousands of foreign students into the country at the beginning of the school year. In the end though, a united effort across the religious spectrum yielded a long list of policies and regulations, as the last weeks of summer were spent making dormitories, dining rooms, batei medrash, and classrooms compliant with Ministry of Health regulations. And now, in the throes of another lockdown and the skies closed again, those thousands of students from yeshivos, seminaries, and other assorted gap programs who made it to this side of the ocean are grateful their schools pulled out all the stops to ensure their year in the Holy Land.

And, say the dedicated staffers, the past three months haven’t been as bad as they thought.

“We had the dreaded quarantine and were really petrified at first,” says Mrs. Beila Lehman of P’ninim Seminary in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood. “But looking back, it was such a special part of the year. In ‘normal’ years, the girls spend the first weeks of school running away from the strangers in the dorm to the safety and familiarity of family in Israel and friends in other schools. This time, instead of facing so many new things and meeting the entire school at once, they met just five other girls in their capsule. By the end of quarantine, they had five close friends, and that tight-knit circle expanded to include other girls exclusively in their school.”

The way the different schools banded together to make sure every institution could open went beyond expectations — much to the gratitude of those involved. World Mizrachi and The Yeshiva and Seminary Coalition — better known as “The Igud” — as well as askanim and government officials worked in tandem to get the borders opened for incoming students. Schools from the far right to the far left, schools that were considered competitors, or schools that simply had nothing to do with each other, united to gain entry visas for their students.

“When the opportunity presented itself to join with other schools across the hashkafic spectrum, I felt my father a”h telling me, ‘You have to grab this opportunity to make a kesher between so many different parts of Torah Jews,’ ” says Rabbi Zecharya Greenwald of Me’ohr Bais Yaakov, located in the Beit Hakerem section of Jerusalem. He is referring to his father, well-known political and communal askan Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald. “It was truly incredible. Achdus has a tremendous koach — who knows if that wasn’t the reason we were successful?”