Yishai Gesundheit ’02

Posted on February 11, 2024

My name is Yishai Gesundheit, and I am 37 years old.

Here’s a glimpse into the life of a teacher during wartime:

There is no longer a need for what I did in the army, so I did not enlist in the army reserves. What did I do? I helped out my relatives, I helped guard in my community, and mainly I continued teaching. At first, I taught on Zoom because of the sirens in Beer Sheva, and then gradually we returned to a very intensive routine.

A month and a half after the war began, I was asked to substitute for a teacher who was enlisted to the army reserves, in the high school near where I live, and to lead a creative process of preparing for matriculation in Bible. Since then, I have been much busier, but it has been an exciting experience that has helped me develop professionally. I see this experience as an opportunity for me to improve my ability to teach via projects. In the school that I usually teach in, I also decided to have my students ask research questions and present them, rather than take a test. The general topic I chose was “Life and Death.” I expected and hoped that there would be questions and experiences directly connected to the war, and I hoped that their personal research would be a kind of gentle therapy for hidden distress. I was surprised to discover that many students are interested in life after death. I felt that the students were asking age-appropriate questions, not necessarily connected to current events.

Last Friday, after a significant delay, one of my dear students sent me a question. A month ago, this student lost a second cousin, who was a hostage in Gaza and was tragically killed by IDF soldiers. A week and half later, a different cousin of his was killed in battle in Gaza. His question was: Are Jews who died in order to save lives more important than Jews who died naturally?

What a question.