Liraz Bar
By December, Liraz Bar will have started her IDF service as a spokesperson handling media for the IDF. She has achieved this unique and exclusive position in part because of her experience working for JEWISHcolorado for the past year.
“Here, I have done advocacy for Israel and also worked on social media,” she says. “This is needed for our military because there is so much fake news, and we want to show the good parts and special moments of the army.”
Before she came to Colorado, Liraz always wanted to have a partner on every activity. She credits the past year with giving her the newfound confidence to fly solo.
Liraz (left)
“This year, I faced doing things by myself,” she says. “I learned how to speak in front of a crowd, how to teach a lesson, and how to introduce myself if I am the only Israeli in the room.”
Liraz found it very interesting to watch teens in Colorado live their Judaism.
“Before I came here, I did not wear a star of David because in Israel it is obvious that I am Jewish,” she says. “But I saw people here demonstrating their Judaism, and that was meaningful to me. Now, I wear a star of David to show that I am proud of who I am.”
During her months in Colorado, Liraz did not always see her impact in the moment that it happened. But in her last days as she prepared to leave, she realized how effective she had been.
“Going to BMH and having all the kids jumping on me as I said good-bye—you realize you really made a difference,” she says. “I hope they remember me as the Israeli person in the room who always had a smile, gave advice, and listened to what they had to say.”
She will miss the friendliness of the people in Colorado, and, in particular, she will miss her host families.
“I felt like a daughter to them,” she says. “It will seem strange that when I return to my Israeli family, I will know that I have families in Colorado.”
Liraz will also miss her family of Shinshinim.
“When we first started, we didn’t know if we would connect with each other and become friends,” she says. “Now I feel they are another family because we have had this whole journey together, and we will always be there for each other through good and bad.”
Adi Buchman
When Adi left Israel a year ago, her farewell party was her birthday party. This year, her welcome home party will also be her birthday party. The young woman who left Israel a year ago thinking her future would be interior design is returning a year older with a new purpose.
“Since I came to Colorado and worked with kids, I fell in love,” she says. “I cannot see a life where I am not working with kids.”
By November, the IDF will put her teaching skills to work. She will spend the first six months of her service learning how to fight in a tank, and then she will turn around and teach those skills to other young tank soldiers. It will be a far cry from the kind of teaching she did with children at DJDS and HEA.
“Every time I came into class, kids would run and hug me and that made my day,” she says. “As much as they connected to me, I connected to them.”
For Adi, this year meant learning that home is not just Israel and family is not just biological.
“I learned that Denver is also my home, and my host families are family, and the Shinshinim are my family, and Michelle (Ruby, Director of Israel Teen Emissaries and Education) is my family,” she says. “The community here means so much.”
This year, Adi says, she has learned to live the Hebrew saying, “If not me, then who?”
“You have to grow up to learn that you don’t need other people to do what you want to do,” she says. “For the first time, I have the confidence to rely on myself.”
Adi laughs when she talks about the surprises that came with American life. Why don’t drivers honk? And why do people never seem cold, even when it is freezing?
When the year came to an end, Adi debated what would be the most meaningful way to say goodbye to her young students. She knew they loved art, and in a stroke of genius, she found a way that they could continue the craft of coloring even when she is gone. Using AI, she created a coloring book with herself as the main character.
The book documents her experience in Colorado—frightened to be away from home for a year at the beginning, and then, day by day, feeling more at home because her students welcomed her. The book is, she says, “a beautiful way for the kids to understand what I did here and to remember what we did together.” It is also a brilliant way for Adi to be remembered in the way she wants, “as artistic, and smiling, and giving equal attention to every child.”
Alma Elad
After her return to Israel, Alma Elad is looking forward to spending time with her family and taking a “true vacation” in Greece. By November, she hopes to be training to become a pilot in the Israeli Air Force. She has passed one round of exams and knows that she has more testing before she realizes her dream.
When she came to Colorado, Alma already knew a little bit about being a Shinshinim because she had traveled to Denver with the Ambassadors Ramat HaNegev (ART) program as a high schooler and watched the Shinshinim at work at Denver Jewish Day School (DJDS).
“I already knew what Ramat HaNegev did to make this partnership work,” she says. “But this year, I saw the other side—the ways that Colorado makes the partnership strong.”
Alma (second from right)
In her year in Colorado, Alma learned that she can take on new challenges—and succeed.
“I feel more confident that I can do things if I put my mind to it,” she says. “Even if I have to tackle projects I have never done before, I now know that I can do new things and accomplish them.”
She also experienced a religious enlightenment.
“In Israel, I felt Israeli, but after my year here, I feel more Jewish,” she says. “I learned about Judaism this year and discovered that I can do whatever I want to make my connection to Judaism stronger.”
The big surprise of Alma’s year of service was Colorado’s weather. She had expected to go skiing often, but there wasn’t enough snow to make that happen. What did bring her joy this year was her host families and the friendships she built with the other Shinshinim, her “friends for life.”
“I hope to be remembered in Colorado as an ambassador for Israel and as a friend,” she says. “As an ambassador, I might have changed people’s understanding of Israel, and as a friend, I hope I made people feel more connected to Israel.”
Tomer Eli
By next November, Tomer Eli will begin his IDF training as a paramedic. He “aimed for it, asked for it, and tested for it,” he says. No surprise that he was successful, since he started volunteering with Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency organization, when he was in ninth grade.
“I know that it is something I am good at,” he says. “To me, helping other people who are injured or sick is a great way to contribute my skills to the military.”
Before Tomer starts caring for others, he plans to spend his first months back in Israel caring for himself, “reacclimating to the life I had in Israel after a full year living away from home.”
“All the Shinshinim have changed so dramatically,” he says. “You don’t feel it until you are around the people who knew the previous version of you, but now you are different.”
How has he changed? He has grown more resilient, he says. With a consistent job for one year, he has learned how to connect with people quickly and develop strong relationships. He has become a better long-term planner, and he now realizes that there is a world outside of Israel.
“I feel like I was living in a small box before this year,” he says. “Now, my world is much bigger. I am already planning a winter vacation in New York because the world has opened up to me.”
His greatest joy this past year was seeing his work with small children and teens pay off over time.
“You plant a seed with these children, and you water it, and sometimes it takes a few months before you see the payoff,” he says. “Then all of a sudden you get a photo from a parent, and you realize that there is a connection that goes beyond the hours we spend in the classroom.”
Tomer says he will “miss everything” about his time in Colorado—particularly the feeling that “I do matter, my job matters, creating connections matters.”
“Connections are all it takes to build something great together,” he says. “The support we have experienced from the Colorado community, especially during the Iran War, shows me how much we need each other. We can’t do everything by ourselves.”
Maayan Hayoun Rozenfeld
Maayan’s first mission when he gets home will be to find a job to fill his time before he heads to the IDF in January. He hopes to train to fly fighter jets for the IDF. He returns to Israel with new self-knowledge, earned during his time in Colorado.
“As a Shinshin, my social skills improved,” he says. “I learned time management and became better at working under pressure. My creativity was definitely tested by having to find creative ways to do programming with children. I think I became more creative because of that.”
Maayan’s time outside of Israel led him to think about the Jewish community in his home country and the Jewish people around the world.
“Where do I fit in that world?” he asks. “What ideas can I take from JEWISHcolorado back to Israel?”
He knows that he would like to bring back with him some of the experiences he had connecting to the Colorado Jewish community through traditions, high holidays, and Shabbat dinners with groups of families.
He says that Colorado surprised him by “how polite everyone was.”
“At the beginning, I wondered if it was sincere,” he says with a laugh. “Over time, I realized it definitely makes interactions better.”
This year, he found joy working with young children and enjoying Colorado’s outdoor life.
“Every time I got the chance to be outdoors in the mountains or the forest, I felt like I was in a movie because it was so different from Israel,” he says. “Being outside connected to nature just felt like a good place to be.”
In a sign of the times, Maayan says with a laugh that he will miss the fact that JEWISHcolorado pays for his gas. The price of gas is even worse in Israel, he points out. He hopes to be remembered as “fun, adventurous, enthusiastic, intelligent, and an interesting person.”