After going to Jewish day school for nine years, you’d think I would have known a thing or two about Israel.

Amanda Belzowski, left, with her bat mitzvah ‘twin,’ Rivka.

Well, I was about to learn that you really can’t feel Israel through the pages of a textbook. When I found out that I would be going to Israel to celebrate my bat mitzvah this summer, I was overwhelmed and overjoyed, because after all those years of learning about the Jewish homeland, I was now going to experience it all.

I love to help in my community, and I’ve helped many great causes, including the UJA campaign, as well as the Heart and Stroke Foundation with my annual lemonade stand, so I knew I didn’t just want to go to Israel and absorb its richness and beauty for myself. I wanted to give back to it in some way, because so many people gave up so much to create it and so many work so hard to keep this small land safe.

I thought hard about how I was going to help, since I couldn’t just run a lemonade stand when I got there. I had heard about twinning projects and decided that I wanted to give someone who lives in Israel the experience of a bat mitzvah with me, since many Israelis don’t have the same opportunities as we in Canada do.

After a recent trip to Africa, I felt a special bond and connection with its people, so I decided to contact someone from the Ethiopian Jewish community to find out if I could twin with a girl becoming bat mitzvah. They suggested a girl named Rivka, and I wrote her a letter in Hebrew. I was thrilled when she replied. I had a pen pal in Israel.

The experience made me think about all the kids who died in the Holocaust and never got the chance to be pen pals and, more importantly, the chance to have a bar or bat mitzvah. How could I give someone the experience of a bat mitzvah without them being there? I decided to contact Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Museum, for help. I wanted to find someone who lived in Israel that was related to someone who died in the Holocaust. Yad Vashem gave me some names of organizations that might be able to help, and after many months, I found a young university student named Reut who had family who died in the Holocaust.

We arranged to meet at Yad Vashem. She told me about her family, and I asked her if I could honour the memory of her cousin, Luba, who died before her bat mitzvah. Reut was so touched that you could hear the tears in the words of her e-mail, so I knew our meeting at Yad Vashem would be special.

I felt confident that by giving others a smile and something special that I was going to have the best, most meaningful bat mitzvah ever!

I stepped off the plane and immediately knew I was home. Rivka and her family had invited my family to visit them at their home in Lod. I knew that this would be a great opportunity to meet my Ethiopian twin and her family and see what her home life is like. I couldn’t believe that their whole apartment was the size of a typical Canadian kitchen, and she lived there with four siblings and her parents. Rivka’s father welcomed us with great warmth and hospitality, and her mother cooked us some delicious Ethiopian traditional food.

Afterward, I told Rivka and her family what Canada was like. I did it in Hebrew. It was hard, but they understood – pictures helped. I can’t even describe how I felt when Rivka and I found a card game that we both knew. I felt as if we had been friends for years. Rivka’s family was so kind and not so different than mine, and I was happy to be giving her an opportunity of a lifetime in return. We had arranged for her and her older sister to come stay at our hotel at the Dead Sea and then to come to Masada with me to my bat mitzvah ceremony. She would get to go into the Dead Sea, experience Masada and visit Ein Gedi together with me, both of us for the first time.

We later met with Reut at Yad Vashem. She had taken a 2-1/2 hour bus ride to see us. Yad Vashem was a life-changing experience. Inside, it’s very meaningful, but kind of scary, because you see many artifacts actually from the Holocaust, and you see horrible pictures of how the Jews had to survive under the terrible conditions of the ghettos and concentration camps. Reut gave us a personalized tour, which was special because I got to hear it from someone who has carried around that pain in her heart every day of her life. After visiting the Children’s Memorial Museum at Yad Vashem, our tour guide let me introduce Reut to the group. Reut talked about Luba and her family, and about how she was so touched that I was going to honour Luba at my bat mitzvah. She gave me a twinning certificate linking me forever to Luba and Reut’s entire family.

I knew then that I was ready to be a bat mitzvah and to sing my portion proudly on top of Masada. The ruins there were actually part of a fortress built by King Herod, but some Jews, after being forced to leave Judea by the Romans, fled to the uninhabited mountain retreat. For four years, they held off the Romans who tried to reconquer and destroy the fortress, until finally the Romans decided to use Jewish slaves to build a ramp. Not wanting to be taken by their enemy and not wanting to harm another Jew, they decided to commit suicide. Knowing how important it is for Jews to stick together and support each other wherever we are in the world, I was honoured to be able to enter adulthood at such a meaningful place in Jewish history.

We woke up at 3:30 a.m. and got ready for the special day. I was going to have my bat mitzvah ceremony with the other four kids on my tour bus. We started before sunrise with a Shacharit service, and then did the Torah readings. I was very nervous, but I knew that with Rivka watching me and Luba, the girl who perished in the Holocaust, watching over me, I would do great. Rivka wasn’t comfortable standing beside me, because in her family, girls never approach the Torah, so she sat close to the front, smiling as I sang my portion loud and clear.

The sun began to rise over Masada as I finished my portion, and a very warm feeling came over me. I felt that something had changed, like I was more responsible, and I was right, because when a Jewish boy or girl becomes a bar or bat mitzvah, they become responsible for their actions. It was an incredible feeling.

Rivka then toured Masada and Ein Gedi with us before she had to leave. We promised to stay in touch after sharing such a special time together.

Touring Israel was an experience of a lifetime. It’s the place where Judaism has lived and thrived for thousands of years, and the place where you can learn more about Jewish history and culture than anywhere else in the world. I got to try new things and see sights I never knew existed, including amazing 2,000-year-old walls, buildings and even cities! I got to stand next to the Stone of Foundation, at a spot along the Kotel, and touching it with both my hands was so wonderful that I burst into tears of joy as soon as I felt it. I don’t even know why. I just knew that I was in my homeland.

My trip to Israel made me realize that tikkun olam (repairing the world) is more important now than ever. My parents have always taught my brother and I to be there for our family, and I have always given back to my community through volunteering and charity work. I now know that family extends far beyond the city you live in and that we in the Jewish community are all connected and are all family. We need to be there for each other and help and give back whenever we can.

With my twinning projects, I not only gave something to a special family in Israel and honoured the memory of someone who never made it to Israel, but I grew so much in the process as a young Jewish woman. I hope everyone gets the opportunity to visit Israel like I did and will plan to make it more meaningful by giving back to our people. It feels great, and I promise that it will be a trip that you will never forget.  But even if you can’t get there, you can always help in some way, because every little bit counts to make our world a better place.

Amanda Belzowski lives in Toronto.