The Future Is Calling to Study in Israel. JITC Founder’s Daughters Picked Up.

For Jew in the City founder and executive director Allison Josephs, the latest episode of Jew in the City Speaks hits closer to home — even as her guests joined from thousands of miles away. This time, her interviewees were her young-adult daughters, Adina and Meira, both now university students. Each is building an adult life — and a future — in Israel.

The conversation came in partnership with “The Future Is Calling,” a campaign of the Tzemach David Foundation that empowers American Jewish families to understand the academic, financial, and identity-driven benefits of pursuing higher education in Israel. For Allison, the partnership was an obvious choice as it was a chance to spotlight two young women living the very reality this initiative promotes.

Allison and her husband are both Columbia graduates who raised their children with a similar sense of “academic excellence,” as she put it. Naturally, they assumed their daughters might follow the same path — and for a time, the girls did too. But the arc of their stories ultimately diverged from the Ivy League script they all once expected. After spending a year in seminary in Israel, both daughters chose to stay. (Their younger brothers are already planning to follow in their sisters’ footsteps.)

Meira once saw herself firmly on the traditional academic track. She attended Columbia summer programs, applied to Columbia her senior year, and checked every box she believed she was supposed to — well on her way to the American Ivy League dream. But even then, something inside her was already pulling eastward.

“At the end of the day,” she explained, “my love of Israel and feeling that this is the future of the Jewish people — and my future — took me away from that path.”

Adina experienced her turning point more abruptly. While visiting Columbia for a prospective student Shabbat, she realized the experience didn’t match her expectations. “I thought I was going to like it more than I did,” she said in reflection. “Even the Jewish community felt very foreign to me.” Allison reminded her that the community was much smaller than when she and her husband were students there. So Adina had a change of heart. “Making Aliyah and doing college in Israel was my plan A,” she said. 

Meira and Adina’s aliyah decisions came long before October 7th, but everything that followed only reinforced what they already sensed. Watching campus antisemitism, pro-Hamas rallies, and encampments erupt across American universities, Allison felt a wave of gratitude as a mother. “You were not part of the group of students that had to have people supervise you as you walked through campus. That was a huge relief,” she said.

Both sisters, confident and grounded in their choice to remain in Israel, enrolled at Hebrew University — drawn by its respected academic rigor, the meaningful challenge of studying in Hebrew, and the camaraderie of being among like-minded peers building similar futures. And as a fun fact they love sharing, Meira appreciates that the mascot of Hebrew U is Albert Einstein, while Adina notes that the university actually holds the IP for his likeness and gets paid every time it’s used.

At university, Meira studies archaeology and history while Adina pursues biomedical sciences. Impressively, both are completing their coursework entirely in Hebrew. Yet despite the language hurdle, neither daughter feels they sacrificed rigor or prestige by walking away from the family’s Columbia dream. “My professors are world-renowned,” Meira said. “They’re the people at the top of the articles about these fields. So I feel very lucky.” Adina echoed that sentiment, noting that Hebrew University is “very respected” in the science world.

But the most transformative parts of their journeys are happening outside the classroom. Adina described working in the children’s ward at Hadassah Hospital during her sherut leumi (national service) where most of her patients — and many of her colleagues — were Arab. “I made wonderful connections,” she said. “It’s really refreshing given everything that’s going on to be surrounded by Arabs who are just really sweet and down-to-earth people.” And just weeks into her studies at Hebrew U, she’s already experiencing similar interactions with her Arab Israeli classmates that continue to give her hope. 

For Meira, who married earlier this year and now lives in Jerusalem with her husband, the connection is evidently spiritual and emotional. “I wake up most mornings and look outside and I’m like — I live in Jerusalem,” she said. “That’s the craziest thing ever. For 2,000 years, that’s all my ancestors could have wanted.”

Allison, who raised her daughters to aim high academically, now watches them do so — as they simultaneously choose something even higher. “It makes a lot of sense that “The Future Is Calling” is the sponsor of this conversation, because I think we’re all in agreement about that,” Allison said, addressing Meira and Adina. 

“We’re proud of the decisions you’ve made, the hard work that you’re doing, your resilience, that you’re building up the land. And I would say to the parents out there, it makes your ability to get to Israel sooner, so much easier, when your kids are there.”

The future of Jewish life in our ancestral homeland seems to be calling more loudly than ever — and these two sisters answered with their whole hearts. Who else will follow?

This piece was sponsored by “The Future is Calling”

“The Future Is Calling,” from the Tzemach David Foundation, introduces American Jewish families to the academic, financial, and identity-building advantages of earning a degree in Israel. With world-class programs, safe campuses, lower costs, and meaningful career paths, it offers students a powerful way to grow both personally and in their Jewish identity.

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