Itai Garfunkel

“If you were to ask me to describe what Hand in Hand was like, I’d say that’s a very tough question. It’s not like a normal school, where you just have lessons, and you learn math. It’s a school for Arabs and Jews together, where you learn with and about one another—so those moments were the real ‘lessons’ for us.

“I think that the biggest thing I take away from Hand in Hand is the ability to listen to and get to know people who are very different from you. Your instinct is to go to something more familiar. But speaking with people who are very different from you, you actually discover a lot more about yourself—about all these fears and doubts that you have, and you can discover that they’re not necessarily right.

“At the end of the day, the Jewish-Arab encounter that you experience at Hand in Hand is a model that teaches you about life in general. Whenever you encounter someone who’s different from you, there’s this opportunity, even though it sometimes doesn’t seem that way. It’s a lesson that has stayed with me, that I take with me everywhere I go.”