They Landed Jet-Lagged. By Sunday They Were Working.

College is a fork in the road for a lot of Jewish students. On one side: building a career. On the other: staying serious about Torah and Jewish life. Most programs ask you to pick one for the summer. JLIC Summer doesn’t.

This summer, close to 200 students landed in Israel across four JLIC Summer programs. By Wednesday evening they were playing Human Bingo and battling it out in a rock-paper-scissors tournament. By Sunday they were at work.

The internships are real. Ariella Goldgewert, a Cornell student studying Animal Science, is doing research at the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine at Hebrew University in Rehovot. Gabriel Klein, a chemical engineering student at the University of Illinois, is in a nanotech lab at Hebrew University working on ways to detect cancer. Aviva Pinto is at Melabev, a day program in Jerusalem for adults with dementia, running group activities and hearing life stories from people who immigrated to Israel and lived through wars. Zeva Gorodischer, starting at FIT for fashion design this fall, spends every morning sewing bridal gowns at a boutique in Mevaseret. Azriel Markowitz spent the week at the Jerusalem Post writing articles and following a reporter to an interview with the Armenian Christian Patriarch in the Old City.

These are real jobs, with real responsibility, in Israel.

Kayla Nussbaum, a business student at the University of Florida, is interning at a software startup in Jerusalem. She said the program keeps proving something to her: building a career and living seriously as a Jew are not two separate goals. They go together.

That’s the whole premise of JLIC Summer. Jewish students shouldn’t have to choose. So the program doesn’t make them.

After work, students come home for the Beit Midrash program. Guest speakers. Shiurim on Rav Kook, Hilchot Shabbat, Gemara. Chavruta learning. Students choose what they want to learn. Gabriel Klein said the two hours of learning go by faster than anything else in his day. Not every evening was shiurim either. A bowling night, a jeopardy game with pizza, a kumzitz. These are the moments where students actually get to know each other. By the end of week one, these weren’t just classmates or program participants. They were friends.

This week also marked Shiva Asar B’Tammuz. All four programs came together to observe it. Students who had spent the week filing articles, running simulations, caring for elderly Israelis, and sewing wedding dresses sat together and thought about what it means to be in Israel right now. It hit different when you’d spent the week giving something back.

Their first Shabbat happened too. Kabbalat Shabbat on the roof. Assigned seating at dinner so you’d meet someone new. Divrei Torah. Singing. A joint Seudah Shlishit across programs.

Week one is done. These students proved the point. You don’t have to choose.

Reach out to any of our Directors to learn more about JLIC and our programming.