Dartmouth College students are used to the cold, ice and freezing temperatures at school in Hanover, N.H. But who would have expected such a snowy welcome in Jerusalem for those on a Mayanot Taglit-Birthright tour of Israel?
However, they were warmed, they said, by a talk given by Ziv Yitzhaki, an Israel Defense Force soldier from the Golani Brigade who was wounded in the second Lebanon war.
Organized by Chabad Terror Victims Project, (www.ctvp.org), the talk was held at the Jerusalem Gate Hotel, where the students stayed through Shabbat.
The essence of Yitzhaki’s message: “Do not be afraid. Be proud of being Jewish.”
Students noted that the first-person delivery of what it means to love the Land of Israel left a deep impression on them.
Rabbi Moshe Gray, director of Chabad on Campus at Dartmouth, who accompanied the group summed up the meeting by saying: “Ziv’s powerful message of Jewish pride is exactly what we are trying to accomplish by bringing the students to Israel.”
The group also heard from Rabbi Menachem Kutner and Rabbi Yossi Swerdlov about the work being done by Chabad in Israel in helping victims of terror and war.
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