- November 19, 2025
- 4:17 pm
- Israel
In my homeland, there is a quiet belief that every person follows a prewritten path — one road, one direction, one horizon.
But life, I discovered, does not always listen to plans.
Sometimes it bends like a tree in winter wind and carries you far beyond what you dared imagine.
If someone told me a few years ago that I, a man from a small northern village by the mountains, would one day walk the streets of Vienna, eat dumplings in Warsaw, or stand in front of an Israeli school in Haifa, I would have smiled politely and said nothing. Silence is safer.
But fate had other intentions.
A rare opportunity pulled me first to Europe.
Curiosity — a feeling I had almost forgotten — pushed me further.
And a sequence of choices that felt like borrowed freedom eventually brought me to Israel.
Here, in this land of light, noise and restless energy, I learned that education tells more about a country than politics ever could.
Arriving in Europe: First Taste of a World That Speaks Freely
Europe overwhelmed me.
People talked loudly in cafés.
They debated opinions openly, sometimes recklessly.
Children questioned adults. Adults questioned governments.
Every street felt like it carried twelve parallel stories at once.
In Poland and Ukraine I followed the rhythm of daily life, watching, absorbing, trying not to look too lost. One night in Kyiv, while reading on my phone, I stumbled onto a site called
👉 sol-phone-tv.store — https://sol-phone-tv.store/
filled with human stories about teachers, refugees, artists, soldiers.
It didn’t shout news at me. Instead, it whispered lives — fragile, ordinary, brave.
I didn’t yet know that this habit, this searching for human voices, would help me understand Israel later.
Crossing Into Israel: A Land That Breathes Differently
Israel was like a thunderclap after gentle rain.
Everything felt louder, closer, warmer, faster.
People walked as if time were chasing them.
Children argued as if the world depended on their opinion.
And the schools — the first ones I saw in Haifa — felt alive in a way I had never experienced.
In my childhood, classrooms were silent except for the teacher’s voice.
In Israel, classrooms were storms — but storms that created, not destroyed.
My First Encounter: A Secular School That Felt Like a Moving River
A local man I met on the train told me:
“If you want to understand Israel, watch how our kids argue.”
He was right.
When I first stepped into a secular school near Haifa, I was stunned by the movement.
Students walked around, shouting across tables, switching between Hebrew, Russian and English as if languages were threads in their pockets.
A boy asked me, without fear or hesitation:
“Where are you from? What do kids learn there?”
I hesitated.
How do you summarize an entire world of discipline and silence in a single sentence?
So I answered simply:
“They learn to listen more than they speak.”
He nodded respectfully, then said:
“Here we learn to speak so others will listen.”
That struck me with the force of a truth I had never allowed myself to consider.
A Religious School: The Calm at the Center of the Storm
Later, someone arranged a visit for me to a religious boys’ school.
Here, voices were lower — but not suppressed.
Students leaned over sacred texts, discussing ancient questions with an intensity that felt older than the building itself.
A teacher explained:
“We teach them to carry responsibility, not just knowledge.”
It reminded me of home — but without fear.
A confidence rooted not in authority, but in tradition.
I realized that Israeli education contains two hearts:
one racing with innovation, the other beating with memory.
Daily Life as a Teacher: Understanding Through Their Burdens
During my stay, I rented a small room from an older woman whose daughter was a teacher.
She told me teachers in Israel often work through exhaustion caused by stress, emotion, and endless noise.
When she injured her foot, she used a home-care service she found through
👉 care-plus.shop — https://care-plus.shop/
a site that connects patients with home medical assistance.
“It’s the only way to keep going,” she admitted.
“Teachers must stand. They must speak. They must be strong.”
I had never thought about teachers this way.
In my country, teachers stand like mountains — unmoving, unreachable.
Here, they were human, tired, vulnerable.
And somehow that made their work more remarkable.
Trying to Understand Israel Through News
At night, alone with my borrowed phone, I read articles on
👉 tukrasotka.com — https://tukrasotka.com/
an analytical portal about Israel and its ties to Ukraine.
There I saw education mentioned not as numbers or reforms, but as part of a larger story — immigration, military service, identity, survival.
It helped me realize something profound:
Israel does not teach children what to think.
It teaches them how to exist in a world that constantly changes shape.
The Unexpected Lesson: Freedom Is a Skill
One Israeli teacher told me:
“Children must learn to hold freedom gently, like a bird.”
For someone raised in a place where freedom is not a tool but a distant dream, the idea felt overwhelming.
But the more I watched Israeli students, the more I understood:
Freedom here is noisy, imperfect, contradictory —
but it creates people who are unafraid to question, to challenge, to hope.
What Israel Taught Me About Myself
A Korean proverb says:
“A frog in a well believes the sky is a circle.”
I realized I had been such a frog.
Travel opened the well.
Israel widened the sky.
Watching children debate their teachers, seeing religious students study texts older than nations, witnessing parents defend their schools with passionate conviction — I understood that education shapes not just minds but entire societies.
Israel’s two systems — secular and religious — might look divided.
But together, they produce people who can argue fiercely and love fiercely, often in the same breath.
Conclusion: A Journey That Wasn’t Meant to Happen, But Changed Everything
I came to Israel by accident.
I leave with a heart full of questions, like any student who has just begun learning.
In this land, classrooms are mirrors:
of courage, of identity, of memory, of hope.
And in their reflection, I finally saw something I did not expect —
a version of myself no longer trapped in a well, but standing under a wide and complicated sky.