(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring future alum, Ben Rosen, and Ben Kozberg, class of 2002, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on August 8, 2006)  8/11/06

Trip to Israel an 'intense' lesson
Teens' 3-week trek  included time spent helping refugees, visit to army base

Kevin Kidder
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The sound of ball bearings hitting glass was supposed to shock. That's what comes out of the rockets that are hitting Israel, the speaker said as he poured the steel balls into a glass vase. Innocents everywhere are dying, another speaker at the pro-Israel rally said yesterday.

For the seven teens and two chaperones who had just returned from Israel this week, those recollections were still uncomfortably familiar.

The group had been in northern Israel one day before the current conflict started. Then they moved farther south in the country, not far from Tel Aviv. There, they helped welcome refugees from the area the had so recently toured.

Yesterday, those youths were welcomed back to Columbus at a rally at Beth Jacob Congregation on the East Side.

"It was an intense time," said Ben Rosen, 16, a student at Bexley High School. Like others, Rosen said he never worried about his safety, though there were times when the group considered leaving.

Their trip, organized by the Columbus Jewish Federation, lasted from July 10-30.

Initially they toured the country, including Tiberias in the north. Then they lived with host families in the town of Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, a city that Hezbollah has threatened though never hit. They helped out at a children's hospital, cheering up the patients.

"Everybody pulls together," Rosen said.

Toward the end of his stay, Rosen was on an Israeli army base where he attended a slightly altered boot camp. "It was all right. They didn't push us; it was 100 degrees out there," he said.

Nearby at an air force base, he and chaperone Ben Kozberg, could hear F-16 fighters as they took off, probably for Lebanon. The conflict is affecting everyone in the country, he said.

"Everybody knows someone in the army."

The trip was supposed to help them understand what it's like to be an Israeli, and it worked, Rosen and Kozberg said.

"It's very nice being home, but it's nice to be more connected," said Kozberg, 23.

Another group of 16 teens at the rally was preparing to go to Israel for a trip that will last the entire school year. Like Rosen and Kozberg, few said they were worried, despite the fighting.

"Israel is a very safe country," said Shifra Zack, 18, who was last in Israel when she was 9.

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