Posted on May 9, 2025
“I made a deliberate choice: for me, the front line of this war was with my students.”
My name is Ariel Gino, Amitim 2001. I live in Jerusalem with my wife, Maya, and our five children. For the past six years, I’ve directed the evening boys’ program at Ma’ale High School, an alternative framework for religious youth who have fallen out of mainstream education. Since the war began, I’ve also begun working in the Feuerstein Institute’s post-trauma department, teaching and providing instrumental enrichment to soldiers, mainly from the current war.
When the war began, almost the entire high school staff was drafted. Only a handful of us teachers remained. Across the Dati Leumi [religious Zionist] education system—yeshivas, schools, pre-military programs—everyone was called up, from principals to maintenance workers. Many institutions simply fell apart, and in the early months of the war, thousands of students were left with no educational framework.
I wasn’t drafted. I was seriously injured in the Second Lebanon War and have been exempt from military service ever since. When the current war broke out, I had very mixed feelings. On one hand, I had a deep desire to contribute. I’d been a deputy company commander, even briefly a company commander, and I heard about units that desperately needed leaders. I wanted to bring my experience back to the front lines. But the reality was that students, especially youth like ours, were left without educational or emotional support. No one to turn to.
I found myself torn: should I push to rejoin the army or stay behind and strengthen the home front? I made a deliberate choice: for me, the front line of this war was with my students. Throughout the fighting, we managed to keep a full academic schedule running. The remaining staff worked tirelessly, taking on massive workloads. And then something amazing happened—we began to absorb students from across the country who had no school to go to. Some had been evacuated, others came from schools that had closed. Others simply couldn’t function in their schools because of constant sirens in their area. We welcomed students from Sderot in the south to Meron in the north, and I realized how impactful that decision had been to hold the line. Some of our students were in the war’s first circles—kids who had friends or relatives at the Nova music festival, kids whose siblings or parents were serving. Providing stability amid fear, emotional overload, and that apocalyptic feeling meant everything. By the end of the year, our students were deeply grateful and, looking back, I’m so glad I chose to stay with the school and not give up on this educational front.
This made me realize how essential it is not to abandon the home front. One lesson I’ve taken from this war is that some needs require long-term, national-level attention. I saw educational institutions around me losing staff and shutting down, and I found myself thinking: Wait—who’s going to deal with all this?
During all this, something personal also happened: I allowed myself, for the first time, to go deeper into my own injury story. In September 2024, I joined a group of soldiers who fought on October 7, in a journey processing battlefield experiences. There, I discovered a whole new world I hadn’t been aware of. It was an incredible experience, and hearing the stories of those fighters was extremely powerful and deeply meaningful. I found myself surrounded by newly traumatized soldiers, looking for guidance from more experienced wounded veterans like me.
I’m often invited on Memorial Day to give talks to schools, army units, and pre-military programs. Up until now, the story of my injury has always revolved around operational, professional, and ethical lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War. But this past fall, I realized there’s another layer I’ve never addressed: dealing with the trauma itself. I had never spoken about that part with anyone, certainly not in a group setting. But suddenly, I saw that this is the story that matters now.
There are so many combat stories, so many tales of heroism; books will be filled with the unprecedented acts of bravery that took place in this war, far beyond anything I did in the Second Lebanon War. These soldiers don’t need battle stories; they need to hear: What now? How do you deal with injury? How do you return to routine? How do you settle after the chaos, after the madness? Realizing this is something I can contribute to, I connected with the Feuerstein Institute’s post-trauma department. The work there is incredible. Taking combat soldiers whose war experiences have shattered their lives, and slowly helping them rebuild. Sometimes starting from the most basic life habits—routine, meaning, making choices, and imagining positive possibilities for the future.
This experience opened something for me—exposure to the world of trauma and the overwhelming need among this growing population for a warm, understanding presence, specifically from someone like me. A combat veteran wounded 17–18 years ago, who has since built a career in education, started a family, and moved forward. I realized that sharing my personal struggle, not the battle stories or rescues under fire that people usually ask about, is what truly matters now.
On a personal level, encountering my own trauma stirred emotions I hadn’t felt before. It brought up things I’d never addressed. It was overwhelming. In that sense, something finally opened—something that had been waiting for 17 years.
I was ordained as a rabbi, though it’s not a role I currently hold. Still, my religious background plays a major role in my work, with both youth and soldiers. It’s a perspective and tool that helps me in countless ways, even where the title of “rabbi” isn’t needed.
Two core themes, deeply rooted in Jewish sources, continually guide my work.
First: in a time of such a profound national crisis, if you’re not connected to a sense of meaning—if you’re not plugged into the broader story of the Jewish people—you burn out. Giving meaning to hardship is, I believe, a life-giving force. I see how much strength it gives people. A person can carry a great deal, so long as they understand what for. Finding meaning in suffering makes it bearable.
Connecting teens and soldiers to the larger story of Am Yisrael—to what I call the burning ember of the Jewish nation—is essential. Understanding that my story is part of something bigger is crucial right now for everyone carrying a share of this war, whether on the battlefield or the educational front. Living through this crisis is hard—becoming used to the sirens, to the fact that there are still hostages being held. This “normalization” can lead to despair, emotional fatigue, cynicism, and even giving up.
That’s why connecting to the chain of generations, seeing my life as part of something greater, is crucial for getting through this moment. This connection gives purpose, without which enduring these challenges we’re facing as a society seems almost impossible.
The second point concerns the tension around giving. The discourse about being fraierim [suckers] and who’s carrying the burden suggests a false choice: give to others and lose yourself, or care for yourself and ignore the collective. But seeing yourself as part of something larger eliminates this conflict. If I’m woven into the fabric of the Jewish people, my self and my society aren’t at odds—they’re intertwined. It’s a question once again of identity. The ability to place yourself in the Jewish story is critical now when we’re called to give so much. When you see yourself as a limb in the greater body that is the Jewish people, the tension between personal and collective interests dissolves. It’s not “me versus them.” I am them.
These two principles guide everything I do since the war: giving people meaning in their suffering, and encouraging people to define themselves as part of something larger. These threads run through all my work.
On the national level, I’d say we’re all looking at the current reality, and everyone is overflowing with criticism from every political angle. No one’s happy, everyone is filled with anger and frustration. But that’s not where I’m at. It’s not where I choose to be.
I want to focus on my letter in the Torah scroll—on where I can uniquely contribute. I position myself in the space where I can give the best I have to offer. And I try—really try—to put all that anger aside. I want to be driven not by rage, but by love. Love for people. Love for our youth. And a deep, deep love for the soldiers who gave everything they had—and are now being asked to give even more.
