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In an Israeli Bomb Shelter, My Students Restored My Faith in Their Generation's Resilience and Commitment
(JTA) Mark Shpall - My students from de Toledo High School in Los Angeles were on a trip to Israel when the war with Iran began on Saturday morning and we heard the first sirens in Jerusalem. When the alarm goes off, you move quickly to the nearest protected space. For the first 48 hours, the alerts came every few hours. It was not the itinerary we had planned. But the experience revealed something powerful about these young people. What I saw in those shelters was not panic. It was grit. It was strength. It was solidarity. Students checked in on one another. They reassured friends and texted worried parents back home. They thanked hotel staff. As we were checking out, the hotel's general manager told me how impressed she was by the group - how respectful they were toward staff, how calm they remained amid sirens, and how appreciative they were even in the middle of a crisis. There is a widespread belief today that young people lack resilience. That they retreat from difficult realities. That is not what I saw. I saw teenagers who understood that being part of the Jewish story sometimes means standing shoulder to shoulder as one people. And I saw how deeply connected they felt to Israel. As the days passed, the prudent decision was to take our students back home via Egypt. Yet the reaction from many of our students was not relief. It was reluctance. Several told me they did not want to leave Israel. Their instinct was not to run from the experience. It was to remain connected to it. That reaction continues to stay with me. This experience will stay with them for the rest of their lives - the sirens, the shelters, the kindness of strangers, and the sense of community they felt with Israelis.