If you have attended a JEWISHcolorado event in the past year, you may very likely have encountered one of JEWISHcolorado’s Shinshinim. For a full year, these young Israelis, all recent high school graduates who delay service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), serve in Israel and in diaspora communities around the world. They spend a year immersed in the local Jewish community, educating youth about Israeli society and culture, current affairs, and Jewish traditions. They bring with them unique interests and passions and, above all, a willingness to create a bridge to Israel. Meet JEWISHcolorado’s five new Shinshinim!
Daniel Hadad
Daniel Hadad was born in Toronto, Canada, where his parents had moved to open a bakery. If his background sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because he is the younger brother of Omri Hadad, who served as a JEWISHcolorado Shinshin two years ago.
“My brother talked about how much fun he had and all the people he met,” Daniel says. “I wanted to do it myself.”
In his Canadian Kindergarten, Daniel made a lifelong best friend who now lives in Israel in an English-speaking home—an excellent opportunity for Daniel to practice his English by talking with his friend’s family. He also picks up English with his favorite TV show “Game of Thrones.” His home is in the Hof HaCarmel district, near Haifa, where he has been surfing for the past seven years, professionally for the past two years.
“It is an amazing sport because you are sitting in the middle of the ocean with no phone, no people,” he says. “You have to learn patience because the waves in Israel are not the best—they last about four seconds—so you have four seconds to get better with each wave.”
Daniel holds dual Canadian citizenship and has lived for months at a time in Japan when his father worked there. He has traveled widely, to Africa, Russia, Austria, Italy, and the many countries that make up Lapland. This is his first visit to Colorado where he is adjusting to different rules of the road.
“You can make a right turn on red here!” he says. “No one honks! And if you let another car go ahead of you, they wave thank-you!”
On October 7th, Daniel was home alone, looking forward to a Bruno Mars concert that night. He woke up to about 40-plus missed calls from his family who were in Jerusalem. An older brother of one of his friends died at the Nova Concert. In the weeks and years that followed, as he would sometimes see incoming missiles while he was out on his surfboard, he turned his school study of diplomacy into a personal mission.
“I love my country and I love Judaism,” he says. “I love everything related to Israel. This year, I won’t miss running to a safe room or a shelter, but I am sad that I am not physically there to support my family in case something happens.”
Daniel’s goals for the next year are two-fold. On a personal level, he wants to “climb a lot of 14ers.” He would like to see if his surfing expertise translates to snowboarding. He also hopes to travel the country—including a trip to the Israeli consulate in San Francisco this fall along with all the Shinshinim so they will be able to vote in Israel’s election.
On a professional level, he wants to leave a lasting impact.
“When I leave Colorado in a year, I want my students to say that ‘Daniel changed my view of things, he had a good influence on me,’” he says. “I want parents to say, ‘The Shinshinim are great—they do good work.’”
Oriya Miron
For Oriya Miron, coming to Denver to serve as a JEWISHcolorado Shinshinit is perhaps the greatest adventure of her life as she travels from her small town in Israel to a big city in a country she has never visited.
Since she was four, Oriya has lived and attended school in Mitzpe Ramon, a town in the Negev on the edge of the massive Ramon Crater. When she started high school, she began to feel like her hometown was small and isolated, but in recent years with ongoing war, she has come to appreciate her home in the desert.
“It feels very safe,” she says. “There have been no rocket attacks, and now that I see how war affects other people, I appreciate not living in fear or having to run to a bomb shelter.”
On Oriya’s first trip abroad to Hungary, she knew that travel was in her future.
“Just walking the streets of Hungary was amazing,” she says. “I knew then that I wanted to see as much as I can of the world. I love Israel, but I want to experience new cultures.”
From the minute she learned about the Shinshinim program, Oriya knew she wanted to do it because “this program is a unique and special way to serve by traveling to different countries.”
She is from the same hometown as Maayan Hayoun-Rozenfeld, a Jco Shinshin who just returned to Israel after spending last year in Denver. When he came home on vacation in early 2026, he and Oriya met, and he talked about the advantages of living in Denver—including access to a variety of outdoor activities.
“I have never skied, and I want to learn,” says Oriya. “I never hiked when I lived in Isarel, but hiking here in Colorado—‘Wow!’”
Oriya studied English in school and watched a lot of English speakers on television. Her favorite English-speaking television shows are “Gossip Girl” and
“How I Met Your Mother.” After just one week, her first impression of Denver is that “everyone is so nice! Even strangers! Even the guy serving us in Chipotle is nice!”
She has a clear vision of her goals for the year.
“I want to make as many friends as I can,” she says. “I want to really have a positive effect on the community and show Judaism and Israel from my point of view.”
Evyatar Moshe
Evyatar Moshe’s parents wanted to work in agriculture, so they looked all over Israel before settling in the moshav Kadesh Barnea in the desert district of Ramat HaNegev. Evyatar says his parents picked the area because of the people, but he also praises the beauty of the desert.
“I cannot see myself living in the city,” he says. “In the moshav, everything is quiet.”
Thanks to their decision and the 25-year partnership between JEWISHcolorado and Ramat HaNegev, Evyatar may have been destined to come to JEWISHcolorado as a Shinshin. He already has personal connections to many legendary emissaries from Ramat HaNegev who have spent time in Colorado, including the recently departed Shlicha Nelly Ben Tal and the former Shaliach Itai Divinsky.
When he was in his sophomore year, Evyatar traveled to Colorado with ART, an ambassador program designed to connect Ramat HaNegev teens with Jewish life abroad and strengthen the bond between Colorado and Ramat HaNegev. He spent time with students in the Upper Division at Denver Jewish Day School (DJDS).
“I saw the differences between Israeli teens and American teens,” he says. “But we were all Jewish and that is what connected us.”
At DJDS, he had the opportunity to meet that year’s JEWISHcolorado Shinshin Talia Shalom, who was also from Ramat HaNegev.
“I saw what she was doing, the role she was playing, and how she connected with people,” says Evyatar. “I started to think to myself, ‘Maybe I should do a year of service before going into the army.’”
Through his experience with ART, Evyatar made yet another connection to JEWISHcolorado when he met Jillian Feiger, Senior Director of Israel and Global Engagement. She invited him to join the Joyce Zeff Israel Study Tour (IST) on its summer tour of Israel, but as fate would have it, the trip was canceled because of the ongoing conflict with Iran.
When it came time to place Evyatar as a Shinshin, it must have seemed beshert for him to return to Colorado where he already has DJDS friends who are now in school at CU Boulder. He hopes to bring his passion for soccer to his time in Colorado. His favorite American television show is “Breaking Bad.” He comes from a family with two sets of twins—he has a brother older by 40 seconds who is also spending a gap year working in agriculture.
During the next year, Evyatar hopes to have a chance to snowboard (he tried it for one week in Hungary) and to leave a lasting impact in Colorado no matter where he finds himself working.
“I don’t think the programs where you are placed is the most important thing,” he says. “I think it’s making a connection with the community.”
Yael Shalgi
“You can look in one direction and see the sea and if you look in the other direction, you will see the mountains.”
That is how Yael describes the beauty of her hometown of Zichron Yaakov on Mount Carmel in a wine-growing region near Haifa. It is an area that she describes as being inside a “bubble of peace” during the recent years, unlike many areas that she describes as being “shattered by war.”
Before settling in Zichron Yaakov, Yael’s family lived in Tel Aviv where she was born. They moved to Orange County, California, where they lived for three years while Yael attended preschool and Kindergarten. It was in those early years in California that Yael picked up English, which she later developed in Advanced English classes in Israel and by watching television. Her favorite TV show is “Emily in Paris.”
Yael is the youngest of five children in her family, with triplets who are 10 years older and a sister who is two years older. Two years ago, her sister served as a Shinshin in Boca Raton, Florida, and that inspired Yael to follow in her footsteps.
“The connections she made with people in Florida, including her host family, made it feel like she was living a completely different life with so many new experiences,” says Yael about her sister. “I saw how important she was to her community and how much she did, and I thought to myself, ‘I could do that for a year too!’”
Yael has traveled extensively, often returning to Orange County to visit friends, but until her arrival in Colorado, she had never been to the state.
“I never thought I would see a city in the U.S. that is so close to nature,” she says. “In Denver, you can drive for 30 minutes, and you are in the natural world! Israel is like that too!”
Yael plays the flute and loves to paint. She is very excited about the prospect of building creative and innovative programming for the children and young people she will be working with in Colorado.
“I want to show everyone what Israel looks like from my point of view and show them why I love Israel so much,” she says. “I want to build a bond between these two places that are so far from one another, and I want to learn—especially about how Judaism is practiced here.”
Daniella Shampal
Daniella Shampal describes her hometown of Tel Aviv as the “best city ever.”
“It is a kibbutz inside of a city,” she says. “There are party places but there are also many quiet places. And I love the Tel Aviv beach!”
She brings extensive experience in the U.S. to her new role as a Shinshin. She has been coming to Perlman Camp in Lake Como, Pennsylvania, every summer since she was in fifth grade. She has many American friends who are delighted that she is now closer to their time zone than she has been in Israel. She has traveled extensively, including Italy, France, Greece, Poland, Germany, and Thailand.
Daniella is the youngest of three children in the family. Her older sister served as a Shinshin in London and her cousin was a Shinshin in Toronto two years ago. She says that her sister describes the experience as “the best year of her life.”
“My sister says you make best friends for life,” says Daniella. “You become more mature and more sure of yourself, and you learn what you want to do with your life.”
With a father who is a judge and a mother who is a lawyer, perhaps it is no surprise that Daniella’s favorite TV show is “Law and Order.” She is an avid singer, a runner, and an enthusiastic sportswoman.
Both of Daniella’s siblings are serving in the IDF. Her brother has been in Gaza and Lebanon. The family lives in an older building so they do not have a safe room. Every time there is an alert for incoming missiles, Daniella has had to run for a shelter in the lower level of a nearby garage. During the ongoing war with Iran, she slept in the garage for one week of the conflict and then again for a second week at a later time along with her dog Louie. On one of her first days in Denver, she heard the noise that signals a weather alert on the television—and her host family had to immediately reassure her that it was only a thunderstorm warning, not an incoming missile.
That was an early lesson in a year that Daniella hopes will be filled with learning experiences.
“I want to learn about the people, about places, and about the culture,” she says. “I know the values I came her with, and I want to share those values with as many people as I can, making new friends and learning how American culture and Israeli culture can work together.”