Every morning since October 7th, 2024, Shalhevet students walked past posters of the faces of innocent people who were taken hostage on that day in 2023 by Hamas terrorists. When the posters were taken down after most of the hostages were returned in October 2025, it hit me hard. It felt a little like we were moving on too fast.
Shalhevet has done a lot to support Israel, especially since 2023. At the same time, as a school, we should do more to educate ourselves about Israel, not just its emotional impact, but to arm ourselves with knowledge.
We learn a wide range of subjects, from Gemara to chemistry to U.S. History, but for me, what’s missing is a genuine, consistent education about Israel.
Shalhevet does require an 11th-grade course on Israel education, where students learn the history of the modern state. But what about current events like the outcome of the war, and how the conflict in the Middle East affects daily life in Israel? What about the 9th- and 10th-grade students? They are missing this perspective, and waiting until 11th grade is just too long.
Even in our required Hebrew classes, where we learn the language of Israel, we barely cover the conflicts, the history, and the current state of Israel’s society, and how people are living there right now. Some students learn Hebrew with an eye on making aliyah in the future, but without the current context, learning the language feels incomplete.
An occasional conversation about politics in Israel, or the day-to-day life for Israelis after the war, would fill what is missing. Shalhevet can address this issue by making small adjustments to its approach to teaching Israeli history and current events.
For example, Town Hall is already weekly and mandatory: spending the first five minutes of every meeting reviewing current events in Israel would help us understand what’s happening there, especially when the world is saying so many different things online. One example is the many media voices that claim that Israel is committing a genocide; even if we know it’s false, hearing it over and over can start to convince us otherwise. If we had a weekly check-in regarding the news in Israel, I feel that students would be better prepared to address this issue if they encounter it outside of school.
Israeli education is most often found in electives or an occasional program, rather than as a required course itself. Firehawks for Israel brings in speakers, such as Unpacked, to have a deep conversation about the story of Israel. But these events are typically once a month, and few students attend (some of them only because they serve food at the meetings, not because they are actually interested in the conversation). If the goal is to help students feel connected to and informed about Israel today, optional one-time events aren’t enough.
Whether it’s used in the context of the Holocaust, Oct. 7, or other points in Jewish history, the phrase “Never Again” is part of our identity as Jews. But sometimes it feels like we’re told to say it without being taught how to actually live by it. If “Never Again” is just a phrase we repeat when tragedy strikes, then something is broken. Instead, it has to be a commitment to our identity as Jews, something we protect not just with confidence but with facts and context.
Israel is not a separate part of who we are. It is the core of our story, our home, our responsibility, and our future.
If we must learn math formulas and how to use the periodic table of elements for use in college and in our professional lives, then we should also learn about the reality of the country our people are still fighting and dying for, not just in Israel but worldwide. Learning about current-day Israel will help students understand the country better and assist them in bigger decisions like aliyah, yeshiva, or seminary.
The best way to actually honor the faces we used to drive past every school morning at Shalhevet is to stop moving past them and to start learning about what they represent — modern Israel — so we will have the knowledge that will help us to take action.
This story was published in The Boiling Point at Shalhevet High School on March 10, 2026.
