Nearly 200 JLIC Summer Program students flew to Israel this summer not sure what to expect. Some had never done a gap year. Others had never worked a real job. All of them are heading home with resumes, new friendships, and a lot more Torah than they arrived with.
The Work Was Real, Right to the End
One student spent the summer at an engineering firm, working with a team of interns to help figure out how Israel keeps its buildings safe. They built an actual product and pitched it, and she said the experience let her be part of advancing Israel while pursuing Torah values, and inspired her to keep doing both after the summer ends.
Another student spent his mornings under the Kotel Plaza with the Israel Antiquities Authority, pickaxe in hand. Most of the digging was at early Islamic sites, but the team also uncovered a Roman bathhouse and a Second Temple-era mikveh, pulling pottery, bone, glass, metal, and marble out of the ground along the way. Not many college students get to dig up centuries of Jewish history on their summer break.
Across the four programs, plenty of other students could say the same. One took on business development, research, and marketing at an Israeli RF intelligence startup, getting real responsibility and seeing the impact of his own work. A different student spent the summer at Hebrew University’s Public Health Research Department, running weekly check-ins with her mentor and analyzing data in SPSS on how new warning labels change smoking behavior. Someone else worked in an immunity lab studying the link between the oral microbiome and cancer, learning to plate, split, and freeze cells along the way. After six weeks into an internship at an optometry clinic, one student joked that his own eyesight was just fine. The blur in his eyes, he said, was just tears, thinking about the summer ending.
Saying Goodbye, Together
The last few weeks were less about new experiences and more about savoring the ones already made. One program closed things out with a mega social program at Nefesh B’Nefesh, sushi and chill in the park, and long-awaited matching crewnecks. In another track, students hit the Jerusalem food truck festival, then wrapped with a final banquet, a round of Kahoot, and a Shabbaton joined by a sister program for Seudat Shlishit. A third program’s banquet featured a Siyum, dancing, awards, and a portable shtender gifted at the celebration. One student said the summer’s bowling social was still her favorite memory months later.
Across every program, students kept saying some version of the same thing: the internships taught them a skill, but the community is what they’re going to miss.
A Dash of Torah to Take Home
It wasn’t lost on anyone that this was all happening the same weeks students were learning Parashat Re’eh and Shoftim. One MTVA student’s dvar Torah tied the two together using Rav Soloveitchik’s Adam I and Adam II: we’re people who build and achieve, but also people shaped by relationships and meaning. This summer asked students to be both at once. SIJM’s directors put it simply in their own closing message, quoting the pasuk on their banquet gift: Torah is meant to travel with you, into work, into the Beit Midrash, and everywhere after.
See You Soon
As one directors’ message put it, this isn’t a goodbye. It’s a see you soon. Whatever came next, whether a dig site, a startup, a hospital ward, or a lab bench, these students proved a summer can hold a job and a relationship with Torah at the same time. Now they’re bringing both home.
Reach out to any of our Directors to learn more about JLIC and our programming.
