“Our life-saving work is better than that of any other place in the world,” Sam Goldberg, a volunteer from the Magen David Adom Overseas Volunteers Medic Program, told The Jerusalem Post at “Coming Home: Aliyah in Times of War.”
Goldberg had grown up in a traditional Jewish home. Israel was central to everything. “I went to Jewish programs, Zionist Jewish school, I faced antisemitism in middle school,” he revealed. “When I was told about the [overseas] program, I figured, you know, I was looking for something [meaningful] to do [in the meantime] between my Aliyah and [the beginning of my] yeshiva, so I decided … to do something that would allow me to contribute to [the people of Israel] and integrate into Israeli society. So, when I was told about the program, I thought it was perfect.”
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He had initially heard about the program from a gap-year student he was hosting in his home in Toronto, Sharon. She had volunteered with the organization, which sounded the perfect fit.
“I made a lot of new friends, some of which I still talked to two months after the program, and some of them I'm going to be serving in the IDF with next year, hopefully,” he said excitedly. “I was also talking to drivers on the ambulances, the patients, and the other volunteers, so I got a first-hand view of what being Israeli is like.”
The pride of being part of such a prestigious organization like MDA stays with volunteers wherever they go.
“When I walk out on the street with my MDA uniform or my medical backpack, it says ‘overseas volunteer’ on the backpack, so people see that, and they’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, you came during wartime.’”
The gratitude he experienced regularly, he said, was the cherry on top.
“There were a lot of times when I had specific patients who had the worst time, like, it's usually the elderly patients, and they would be so happy to see that there was a young teenager helping them during the rough spot,” he said. “I am considering pursuing this in the army and post-army. I want to be a combat paramedic now, and I think [that my volunteering at] MDA brought me to that decision. If you aspire to do something in the medical field, this is definitely the perfect program, [especially] if you're a young university-age student.”
Now, Goldberg has finished the overseas program, but he is in the process of registration for being a regular volunteer medic, and he has completed his Aliyah.
“We are always here for everybody,” he said. “[It is not just] a job. It's a calling, and we do it for the people of Israel.”