Recently, I asked other lecturers if they felt the same way I did: the lecture delivered before October 7 was far different from the lectures given after that date. A lecture given today is something new – we are all on a much higher level. We’ve all gone through a class – an entire school – since Simchat Torah. We meet in a deeper way, and the encounter is a meeting between souls who want to learn and become stronger together, especially with the young audience, the new leadership of the Jewish people.
Many lecturers agreed with me.
Here are just a few examples from the field, from the meetings I conduct around the country and throughout the world:
In one lecture for young people, I prepared a presentation of “pictures of victory,” a collection of small moments of light, justice, and power. Moments of Israeli and Jewish pride. I told the audience that in order to get a final picture of victory, you have to pay attention to small achievements along the way. The goal is not just to see such pictures together, but to adopt this way of thinking. Start looking for such small moments in our lives and echo them.
The next day, I received a message from a soldier named Yishai Turgeman. He sent a picture of a group of soldiers putting on tefillin together, with an explanation that moved me very much: “This is our victory picture! Noam Ramati, the commander, was with us soldiers in combat. He couldn’t put on tefillin all day, and the sun had already set. All the soldiers felt his sorrow. This is the first time since his Bar Mitzvah that he was unable to put on his tefillin. The tefillin were a few meters away, but it was forbidden to move there, let alone start putting them on. What happened the next day? The next day, all the soldiers – even those who hadn’t worn tefillin since their Bar Mitzvah – asked to put on tefillin with him, one after the other.”
On the Eve of Passover this year, I met a group of students in Jerusalem who study Judaism regularly. I came to teach, and I learned a great deal from them. They told me that they enrolled in this program at the beginning of the year because of the scholarship they received, and because of Shabbat meals and trips, but now the students feel that Judaism is the most meaningful subject for them. One held a Bible and said, “How would I get through this period without studying this week’s Torah portion and realizing that I am part of a great story? It’s the best commentary you can get, better than any news release.”
It’s not just learning – it’s also doing. At that meeting on Passover Eve, we talked about freedom. In a series of lessons leading up to the holiday, they learned for the first time in their lives that freedom is not just freedom of choice. True freedom in Judaism is to be the best and truest version of yourself. A slave is constantly worrying about their own needs – it’s not freedom. It’s being enslaved to one’s ego. Being free means paying attention to the needs of others, caring for others, not putting yourself in the center, and understanding that you are connected to another Jew, especially if they need help.
One of the students, surprised by this new concept of freedom that he first heard about at the age of 26, suggested an idea: to clean homes for the elderly, the needy, and families in which the father was drafted into the reserves. After all, there are families who certainly need such help before the holiday. The real freedom comes from ourselves, to help them. Within a short time, this charming initiative was implemented. Students who themselves may not have cleaned for Passover last year have now gone out to clean strangers’ homes, because they have realized that they are not strangers—they are brothers.
I was privileged to spend the past Shabbat in the Ir HaBahadim, the IDF’s main training base near Yeruaham. I met more than a thousand future commanders, who see themselves as the “correction generation,” the generation that will fix what was so badly broken and failed in Simchat Torah. One of them told me: “It’s a mistake to talk all the time only about 7.10, as if it all started and ended there. I realized that our story is much broader: with a past of thousands of years and with an eternal future.”
These stories are not the main headlines in the news. But this is the quiet revolution that is now taking place throughout the Jewish world, in which INEXTG occupies an important and central place in working with young people. It is a privilege to be a small part of that revolution, and to see these hidden and historical processes up close.
The writer is a media personality and lecturer for students and soldiers in INEXTG (Israel Next Generation).