How six months in the West Bank undid a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination

Growing up in the American Orthodox Jewish world, spending a post-high school year studying Torah in Israel was simply what one did. I chose to attend a “mechina” – an Israeli military preparatory program — unaware that what I considered my “year in Israel” would actually place me on occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank. 

“Mechinat Yeud” operated from Efrat, an illegal settlement in the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem. Our days there…