18-year-old Nadav woke to the sound of a siren echoing across Jerusalem. The American high school student had been napping when Iran launched a barrage of missiles.
Rushing to dress and reach the closest bomb shelter, the 90-second count between siren and impact wasn’t enough. A fragment of an intercepted missile slammed into the Old City, and Nadav heard a loud blast.
When the Iran war began in late February, thousands of foreigners were in Israel, including a group of high school seniors from Nadav’s New York school on a post-college application trip. The trip included two months in Israel followed by a week in Poland. When the war broke out, many of Nadav’s friends left the country, but he decided to stay behind.
“I wanted the feeling of being there,” Nadav told The Jerusalem Post. “I wanted to experience it to say that I can be a part of Israel, because all the Israelis experienced every single war, every single moment of it, and I wanted to feel like a part of the nation,” he said.
Nadav had been in Tel Aviv when the first siren of the war sounded, and he spent the next day running in and out of shelters. That night, he said, he slept in a shelter, hearing the loud booms of intercepted missiles in the air above him.
While he could have returned to the US along with many of his friends, he, along with roughly 60 others teens on the trip decided to stay in Israel, joining agricultural nonprofit Hiburim B’Haklaut (Connections in Agriculture) to aid farmers disadvantaged because of the war.
Placed on a small farm in the Galilee, Nadav and several others were tasked with clearing a garlic field of weeds.
What surprised me is how much this [farmer] needed our help," Nadav said. "He said that normally, he had a lot more help,” adding that his workers had been called into reserve duty due to the war.
“Every time we stepped in the wrong place, [the farmer] got genuinely upset because that’s less food he can provide for everyone else, because everyone’s struggling from this war,” said Nadav.
Lack of manpower 'serious issue' amid war
Speaking to the Post, Hiburim B’Haklaut CEO Brachia Rozenberg said that the lack of manpower had been a serious issue since the war, and that his organization turned to meet that need.
“At the beginning of the war there were a lot of foreign workers that left the country and also many farmers were recruited to miluim (reserve duty),” he told the Post.
“At that point, we recruited thousands of volunteers, not just from Israel,” he said, adding that his organization had “really saved a lot of farmers.”
Rozenberg harkened back to how, at the beginning of the war, Hiburim B’Haklaut opened situation rooms for special work across Israel, working to “follow all the needs of the farmers” as well as to build connections with volunteers.
He also recalled how Nadav’s group reached out to the organization, “wanting to do something” to help the country, noting that the episode was a “very special experience” for the teens.
Speculating on the motivation of foreigners who decided to stay during a war, Rozenberg said that since October 7, many Jews and non-Jews alike feel a sense of mutual responsibility, taking advantage of a ”unique opportunity to really take a part in Zionism.”
Hiburim B’Haklaut’s programs span the country, particularly in the Gaza Envelope and along the Lebanon border. Initiatives include helping wounded soldiers recover through agricultural work, and programs for post-army young adults to restore resilience on the frontline, working mornings on farms and volunteering in communities in the afternoons.
Back in New York, the war followed Nadav and his classmates in some ways.
“I think all my friends have PTSD,” Nadav said, describing how he jumped at sirens playing on the radio. One friend, he added, woke in the middle of the night convinced a siren was sounding.
“There was nothing,” Nadav said. “It was just in their head.”
“I don’t know that we want the war,” Rozenberg said. “But now that it’s happening, everyone needs to ask themselves: ‘What is my mission?’”
For Nadav, the answer was simple: to stay.