As Samantha Hyman got off the Nefesh B’Nefesh flight to Israel this past Tuesday, she reflected on what a long, strange trip it had been for her. This was the same willful girl who decided, after a bad experience in a religious day school, that at the age of six she wanted nothing more to do with being Jewish.
“My mom would pull me out of her car by my arms and I would cry, kick, scream and do anything to avoid going into the Hebrew school classroom,” Samantha, affectionately known as Sam by her NCSYers, explained.
From then on, as her family moved from California to Kansas and she switched from day school to public school she had nothing to do with religion until high school.
“When I told my mom that all of my friends would come to school and brag about cotillion, Bible retreats, and how awesome Jesus was, she knew I was in trouble but waited until my sophomore year of high school before she dragged me out of her car once again and forced me into the Jewish Community Center (JCC),” Sam explained.
This did little for her spiritual side, she said. “That was when I discovered the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll.”
In January of her junior year her friends from the pluralistic BBYO youth group peer pressured her to go to a joint BBYO/NCSY Shabbaton.
“That was the Shabbat that changed my life,” she said.
Describing herself as full of chutzpah, she heard that a man by the name of Todd was driving to a Matisyahu concert on Motzei Shabbat (Saturday night). This was Todd Cohn, then the city director of Kansas NCSY. On the car ride to the concert, he told her about an inexpensive trip to Israel.
“The next thing I knew I caved to peer pressure again and signed up for The Jerusalem Journey (TJJ).”
Sam spent the summer of her senior year in Israel on the program, which took place during the beginning of the Second Lebanon War.
“Needless to say I had one of the most unbelievable summers of my life,” she said. “No other tour guide can compare to Rabbi Barry Goldfischer. He has this magical way of making the land of Israel come alive. I never knew what he was talking about when I was 17 but I knew it was important because of his passion and enthusiasm.”
After TJJ, she began her senior year by failing Spanish deliberately in order to force her parents to sign a class withdrawal slip to allow her to spend her Fridays with Todd and his wife Naomi learning Torah. Unsure of what to do after high school, she decided to spend the year at the seminary where Rabbi Goldfischer teaches, Machon Mayan. That year she realized that her home was in Israel. She worked out a deal with her parents to finish college in the US before making aliyah and attended Stern College for Women in New York City. She returned to NCSY as an advisor for the Southern region, now under the leadership of Todd Cohn. From then on, NCSY became a focal point in Sam’s busy life.
“Sam has the biggest heart of all the people I know,” said Rabbi Ben Gonsher, director of institutional advancement for Southern NCSY. “Whether on an NCSY Shabbaton or not, she is always thinking about her NCSYers. It wasn’t infrequent that I’d get a frantic email from Sam, asking what she can do to help make transliterated song books for NCSYers who can’t read Hebrew, when she can fly to Miami to help in the office, or where else she can dig to find scholarship monies to send her teens on summer programs. She has always been an advocate for the teens. Although we’ve looked, we simply have not been able to find Southern NCSY’s next super star ‘Sam Hyman’ advisor.”
Rabbi Gonsher said she even delayed her aliyah in order to watch her NCSYers graduate.
“NCSY was the instrument in getting her to where she was,” explained Todd Cohn. “NCSY enabled her to take all this potential she had and fully develop it into the wonderful person we now know.”
As Sam’s flight arrived and she prepared for her new life in Israel, she was greeted by her NCSYers who were spending the summer on NCSY GIVE (Girls Israel Volunteer Experience).
“There’s nothing more amazing than seeing your NCSY advisor’s dream come true,” said NCSYer Orly Ohayon.
Orly was one of the several NCSYers waiting for Sam. They held a poster which read, appropriately, “Welcome Home.”