Golda Daphna, 24, moved to Israel just days before enduring the most significant attack the Jewish state has ever known. While many would have been scared away by the gravity of the situation, that was the opposite of what Daphna was feeling.
She may have felt fear, but she first and foremost felt inspired by the resilience of the Jewish people.
Daphna’s journey to taking the leap and moving to the Holy Land was years in the making. She grew up in a Zionist home on Long Island to an Israeli father and an American mother. She attended religious girls’ schools before enrolling at Columbia University, where she challenged herself academically, socially, and religiously.
Known by many in the social media world for her TikTok presence, Daphna has been expressly an advocate for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.
On TikTok, she has been transparent with followers about matters in the Jewish world and the resilience of the Jewish people. She’s shared her journey from Orthodox Judaism and back again, even documenting her internal struggle with whether or not to take the leap and begin her life anew in Israel.
“Growing up, I never felt Israeli, but I always knew I wanted to move to Israel,” Daphna told the Magazine. She grew up hearing countless stories of war and subsequent survival and resilience, knowing that there was always a possibility that she would be confronted with the harsh reality that Israel has been familiar with since day one.
Shortly before making the move, Daphna had planned a family trip to Italy that was suspended due to a health scare. After taking difficult physics courses all summer to prepare for a postbaccalaureate premedical program at Columbia, she was disappointed that her vacation was called off.
Her mother suggested she travel to Israel instead. Although she had been here countless times, she was not going to turn down the opportunity.
She was initially disappointed, she said – she’d be seeing many of the same sites in Israel she had always seen and wanted to experience something new.
“I’d be on social media watching posts about people on the Amalfi Coast, but instead I was here,” she said.
“But then there was a moment when I was on a train from Modi’in to Jerusalem when I looked out the window and just felt... I knew that I couldn’t leave here.”
DAPHNA STARTED thinking about her trajectory, the professional plans that she had made and their connection to the life she wanted to build in Israel.
She studied to become a biomedical engineer and had recently graduated from Columbia University in New York. She had thought about entering the medical field and worked as a medical scribe at a fertility clinic and applied and interviewed for a program at the Weizmann Institute.
When she did not achieve the results she had hoped for, she said, “I became a biomedical engineer to become a biomedical engineer in Israel.”
She had made plans in a meticulous manner but felt like she was planning for a life she was not living.
“I had a list of bullet points, but life doesn’t work that way,” she said.
So, she decided to take the plunge.
Moving to Israel a week before Hamas's attack
“I got back from my trip to Israel just a week before my lease was ending. I packed up my apartment and moved [to Israel],” Daphna said.
“JUST A week later on Shabbat morning, there were sirens.” Daphna reflected on how her entire world was turned upside down without a moment’s notice, just as she was starting a new chapter in her new country.
She had been bursting with emotion about moving to Israel, and she was excited to spend Sukkot hopping from sukkah to sukkah. “I sat in a [class] for 30 minutes in Spanish simply because I wanted to meet people!” she said
The night before the attack, she spent Simchat Torah dancing in the street at Chabad on the Coast (unknowingly, alongside The Jerusalem Post reporter who was to tell her story), meeting new faces. She had the time of her life and danced the night away with her newfound friends. The new faces had invited her to a meal Saturday afternoon, which she still planned to attend after the first sirens sounded.
As Daphna made her way to the Shabbat meal, she noticed an eerie silence surrounding her. This was not the silence she knew from Israel even during stressful times; she met two girls sitting on the stoop of her host’s home, who were crying. When she asked them what was wrong, they told her that Israel was at war.
Daphna was not able to turn on her phone on Shabbat, so she reached out to a non-Shabbat observant friend in New York who she knew would be able to go to meet her parents at the Chabad where they were davening that morning.
Just five minutes before her friend was able to track down Daphna’s parents, the congregation was notified of the situation. Although her parents are religious and keep Shabbat, they understood that the severity of the situation called for speaking to their daughter via FaceTime.
As she spoke to her parents about the concerns on Saturday night, never once did the question of leaving the country cross her mind. Even as sirens wailed overhead while she spoke to her parents, her spirit did not waver.
She felt like she was seeing the experience through the eyes of her father, who grew up in Israel and fought in wars as a soldier in the IDF.
Her connection to Zionism launched her desire to help. Before taking time to visit an aunt in Modi’in, she joined in community efforts to help whomever she could, however she could.
“I don’t have any doubts that this is where I want to be, and this is where I should be,” Daphna told the Magazine. “I know what it’s like to be a Jew in America... I feel like people don’t really understand what it’s like to be here now. That’s why I wouldn’t leave, and why I feel that I need to stay here,” she added.
“I want to be with the Jewish people, I am a Jew. I cannot imagine not being here with the Jewish people [during this time],” she said.
Daphna met a couple who were heading to Rome shortly after the war broke out.
“Honestly, I could not fathom leaving Israel. The only doubt, I think, is that when you’re an oleh [new immigrant] and you’re not really [feeling] Israeli yet, you almost feel like a burden. You’re not Israeli enough to feel their pain – yet I don’t feel American enough to be in America,” she said.
DAPHNA’S ZIONISM has many layers – her great-grandparents were invited by Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress to go to Palestine and become doctors.
Her great-grandfather served as David Ben-Gurion’s first doctor and helped create Kupat Holim, Israel’s national healthcare system. Her father was 17 years old during the Six Day War. He fought in the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War. Her parents met when her mother was in Israel for a commercial.
To Daphna, Zionism means being part of the Jewish nation.
“I think that coming to this country, I had a lot of questions. Now, I think I understand why Israelis are calm about their choices. It’s all going to be okay – I am in awe of Israelis on the front lines, I am in awe of the families speaking out to advocate for the hostages.”
As Daphna tried to wrap her head around the atrocities that happened in her new country just a matter of days after she made aliyah, she further understood what made the nation great. Israelis turning to humor to get through the darkest of times, people both secular and ultra-Orthodox coming together to donate everything from blood to supplies to their free time, she knew she was in the right place. She was witnessing the resilience of the Jewish people in action.
“I am in awe of the Jewish people,” Daphna said.
“I think that seeing the reality of what makes the Jewish nation, the groups of people just trying to help one another – that has been the most life-changing, life-altering experience in itself.” ■
Golda Daphna, 24 From Long Island, NY, to Tel Aviv, October 2023