Recently, I asked other lecturers if they felt the same way I did: lectures given before October 7 were very different from lectures given after that date.
A conference given today is something new, we are all at a much higher level. We have all been through a class, an entire school year of classes, since Simchat Torah. We meet in a deeper way, and the meeting is between souls who want to learn and grow together, especially with the young audience, the new leadership of the Jewish people.
Many speakers agreed with me.
Here are just a few examples from the field, from meetings I hold across the country and around the world:
At a youth conference, I put together a presentation of “images of victory,” a collection of small moments of light, justice, and power.
Moments of Israeli and Jewish pride. I told the audience that to get a final picture of victory, you have to pay attention to the small achievements along the way.
The goal is not just to see those images together, but to adopt this way of thinking. Start looking for these little moments in our lives and make them resonate.
The next day, I received a message from a soldier named Yishai Turgeman. He sent an image of a group of soldiers putting on tefillin together, with an explanation that really moved me: “This is our image of victory! Noam Ramati, the commander, was with us in combat. He could not put on tefillin all day and the sun had already set.
All the soldiers felt his sadness. This is the first time since his bar mitzvah that he was unable to put on tefillin.
The tefillin were a few meters away, but it was forbidden to move there, much less begin to put them on.
What happened the next day? The next day, all the soldiers, even those who had not worn tefillin since their bar mitzvah, asked to put on tefillin with him, one after another.”
Different moments of spirituality throughout the year
On the eve of Passover this year, I met a group of students in Jerusalem who study Judaism regularly.
I came to teach and learned a lot from them. They told me that they enrolled in this program at the beginning of the year because of the scholarship they received, and because of the Shabbat meals and excursions, but now they feel that Judaism is the most meaningful topic for them.
One of them held a Bible and said, “How would I get through this period without studying this week’s Torah portion and realizing that I am part of a big story? It’s the best commentary you can have, better than any statement.” press”.
It’s not just learning, it’s also acting. At that gathering on Easter Eve, we talked about freedom.
In a series of lessons leading up to the holiday, they learned for the first time in their lives that freedom is not just freedom of choice.
True freedom in Judaism is being the best and truest version of yourself.
A slave constantly worries about his own needs, it is not freedom. It is being enslaved to your ego. Being free means paying attention to the needs of others, caring for others, not putting yourself at the center, and understanding that you are connected to another Jew, especially if they need help.
One of the students, surprised by this new concept of freedom that he first heard at age 26, suggested an idea: clean homes for the elderly, people in need, and families in which the father was called up.
After all, there are families who certainly need that help before the holidays. True freedom comes from ourselves, to help them.
In no time, this lovely initiative was implemented. Students who perhaps didn’t clean for Easter last year have now gone out to clean strangers’ houses, because they have realized that they are not strangers, they are brothers.
I had the privilege of spending last Shabbat at Ir HaBahadim, the IDF’s main training base near Yeroham.
I met over a thousand future commanders, who see themselves as the “correction generation,” the generation that will fix what was so badly broken and failing in Simchat Torah.
One of them told me: “It is a mistake to talk all the time only about 7.10, as if everything began and ended there. I realized that our history is much broader: with a past of thousands of years and with a eternal future.”
These stories are not the main headlines in the news.
But this is the silent revolution taking place throughout the Jewish world, in which INEXTG occupies an important and central place in working with young people.
It is a privilege to be a small part of that revolution and see these hidden and historical processes up close.
The writer is a media personality and lecturer for students and soldiers at INEXTG – Israel’s Next Generation.
