‘I’ve never felt like this before’

You know how we often hear that Jewish summer camp can change a kid’s life?

Jordyn Engel knows that’s true.

It’s not the only thing that took her from a happy childhood and adolescence in Springfield to where she is now, a combat medic in the IDF. Covid factors in as well, as well as some very smart parenting.

Ms. Engel, who is 23, one of three sisters — the others are Rachel and Samara — went to public school and became bat mitzvah at Temple Sha’arey Shalom in Springfield. Her parents, Julie and Gary Engel, sent her to day camp at Camp Yachad at the JCC of Central New Jersey, and then, when she was 8, to sleepaway camp at Camp Tevya in Brookline, New Hampshire. She loved it, and “I got a lot of my Jewish identity there,” she said.

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Campers spend their last summer in Brookline when they are 15; the summer they’re 16, they go to Israel.

“This was my first time in Israel, and I was there for five weeks with all of my camp friends,” Ms. Engel said. “It was amazing. And it was the first time that I was exposed to the true meaning of Israel. I had always known what Israel is, of course, but I didn’t really understand it. I didn’t know what it looks like, what it feels like, what the culture is. It was my first real exposure to Zionism.”

That was 2018.

After that spectacular summer, Ms. Engel went back home and finished high school, graduating in 2020. She decided to go to the University of Maryland. “I wanted the whole college experience, like in the movies — lots of friends, football games, pledging a sorority. I had a roommate. I did orientation. I was supposed to start in August.

“And in the first week of July, they told us that everything was going to be on Zoom.” The pandemic still was raging. “So why go to college, to sit on Zoom by yourself? And pay $40,000 for it?

“So my mom — and I still don’t know how she came up with this idea — said, ‘Why don’t you go to Tel Aviv University?’ And I realized that even if I was going to have to sit on Zoom, I might as well do it on the beach.

“It was brilliant of her, and it changed my life.”

So Ms. Engel went back to Israel, “and all of a sudden I was exposed to a new culture, a new language, new people who were just like me. After the first semester, my parents were like, ‘Do you want to come home now?’ and I was like, ‘No, let’s just make it one more semester.’

“And then I kept on staying, one more semester and one more semester and one more semester, and eventually I finished my entire degree there.”

It was a wonderful experience. “I had a bunch of roommates, I got to live in Tel Aviv, I got a degree in psychology, and I learned about myself,” she said. “I learned about what it means to be Jewish and what it means to be Israeli and what it means to be a Jew living in Israel.”

During her last year in college — which was her third year, because it takes three years to earn a bachelor’s degree in Israel — Ms. Engel formalized her aliyah and became an Israeli citizen. “I knew that with that decision would come enlisting in the IDF, because I knew that it’s a rite of passage,” she said.

“It was March of 2023. My mindset then was that I want to live here, and everyone who lives here needs to enlist, and to be part of protecting the country. I told my parents. I think they thought it was a little shocking and a little scary, but they supported me in every way, and with more pride than anything else.

“I enlisted in Garin Tzabar,” she continued. “It’s the way lone soldiers typically enlist. They help you, support you, and prepare you. My preparation period started at the end of August 2023, and it was supposed to be three months.

“Then October 7 happened.

“I wasn’t a soldier yet, but I really wanted to do something. So my best friend and I got $100,000 in donations on Venmo, because of what we posted on our Instagram Stories on October 9, asking for donations for packages for soldiers.” (We’re not mentioning Ms. Engel’s best friend’s name here because she too is in the IDF.) “We thought we’d be getting snacks for them; we ended up funding helmets and goggles and drones and GoPros.

They had to stop the appeal when they were enlisted on January 2.

Once she was enlisted, Ms. Engle went on a three-month course at Michve Alon that combines Hebrew language classes with basic training. “It’s specifically made for olim,” she said. “I think that the best way for lone soldiers to enlist is this way, because it helps you adjust to the army culture, the army language, and the commander-to-soldier relationship.

“Before this course, my Hebrew basically was nonexistent,” she said. And now? “Well, it exists…”

She began at Michve Alon in January and finished in March. That’s when soldiers are assigned to their units. “My parents had made me promise that I couldn’t go into combat, so I decided to become a medic,” she said. “I was assigned to a medic course. It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life — much harder than university — but I passed.

“But at the end of the course, I realized that the job wasn’t for me. It wasn’t enough. I had emigrated alone. I had enlisted alone. I wanted to say wholeheartedly that I had done everything I could to defend the country with my body and my hands. And I knew that in this job, as a medic, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

“So I filled out a new form, basically to re-enlist, for a new position. And I drafted to combat.

“And I didn’t tell my parents until I got the call telling me that I had the position. And since November, I have been a combat medic.”

Ms. Engel has spent most of her time in that role on Israel’s northern border. Now she’s on the border of Gaza. “We’ve only been here since May, and we are always moving, depending on what’s needed,” she said. There are a lot of rumors flying since the hostilities with Iran began, but so far there’s been no hard news.

Ms. Engel now feels that she’s doing what she’s always wanted to do.

“I have felt like this before. I have never done anything more meaningful.

“I was in Israel in 2020 and 2021; there was a war with Hamas in 2021 — not like this one now — but I remember that I was sitting on my butt, and I couldn’t do anything. I wasn’t serving the country. I hadn’t served the country. I was 18” — the age when most native-born Israelis are drafted.

“And I had lived through so many terrorist attacks, but I still couldn’t do anything to protect Israel. And then October 7 happened, and I still wasn’t a soldier, so I couldn’t do anything” — although she and her friend had done a lot of fund-raising.

“But now, with another war, I finally can feel that I am doing something. That I am giving back to the country that has made me who I am. I am feeling fulfillment.

“There is a rite of passage to living here, and I finally feel like I’ve done it.”

Ms. Engel’s army service will end in January 2026, although she might be in the reserves after that. She hopes to go to graduate school to earn a master’s degree in social work. She now has the life experience to back it up.

And she hopes to be able to stay in Israel.