Narrow Mountain Pass

I realized that I would probably die and that there was nothing I could do to stop that from happening.

N ovember 18 2016 was the worst day of my life. It was also the best day of my life.

I had arrived in Eretz Yisrael about two months earlier when I was just shy of my 18th birthday to begin Aish HaTorah’s post-high-school kiruv program known as the Gesher program. Although my family is frum I had dropped religion around the time I started high school because I had a lot of questions that I wasn’t getting satisfactory answers to. When I asked questions about Jewish observance the standard answer my teachers gave me was “Because G-d said so.” That wasn’t good enough for me however and each answer to that effect spurred me to drop the particular observance I was asking about: davening wearing a yarmulke eating kosher keeping Shabbos.

For 12th grade I switched to a nonreligious Jewish high school. I wasn’t planning to do a gap year in Israel but a rabbi from Aish HaTorah Jerusalem came to my school to recruit for the Gesher program and he managed to convince me that the program would provide satisfactory answers to my questions. It did — but not in the way I expected.

On Friday November 18 17 Cheshvan the yeshivah organized a tiyul to the Galilee’s breathtaking Keshet cave. Ever the adventurous sort I was the first one to rappel down into the cave and when we started the 40-minute climb back up to the top I was in the lead along with my madrich Aron Dovid. As part of that hike we had to walk single file on a rocky ledge along the side of the mountain. The ledge was only eight inches wide. On the other side of the ledge was a cliff.