Jeremy Schooler
When I committed this spring to being a staff leader for a Birthright trip, I expected a meaningful journey through familiar territory — a whirlwind of hummus, history and heat with nearly 40 participants, the vast majority of whom had never been to the Middle East.
June 8, my 27th birthday, marked the beginning of our 10-day program. By June 18, I’d helped lead my group not only through the complexities of Israeli culture but also through experiencing an actual war, as well as an unexpected detour to one of the holiest religious sites in the world, 2,500 miles away from Israel, and to a total of five countries in a three-day span during our journey home.
Our trip began peacefully, if not unremarkably, in Tiberias and Zichron Yaakov — lovely spots, but far from the top of most tourists’ Israel itineraries. On our fourth day, we arrived in Jerusalem in the evening, and our group went out for a night of fun at Machane Yehuda market, excited to truly see Jerusalem, including the Old City and Western Wall, the next day. However, at around 3 a.m., under two hours after returning from the shuk, sirens began to wail through our hotel’s announcement system and across the city. Israel had preemptively attacked Iran’s nuclear sites, sparking an Iranian counterattack missile strike.
For the next five days, my group was confined mostly to our hotel, and during certain times, a small stretch of area surrounding it, in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood.
Our “world” narrowed to a small convenience store a couple hundred yards away, a few hotels and a small patch of grass. Much of our time each night was spent in our hotel’s basement, which doubled as both synagogue and bomb shelter, and was dubbed, naturally, the “shul-ter.”
Between a post-high school gap year program, the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School senior capstone trip, the two prior Birthright trips I had led and a couple other visits, I have spent over 14 months in Israel, all without ever experiencing a red alert siren or a bomb shelter. I was now thrust not only into this setting, but now with 39 people looking to our guide, my co-staffer and me to keep things sane and safe.
Despite the fear and confinement, we tried to make the best of our time. My co-staffer and I organized games, reflections and bonding activities. The irony of being so very close to the Old City, yet feeling so far, and the strange comfort of routine in crisis, was not lost on us.
On June 16, our guide broke the news to us that we were evacuating the next morning, after days of uncertainty about whether we’d be unable to leave Israel at all in the next few weeks. Birthright had arranged for thousands of participants to leave the country by boat, to Larnaca, Cyprus. On our final night, we had a bittersweet goodbye party outside our hotel, complete with TV interviews from Israel’s i24 News, who had heard about our group and sent a reporter and camera crew to do a story about us.
We left Jerusalem for the Ashdod port at 5:30 a.m., and rumors abounded about what the boat would be like. Frankly, most of us expected a crowded, uncomfortable ferry, given that thousands of people were booked just a day or two before.
Our bus was the first to reach Ashdod, but what awaited us after hours of check-in, customs and security was not a ferry, but a massive cruise ship, complete with pools, water slides, bars, a casino, restaurants, a basketball court and much more. We spent 18 hours onboard, almost all of it disconnected from the internet, meeting thousands of other participants, playing Jewish geography (the archaic way, without using social media mutual friends lists as a crutch) and enjoying the ship’s amenities. The “Jews Cruise,” as it was aptly dubbed, was truly the most incredible way possible for us to leave Israel.
Upon landing in Cyprus, things got messy again. Buses to the airport were limited and disorganized, many people were separated from their full groups, some were held up at customs and some (including me) still didn’t have any internet connection. I managed to find about half of my group and board a bus to the airport, hoping the rest of our group was there. As it turned out, the airport was too packed to hold everyone. The rest of the participants from my trip, along with hundreds of others, were taken to Chabad of Larnaca, which became a makeshift hub for people who couldn’t get on one of the airport buses and needed food, water and a place to wait for the next updates.
Eleven hours after we arrived in Larnaca, with the help of our trip provider and Birthright’s team in Israel, the U.S. and Cyprus, the 17 total people from my group who managed to reach the airport were told that seats were secured for us on a Rome-bound flight departing that night. After arriving at our hotel in Rome at 2 a.m. — to kosher meals waiting for us, which Birthright impressively set up as they simultaneously organized countless buses, flights and hotels in cities across Europe — we realized we were just a 10-minute walk to Vatican City.
And so, at 2:30 a.m., our group walked to Saint Peter’s Basilica, figuring that we might as well make it to one of the most revered religious sites in the world, even if it was not the one we expected to see when we had first arrived in Jerusalem six days prior.
We flew from Rome to New York the next morning without incident, and the whirlwind was over. There’s plenty to debate about what this trip meant, what it achieved and how we’ll all process it going forward. But I am confident that in 25 years of Birthright, there has likely never been a trip quite as unforgettable as ours.
Jeremy Schooler is a Bethesda native and CESJDS graduate who currently lives in New York City. He plans to return full-time to the Washington area in the coming months.
