"Ideals are part of our daily routine. The principal is a true believer and he passes it on to us. They sponsored buses to Gush Katif so we could protest and speak our mind."—Tzuriya, 19.
Excerpt from the Girls at War, an article by Elizabeth Rubin for Tablet magazine:
Miriam...was one of the passionate warriors, anti all falsehood—Holden Caulfield with faith...Though her generation is hooked into social media, like many of the settler youth, Miriam consciously resisted it. “It’s an illusion,” she said of Facebook. “People tell you they love you but it’s on the computer!” “The culture that surrounds you today—TV, music videos, movies—makes a distance from your character,” Miriam explained. “You are not yourself.”
For her, and her classmates, Ma’ale Levona is the anti-Facebook. Everything is embodied: Girls sleep, sing, pray, study, fight, throw rocks, love, hate—all together, in the flesh. Every activity is saturated with passion and authenticity.
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They don't do it for fun. They do it because they believed in what they do. And they believe that they're doing it in the name of God.
Everyday is a war for these girls of the Ma'ale Levona. Either against the Arab, or against the state. They spat and threw rocks at Arabs for revenge. They march on the street as a protest against evacuation and they blocked the road, whipped mud and hurled trash at riot police.
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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Read the article in full - all 8000+ words of it - at Tablet. Photo by Gillian Laub.
Disclosure: the article is written about Jewish people by a Jew for a Jewish magazine.