Just two weeks after the horrific October 7th attacks, Israel and the international community were still in chaos. People scrambled for information about their loved ones, hundreds of thousands of reserves were deployed, and thousands of Israeli families had been displaced from their homes. Civilian volunteer initiatives took place across the country to compensate for the lack of governmental aid.
At M², we, like countless others, were only beginning to process our role in the crisis and recovery when we reached out to alumni to check in — even while our own team members were hurting and mourning. The message we heard was unmistakable: educators were extremely distressed. For the past few weeks, they had been doing the unimaginable: standing in front of learners and trying to meet their needs without the chance — or tools — to process their own pain.
“We realized that educators needed a new kind of support,” said Shlomit Naim Naor, M² Program Director. “We needed to provide them with different methodologies and exercises that demonstrate that even when they cannot choose what happens to them, they can choose how to respond.”
The Yated initiative was founded with that mission at its core. The three-day program provides educators with the tools, skills, and language for navigating their experiences, so they can help their learners to do the same. With programs in North America and Israel, participants are taught a blend of concepts from psychology, education, and storytelling to help craft new narratives to support them and their learners in experiencing growth and finding meaning amid the chaos.
“Educators constantly give to others,” said Shlomit. “During Yated, we take care of them, just as they do for their learners.” One year in and three cohorts later, we asked three of the program’s alumni to reflect on their experience.
Rediscovering what it means to teach in a post-October 7th world
Inbar Zonenfeld Falik, an educator and social program coordinator at Reali Hebrew School in Haifa, was one educator whose role changed dramatically after October 7th. The school lost 12 people in the attacks and ensuing war.
“I felt like I needed to approach my students not only as a teacher but also as a social worker,” she said. “I needed to change how I taught, transform my lessons, and choose my words more carefully.”
After two months, Zonenfeld Falik said the stress had taken a toll on her. She didn’t want to write lessons anymore or reflect on resilience, and even speaking about her beloved country made her heart ache.
“I knew that I needed to help my students process what they were experiencing,” Zonenfeld Falik said. “But I didn’t know where to start.”
For all kinds of educators, including Zonenfeld Falik, Yated has proven to be a transformative experience.
“After Yated, I started to pour myself into my lessons again,” she said.
Indeed, working through how to tell her October 7th story transformed the course of Zonenfeld Falik’s life: her experience at Yated inspired her to return to university as a student — to study experiential education.
Healing through storytelling
The importance of processing through narrative is a central concept of Yated, and as a historian, Eran Shlomi related to its emphasis on nurturing resilience through storytelling. As the Director of Education at the Birthright Institute for Tour Educators, he saw Yated as an opportunity to delve into his own experience, and reflect through experiential learning techniques.
By the time the program was over, Shlomi had a new understanding of what storytelling means in the context of October 7th. “For Israeli educators, it’s very challenging to communicate a painful experience when you’re still dealing with the pain,” he said. “Storytelling is first and foremost a therapeutic process.”
Finding the words to process the unspeakable
In the absence of language to describe their experiences, people struggle to make meaning of their new realities. Yated provides educators with a space and community to confront complicated questions about their shared Jewish future.
The opportunity to find the words appealed to Lior Argaman, Educational Strategy and Partnership Director at The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Adelson Shlichut Institute. In her role, Argaman is part of a team that supervises the training and mentoring of Israeli Shlichim (emissaries) from the moment they assume their role abroad until their return home at the completion of their service.
Each year she helps train and send over 2,000 Shlichim around the world. Argaman says some things in the Shlichut world have changed and become more visible and present since October 7th, including the needs they meet. “It’s been emotionally hard for all of us, and that includes our Shlichim who are overseas, far from their families and support,” she said. “At the beginning of the war, some felt like they could be contributing more from Israel.”
Being part of a diverse peer group of both formal and experiential (‘non-formal’) educators was also appealing to Argaman, and she felt the program organizers created a thoughtfully curated, comfortable atmosphere for participants. Today, she helps Shlichim realize that they are most needed in Jewish communities across the world, and Yated has supported her in developing strategies to communicate that.
“It’s been hard to find the words to describe what I’m experiencing,” she said. “As someone who leads educational strategy for so many people, I needed to get in touch with how I felt, put it into words, and then help others do the same.”
Argaman has already implemented methods she learned at Yated in her own work. Specifically, she wants the Shlichim to learn from one another and feel supported the way she did during Yated. “We’re still living this painful reality, but I often think about how we’re going to remember this time in our lives 20 years from now.”
“I hope that we will remember how we felt, how it influenced us, and how it changed us, and I think that Yated has played a part in helping me frame the experience,” she said.
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Three cohorts in Israel have already benefited from the Yated experience and several more are planned in North America over the coming months. With the renewed resilience and practical pedagogical tools fostered by the program, educators are better equipped to articulate their own experiences in meaningful ways while helping learners navigate these challenging times.