Labs, Bridges, and Bedside Chats: A Month Inside JLIC Summer

This summer, one JLIC student is helping turn sunlight into fuel. Another is inspecting the bridges under Israel’s speed trains. A third is sitting beside a family who lost a son at the Nova Music Festival, just so they are not alone.

These are three of nearly 200 college students spending the summer in Israel with JLIC Summer. The program has four tracks: SIJM, SIJ @ YTVA, SIJ @ MTVA, and SIJW. By day, students work jobs like these all over the country. By night, they head back to the Beit Midrash to learn. In between, they are building a community that has come to matter just as much.

The Work Is Real

Bailee Schwartz did not expect her internship to teach her this much about listening.

Bailee is a senior at Stern, studying Psychology and Political Science. She spends her days at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem, working with a group called Osim Sameach. Her job sounds simple on paper. Visit patients. Keep them company. In practice, it has meant sitting with a woman right after she got hard news. It has meant playing round after round of Rummikub with a patient who just felt lonely. It has meant listening to a family whose son was murdered at the Nova Music Festival. Bailee says most patients are not looking for a snack or a coffee. They just want someone to make them feel seen. She has met Holocaust survivors, new immigrants, foreign workers, Israelis, and Arabs. Each one has trusted her with a piece of their life.

At Hebrew University, Roee Weglein is working on a very different kind of problem. Roee is a student at Rutgers. He spends his days in a chemistry lab that is trying to turn sunlight into clean fuel. Here is the idea. Certain materials, when hit with sunlight, can split water apart. That releases hydrogen, which can be used as fuel with no pollution at all. Roee’s job has been to test thin films of these materials under simulated sunlight. He measures how well each one turns light into an electric current. A few weeks ago, he could barely follow the lab’s weekly meetings. Now he follows the whole conversation about how small changes to a film change how much power it makes.

Adina Baum has landed the kind of internship most college freshmen only dream about. Adina studies Actuarial Math and Civil Engineering at Queens College. This summer, she is inspecting bridges for a firm that handles most of Israel’s major bridges. Some of those bridges carry the country’s light rail and high-speed trains. Some days she is in the office. Other days she is out on site, watching real inspectors check real bridges for real problems. Right now, she is helping on a project for Netevei Israel, the country’s roads authority. The goal is to help Israel’s roads recover faster after a natural disaster. Adina never thought she would get this kind of hands-on experience as a freshman. She is not taking it for granted.

Across the four programs, other students are doing work just as real. Noam Elbaum is in the ER at Hadassah Ein Kerem. Molly Cohen is watching Israeli court proceedings at a law firm in Jerusalem. Ruthie Israel is in a first grade classroom at Shalva, working with autistic children. None of these students are just filling time. They are doing jobs that matter, in a country they are learning to love even more because of it.

Torah Every Night

After work, students come back together for the Beit Midrash program, and it is just as full as their workdays. Special guests join throughout the summer to share their own perspectives, connecting everyday life and work back to Torah. Michael Eisenberg, a well-known investor, spoke to MTVA students about AI and the economy. Then he tied it back to what the Torah says about staying united while chasing big goals. Rebbetzin Tamara Spitz gave a shiur on the psychology behind biblical Midrash. Molly Cohen, a YTVA student, called it her favorite class so far. Rav Blau, Rav Horn, Rabbi David Aaron, and Mrs. Malka Hubscher have stopped by too, helping students connect what they are learning at work to what they are learning in the Beit Midrash.

On top of the guest speakers, students keep up with regular learning. SIJM is working through Maseches Makkos with Rav Reuven Schrier. MTVA is studying the writings of Rav Kook with Rabbi Ari Ze’ev Schwartz. Jacob Goldman, an MTVA student, said the class showed him “poetry of the finest quality” where he expected controversy instead.

Getting to Know Israel, and Each Other

The programs have also taken students out of Jerusalem this month. That means seeing more of the country, and more of each other.

SIJM students spent a Friday in Sderot, learning for a bit inside the Sderot Hesder Yeshiva. From there, they traveled to Kfar Maimon. They played paintball, then grabbed pizza from a shop owned by an Israeli reservist. SIJ @ YTVA and SIJ @ MTVA students traveled together to an Ethiopian Jewish village in Carmei Gat, near Kiryat Gat. They made pottery and bricks by hand, the way families there still do. On a separate night, students ran a scavenger hunt through the Old City of Jerusalem. Later, they played a fierce round of Panopoly and Family Feud. SIJW students visited two villages of their own on a single Friday. One was Beita Israel, an Ethiopian community. The other was Wadi Attir, a Bedouin village known for new farming ideas.

These are the moments where students stop being just co-workers or classmates. They start being friends.

A Hard Day, Together

This stretch of the summer also included Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It marks the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash. Ty, one of the program directors, shared a teaching from R’ Chaim Vital. The Beit Hamikdash actually started burning on the night of the 9th of Av. The building itself did not finish burning down until the next day. That is part of why the strict mourning rules of Tisha B’Av ease up partway through the 10th. Once the Jewish people saw that Hashem was destroying a building and not a people, there was already a little less to mourn.

Same Story, Every Year

A lab experiment can take months to pay off. A bridge inspection can take all afternoon. A lonely patient might just want a game of Rummikub. Whatever the work looks like, JLIC Summer students keep showing up for it. Then they show up for each other.

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