Not even a year has passed since being on the FZY movement team and whilst studying out here in Tel Aviv the thought of making aliyah has been constantly on my mind. The sun is shining, the culture is epic, the people are eager to engage in debate and the city is an insane place to live. I can’t imagine coming home in September feeling outside the centre of this buzz! But enough about that, this summer I have the unique and wonderful opportunity to represent the white and blue, our Jewish State, Israel as I have been selected on the rosta for the first ever Israeli National Lacrosse Team! For those of you who don’t know what lacrosse is about (you’re missing out!), it is basically hockey but (way cooler!) played in the air instead of along the ground. The game originated from the Native Americans with sticks that look like fishing nets. It is fast paced, skillful, potentially aggressive and a hell of a lot of fun.

This Summer, Israel’s National Lacrosse Teams are set to compete in the European Championships in Amsterdam – an historic moment for this country. For all you Zionists – this is a positive story of Israel (just turned 64) as a flourishing country eager to compete on the international stage. This is a story of young men and women, striving for recognition on the world sports stage and it is an amazing story to be a part of.

As a newcomer nation, the team has to fundraise for their place in the tournament. As such, each member of the team has been given a target and if we fail to meet our targets then Team Israel will not be able to compete. The support of the Zionist Diaspora is crucial and who better than the FZY community behind me and Team Israel to help spread the word!

I can’t even put it into words what wearing ISRAEL on my shirt would mean to me. Just thinking that in less than a couple of months, I will walk out onto the pitch with my fellow team mates, head held high waving the Israeli flag makes me overwhelmed with excitement and pride.

Herzl said “If you will it, it is no dream” – please help us spread the word in this new chapter in Israel’s history and help make TEAM ISRAEL’s dream a reality.

To join in the excitement, donate @ http://fundrazr.com/campaigns/0IPhd For more information check out http://www.lacrosse.co.il/

For those of you who I have had the honour to lead or work with, I hope that your FZY journey has continued and is thriving as you are the ones who make the movement what it is. I look forward to hopefully seeing the terrific Tour 2012 madrichim at some point this summer so let me know when you guys are coming out!

Miss you all.

FZY love & banter,

Kalmo

19/04/12

Today is the last day of the trip, its holocaust memorial day, and it’s the March of the Living.

FZY Flag going through the gates in Auschwitz

The march was unbelievable. Eleven thousand people came from all over the world celebrate the fact that we’re still here. It was incredible to look behind me and see so many faces, we’re all there to make sure that no one will ever forget the tragedies of the holocaust, and it was truly special and I feel so lucky to be a part of it.

The most emotional and unforgettable part of the tekkes was at the very end. We all sang hatikva together, and suddenly the sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the sky but only where we were all stood singing for our country, Israel. It was as if all those who perished were saying thank you to us for remembering them. It was as if they were so pleased to see us all there and thriving.

The sun shining down on the Hatikva

All in all, I have to say that being here for the past five days has given me reason to research the holocaust even more. I want to take every opportunity to go and hear holocaust survivors tell their own survival story. I want to ensure that Youth Movements today are just as empowering as they were in times of war. I want to make it my mission to educate my peers and the next generation on the holocaust. I feel so blessed to be here today that the idea of anyone trying to destroy us again isn’t one even fit for thought. It’s up to us to guarantee that there will always be Jewish people to tell our unique stories and most of all, I will never take my friends, family or religion for granted again.

Being Jewish isn’t just a religion, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of thinking and believing, it’s being the best we can be even when we’re being told we’re lower than the insects. It’s being there for each other, and being there for the rest of the world too.

I will never forget.

If anybody has been affected by the content of these articles feel free to contact the FZY Team who will be happy to process things with you.

18/04/12

There is an eerie grey about the air. Every place we pass has ghosts and haunted horror following us around. You can’t look out the window from the coach and not be reminded of the events of the holocaust and how it’s affected almost every Jew you meet.

Lurking in my mind, as always, is this desperate question I have, why did this process of killing the Jews, one by one, go on for so long? Surely red flags should have gone up as soon as the Ghettos were put in place, not six years later. I keep thinking that if all the train drivers refused to drive the trains, if all the gas men didn’t supply the gas, if the electricians didn’t fix all the electrical problems that so often occurred on the death camps, labour camps, concentration camps, so many lives would have been saved.

Birkenau entrance

Today, we went to Auschwitz – Birkenau. It was different to Majdanek. It was absolutely huge I could never have imagined it. The amount of barbed wire surrounding the camp, the amount of barracks, watch towers, crematorium. Yuval explained the way the camp worked. The Germans send Jews there from all over Europe in hope to exterminate them all. They’d arrive by train – I say train but I really mean cattle trucks. In one tiny carriage would be one hundred people, sometimes even more. It would take days and days to arrive and the whole time never knowing where you’re going, not knowing your fate, not drinking or eating or stopping of any kind. They had to guess the hours and days, so many died amongst their own urine and faeces from hunger, disease, exhaustion, and this was just the beginning. I imagine them thinking that it couldn’t get any worse.

When they arrived it was only ever at night, another tactic the Germans thought up callously. They got off the trains and in their faces were large big white lights in order to disguise the on goings of the camp. All they heard was shouting in German as they were thrown off the trains and into the selection.

On the left hand side, they had all the strong and healthy looking people. For the people stood on the right, these would be there last moments in the world.

For those who stand on the left, they had a long, hard time ahead of them. We all walked the same way they walked to the room they were forced to undress, to be disinfected as if they were vermin, to have their heads shaved for two purposes; To completely strip them all of their identity and to use their hair for their own profit. Their identities would be completely rid once they were given a number tattooed, and their name taken from them.

Mala explained how terrible it was to step out of that room, in striped uniforms and no hair. Everyone they knew became completely unrecognisable. No one knew who anyone was, no one knew who they were themselves anymore.

They worked and worked and worked, and when one ‘batch’ died from it all, they brought a new ‘batch’ in, and off they went again. They were used to make things for the Germans in order to help their economy grow. They were slaves with no names. They were fed barely anything and they lived on top of each other. They were beaten, shot and scared. They must have felt totally alone in the world with no one standing up and fighting for them, and even if there were people, they would have no way of knowing that. They must have been wondering the whole time if there was anyone coming to save them, if they would live to see the end, if they were the last Jews left with no hope of Jewish revival, worst of all they must have all been wondering if they would be the next person to die.

Standing where they stood, when they saw the last glimpse of themselves, again made me feel sick and lucky all at the same time.

For those selected on the right, the SS felt they weren’t worthy of a life. They were taken straight to the gas chambers. Eighty five per cent of people that came off the trains were taken to their deaths that night. Because there were so many people a lot of them had to wait in turn on a patch of grass by the chambers. They were sitting, waiting to die. They knew what was coming, they could hear the screams, they could smell the burning bodies, they knew what was coming.

Birkenau Crematoria

It makes me ill. After the already horrific journey where they were starving and thirsty, the last thing in their life they saw was their family and friends, climbing on top of each other in a cramped space, each trying to reach the top to avoid the gas and brutal murder. They must have been absolutely terrified in their last moments, in their previous moments, and forever after.

The bodies were dragged out of the chambers by inmates themselves, burnt in the crematorium by inmates themselves. The SS never lifted a finger, except to shoot, shove or to be violent in some form.

Going to Auschwitz One was very strange. The first bizarre thing was the shops within the site itself for the tourists. It angered me that food businesses opened up to make profit of all these visitors coming to pay respect to the disgust of the holocaust, but I didn’t have long to focus on that as I had a lot more to be angry and upset about as we entered the concentration camp.

It was very surreal once again. It seemed far too small to hold the hundreds and thousands of people that lived there.

The first significant house pointed out to us by Yuval was the whore house for the SS officers. They’d select the most beautiful women, of course they were allowed the privilege of keeping their hair, and they were used for sex and G-d only knows what else went on, but from what I already know I realise these women were in hells hell.

We saw the spot where a band would play during the marches they had to do round the camp. They really knew how to humiliate people at any given opportunity. How dare music play as skeletons drag themselves up and down the cold cobbled streets hanging on for dear life, purely for entertainment.

I learnt that there were ranks within the camp itself amongst the prisoners. Jews, African Americans, cripples, Gypsy’s, obviously Jews being the lowest of the low.

Going into the room with the mountains of hair, tons of shoes, thousands of personal possessions, was horrendous. The suitcases lined up, names and addresses plastered across them, it really hit home how they were each individuals, and they each had a house and a street and a family and friends. They all brought their favourite shoes, best shoe polish, most treasured jewellery, favourite books and family albums.

Crutches taken from inmates at Auschwitz

The room full of crutches and other such items killed me a little inside. Without these things certain people can’t do anything! They couldn’t walk or use their hands, they couldn’t live.

One of the most disgusting things I learnt was of the accounts the officers and commanders had where it showed how much money each ‘number’ was bringing in through their hard work. If someone wasn’t making enough it was to be the end of the line for them.

The most terrifying place on the camp had to be blocks 10 and 11. These were used as prisons and a court room. As if it wasn’t enough in the rest of the camp, there were rooms created to torture people further. There were tiny rooms called the ‘suffocation room’ where four people would have to stand all together, all night with no room to move or even breathe. It was unlikely that they’d all survive the night and even if they did, they were forced to go to work the next day, of course no food or liquids were given to any of them during this. There were other rooms used for medical research. In here people were tested on how to be killed the quickest and cheapest way, they tried to see if they could limit the amount of children a woman could have, they would take twins and do similar things to each one and see what was to happen.

At the end of this day, I feel distraught and angry. I still will never be able to come to terms with the humiliation they suffered on top of all the other things put in place. I can never forgive the Nazi’s for this.

17/04/12

Emotions were all over the place today. As always, a sick feeling sat in my stomach.

Our first stop this early morning wasLublin. Yuval, our educator, continued to educate me in realms I haven’t discovered. He taught us how the Nazi’s formed. It had always baffled me how a whole nation had come together to destroy a whole group of people, and today it was explained that the Nazi party and its members were psychologically abused by the system, with their moral compass being flipped 360 degrees. They changed the meaning of murder to salvation and in doing so they filtered their grotesque ideologies into their surroundings, leaving behind discomfort, fear and worst of all, a massacre.

Their education gave them the tools to destroy lives and believe it was the right thing. Their economy grew with the new jobs and strong men around them.

What got to me, was that they started this all by killing off their very own people. Hitler created a world where it showed his followers that mentally ill, physically ill and just generally ill people were ‘draining their economy’ and sooner or later, disabled and impaired people were being killed off. This was until various people picked up on the horror of this; and with that, enough of the society stood up and fought against it. This makes me extremely angry. It’s so twisted that this wasn’t allowed to take place, but the systematic mass murder of all the Jews was ok to live next to.

The power the Nazi’s had over people was so tremendous that I can’t help think that they could have so easily used their power for good and not evil, or at least this shows me that there was an opportunity for someone else to enforce things in the same way only with opposing ideologies. Why didn’t this happen? Fear is not a good enough answer for me. I like to think that if I were there I’d rather die trying to do the right thing than live turning a blind eye. Isn’t that on the same level, or in some ways, even worse?

Do we in our youth movements empower our chanichim to stand up and fight for our beliefs? We do in such events as Veida and Bogrim Seminar, but I believe we could do much more.

FZY at Majdanek

We went then after to a concentration camp, ‘Majdanek’. It was horrifying to see the whole camp from the view above as we walked in. The rows of barracks and tall watch towers all looked like a flamboyant movie set. It was hard to imagine it filled with thousands of skeletal bodies, forced to work until death.

One strange and horrible thing to see, was how close the town and the village were to the camp. All these members of society idly stood by and allowed this to take place in their back garden. The prisoners would walk into town and back to the camp. The fact that they came face to face with locals of the community EVERY DAY and they did NOTHING make me feel physically ill. Learning that the village consumed these people into their lives as they walked into town and into their everyday lives frightened me, knowing they could be such a significant by-stander. How could they live with themselves knowing what was happening?  I’m sure there were people who tried, but clearly not enough. They claimed they didn’t know what was happening when the war was over, I claim they are evil to say such a thing when they saw these uniforms being forced to run into the town with dogs and whips chasing them the whole way there.

The commander of the camp lived inside it, amongst the walking dead, not alone might I add, but with his wife and two children, a big fancy white house with a full view of the daily torture going on outside the window, past the lawn. He brought his children up teaching them to kill, teaching them that they’re better than everyone else, teaching them that the way to get what they want is to destroy the things they don’t like. Terrifying. His wife would even use the dead bodies she lived upon to make lamps and other such accessories. Horrifying.

It makes me think of all those other family’s whose ideals were based on the Nazi’s fascist point of view. Those children will have grown up with fathers who are murders and with a moral sense only worth holding on to in the jungle. How will they ever get through life holding on to those ideals? It makes me realise how many different people were affected by this tragedy.

Having Mala Helfgott, a fascinating holocaust survivor, with us throughout our experiences was truly inspiring. She again told tales of her personal times in the barracks. She told us how it was hard to keep her little cousin of five safe but she managed to do it, she knew she had no choice. She explained that it would be six people to one bed which to us seemed ludicrous as it would be hard to fit two of us on the uncomfortable wooden planks. She told us how people would fight for the blankets as soon as someone else said goodbye to the world. She told us that everyone was just, dropping like flies. Just what the Germans wanted.

Mound of Human Ash at Majdanek - Photo by Lauren Geisler

We saw the crematorium and gas chamber, and to finish it off we saw a large pile of ash belonging to those who suffered horrifically during the time of the war. Looking into this humongous pile sent shivers down my spine. I couldn’t imagine all the lives lost, all the love lost, all the fear that must have been within all these bodies before their frightful end. I felt so lucky to stand there, I felt it was my duty to tell the whole world to come and see this, and to never forget.

We had a small tekes as the three youth movements, FZY, BBYO and Habonim. We said a few words and sang Hatikva. It was a strange feeling, standing so close to all this death and singing a song of hope. I hope they heard us singing for them, I hope they have a way of knowing they are not forgotten – now or ever.

Solemnly we made our way back on the coach to go to Krakow. As it was a five hour drive, we watched Schindler’s List on the way. It helped me to restore a little faith in humanity once again. The way he was able to see the truth underneath the smiles of his fellow Nazi’s. The way he didn’t succumb to this terror. The way he went out of his way to save as many Jews as he was able. The way he broke down sure that he could have saved so many more.

Schindler's Factory Gates - Photo by Lauren Geisler

Imagine, just for a moment, if there were ten more, twenty more, thirty more people like Schindler? Think how many more thousands of Jews would be here today? There are 6,000 more alone from the Jews he saved himself.

I felt happy, angry, sad, overwhelmed, let down, but most of all what has stayed with me is this feeling of pride. I’m so proud that we’re able to walk in and out of these places unlike the millions of bodies there before us. I’m proud that a lot of us in this world won’t let the holocaust lie and we will continue to commemorate these hero’s for as long as we can until of course we teach our children to teach their children and so on and so forth. I am so aware that we’re the last generation to hear directly from these brave and wonderful survivors, we need to not only take the opportunities to hear them tell their stories but we should create them. I know I will.

Tami joined a delagation from FZY on the March of the Living Trip to Poland in April 2012

16/04/12

The first thing that touched me today, was the holocaust film we watched on the bus “Escape From Sobbibor”. I’ve seen this once before but somehow being inPolandand watching it made my stomach churn and made my anger grow. The scene with the mother holding her baby after she was caught hiding her affected me deeply. She smiled, holding her child with a gun in her face. She was so content with the situation and it showed her willingness to die as a mother and baby rather than – well what word can I use? The idea of a child dying before her parents is so dire that there is no name for this like there is for an orphan or a widower. She’d rather die with her than live knowing she’d never see her again. A choice that not everyone had.

The way the people worked together in Sobbibor to escape was inspiring, but I had a thought the whole time. How ridiculous is this whole situation? They’re forced to kill, lie, steal and ESCAPE. The situation should have never been so severe.

The first destination today was “Treblinka”. Seeing the model of the death camp, and walking around seeing it was fascinating and distressing. Standing in the same place where all these Jews were, gave me chills.

Mala, a wonderful holocaust survivor joined our group today. She told us tales of her experiences. She spoke of the embarrassment of having to walk naked in the concentration camps in front of the SS soldiers. She told us how she would be talking to a friend in the camp and they’d pass away, in the middle of a sentence, but she didn’t feel anything for that was her reality. Death, and work.

Memorial Service at Treblinka - Photo by Lauren Geisler

Hearing her stories made it even more real. Everyone in these camps have stories, they have lives, HAD lives. It could have been us.

The tekes was intense and necessary. We said prayers and took time to remember those souls. A holocaust survivor began to cry as she relayed a long list of her family members that had been taken from her. It became infectious, not before long the majority of the crowd who had gathered also began to feel their tears touch their cheeks.

All of us Jews, standing there together, made me hope that these unfortunate souls could see us, could know that we know, that the world knows, that we are still here.

It also made me think of these evil people who claim the Jews made up the holocaust, or at least exaggerated it.

Who can deny the holocaust? Who can say this was all a myth, a dream, a made up truth by the filthy Jews? Come toPoland, come toAuschwitz! Use your brains, your heads and your hearts. They hurt us, the memory hurts us, but we’ve proved we’re not vermin, so why be so callus to say that we lie.

If a man was lying in the street, staring death in the face and looked up at me to spit and call me a horrible Jew, it would be my duty to lift him off the floor and take care of him as if he was one of us, because we’re not evil or animalistic, we’re human just like everyone else, and now this man can never tell his friends that the Jew is bad, and if he does he’ll forever know he’s lying.

We pride ourselves on helping others even when we’ve been so disgracefully let down, so please, deniers of the holocaust, haters of the Jews, come toPolandand see what we see, hear what we hear and learn that we are all the same, only as we’ve been victims we’ve learnt never to victimise. Does it need to be the case that others must feel the same pain in order to understand? I hope not. I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone, ever again.

Let us be, let us live, let us prosper, for we are all one.

15/04/12

Today, I came to Poland for the first time. I was firstly shocked by what I saw in the surroundings. It was so strange to see buildings that were modern, next to buildings that were so old.

The first stop we made was at the cemetery. It was very interesting to see all these amazing Jewish people buried. All the different fantastic head stones that told stories were truly beautiful. What touched me the most was an area that was a patch of large grass, but underneath laid the bodies of holocaust survivors. It seemed to unfair that none of these people had head stones just because no one knew who exactly they were, only that they were one of us.

Warsaw Cemetery - Photo by Lauren Geisler

The whole day I was more and more shocked, however much I knew about the holocaust I still will never get over the Germans. How could they be so cruel? And for what reason? Because of faith? It makes no sense to me to be so offended by someone’s, or by a whole people’s religion.

Today was long and hard for our entire group. We didn’t sleep last night and after out flight we launched straight into the day. Although hunger and tiredness hit me extremely hard, I knew that I had no right to complain or even feel sorry for myself or any of the group, because all our ancestors went through so much for us to survive. They were starving, weak, humiliated, imprisoned, eventually diseased, eventually the animal the Germans often described. I mean really, how anyone can see it fit to complain as we stand here.

Learning about the Jewish Youth of this era was truly inspiring. The way they all came together, networked, chose not to stand and do nothing but stand up to the Germans when no one else would.

It made me so proud to be Jewish, but it also makes me sad that so many Jews today take this for granted. How can WE, as FZY, Habonim, BBYO or any other movement ensure we are a movement that moves and not a standstill landslide, letting our heritage, courage and bravery fall away with our ancestors.

It’s up to us, to remind the youth, to remind each other, how important it is to never give up, to fight for ourselves, to fight for each other and to make our ancestors proud.

We didn’t die then, we’re still here today, let’s make sure we’ll be here tomorrow.

The official Yom HaShoah poster in Israel designed by Dorielle Rimmer

Tonight marks the start of Yom HaShoah, the commemoration the Shoah, or Holocaust. Yom HaShoah is an essential day in the Jewish calendar, providing a collective focal point for our individual remembrance. As the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, puts it: “We cannot bring the dead back to life, but we can bring their memory back to life and ensure they are not forgotten. We can undertake in our lives to do what they were so cruelly prevented from doing in theirs.”

Unlike Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), which coincides with the Allied liberation of Auschwitz, Yom HaShoah is timed according to the date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Yom HaShoah is particularly Jewish, whereas HMD recognises the universal nature of the Holocaust. Central to our own Jewish day of remembrance is the role of youth movements and young people, and this provides an example for us to emulate today.

After the start of the Second World War, many Zionist youth leaders who had managed to flee to safety in the east made the decision to return to Nazi-occupied Poland. Youth leaders of movements like Betar, Hashomer Hatzair, Dror and He-Halutz returned voluntarily after several months spent in Russia and Lithuania, motivated by a sense of responsibility as local leaders, not only to their young chanichim (members), but to the Jewish community as a whole.

Once back in Poland, these leaders became central to life in the ghettos, the densely-packed part of town where Jews were forced to live by the Nazis. Without a school system, Zionist youth movements became central to education in the ghettos, establishing kibbutz groups and underground schools, publishing newspapers, and training new leaders through informal education. This passive resistance ensured a flourishing cultural life in the ghetto, helping young people to develop despite their situation.

As the Nazi killing machine accelerated through 1940-3, youth movements changed tactic, moving from passive to active resistance. The youth movements became the driving force behind the armed resistance movements in the ghettos, most famously in Warsaw. When the Nazis tried to enact their final deportation of the Jews on April 19^th 1943, the whole ghetto rebelled, led by the 23 year old Mordechai Anielewicz. Despite the massive mismatch in resources, these Jewish resistance fighters held off the Nazis for 24 days, killing 20-100 (depending on the source), and the Nazis were forced to treat this rebellion as a full-scale battle.

News of the uprising spread across Europe and helped encourage other ghettos to resist. The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt is an extraordinary example of what Jewish youth and youth movements are capable of in the face of adversity.

Over the last few days, FZY members have visited the Warsaw Ghetto as part of FZY’s first delegation on March of the Living to see firsthand where these events occurred. Tomorrow, they will join 8,000 other Jews from around the world to march three kilometres from Auschwitz to Birkenau to stand proud and prove that “Am Yisrael Chai” – the Jewish people lives.

FZY is proud to be a member of the forum for Yom HaShoah through the Zionist Youth Council, and encourages all members in London to go to the national memorial event this Sunday in Hyde Park, as well local events around the country.

If you have found employment, and used FZY in any way on your CV, please can you two minutes to fill out this speedy survey about FZY on your CV

As part of my role on the Mazkirut, I am responsible for ensuring that FZY’s fulfils its aim of tzedakah, and at the moment I am focusing on ways to exceed the £8000 target that we have agreed with the UJIA to donate to our partnership project, the Ethiopian Bar and Bat Mitzvah (EBBM) project.

I write this blog as a kind of plea to appeal to your enormous heart-strings to get involved in fundraising projects. As members of FZY and those fortunate to be born into a society where not having some sort of Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah party is unusual, I believe we really can make a difference to these people’s lives who already feel isolated from the Jewish world.

The Ethiopian community in Israel, is not as fortunate as ours and its youth relies on the generosity of others in the hope that they receive the simplest of gifts including new clothes and good tuition in preparation for their rite of passage from childhood to Jewish maturity.

If you are now asking yourself what you can do to help, the answer my friends is simple.

First of all available to everyone to purchase at the cost of £8 is an “I ♥ FZY t-shirt” available from both North and South offices, just contact a Movement Team member who will oblige your request. There is also a range of other FZY merchandise for sale such as laundry bags and puzzles.

Secondly attending Chavorot meetings and Bogrim events, will help you donate as all proceeds go to this worthwhile cause

Thirdly you can enter a sponsored event for the EBBM fund and get people to sponsor you in aid of the charity.

And finally if that doesn’t tickle your fancy, then watch this space for upcoming summer FUNdraising initiatives on Tour and Summer Camp.

Thanks in advance for all your help, there is no gift greater in my opinion then giving a Barmitzvah and making one 13-year old feel part of our FZY family x

Einav has over a decade of experience working in FZY, rising from an Israel Tour madrich to become FZY Israel Tour Director as FZY Tour grew to its current position as Anglo-Jewry’s flagship Israel programme between 2003-7. From 2007, Einav switched sunny Jerusalem for less sunny Hendon, and served as FZY’s Central Shaliach for three years, where he worked with three different Office Teams to enhance the level of Israel education in FZY and ensure that Israel remained central to our identity as a Zionist youth movement. In recognition of his success as a Shaliach, the Jewish Agency appointed Einav as the Head of the Jewish Agency Education Delegation to the UK in his final year, giving him a more central role in the development of educational Zionist programming in the UK.
Joshua Marks, FZY Mazkir, said: “FZY are very excited to have a familiar face bringing a fresh perspective to the role of directing FZY in Israel. With both Israel Tour and Year Course numbers on the rise once again, it has never been more important for FZY to maintain a strong on-the-ground presence in Israel.”

Einav succeeds Michael Freeman, who is currently on the Diplomats Training Programme in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Making Aliyah shortly after working for FZY, Michael brought over 25 years of involvement in FZY, and was heavily involved in so much of FZY’s phenomenal growth over the years. Michael said “FZY has been a huge part of my life. Together with Young Judaea, it has been my only real professional career and I have loved every minute of it. Not many people get the chance to follow their dreams twice – I made Aliyah and now I get to go into the foreign service to represent our amazing country.”