"Magic Moments" is certainly the most exact description of the feelings that remain with you during and after you take part in this wonderful journey. Today I have a second family that consists of the fourteen madrichim, the eighty three hanichim and many more, including directors, coordinators and others that were involved in and contributed to the success of the Magic Moments 2008 Delegation.

This is an outstanding project that is significant in developing and enhancing our region of the Galilee. In Magic Moments the "giving" and the "receiving"  are so intertwined that at the end of the journey you don't know which of these carries more weight in the suitcase of your memories. And it doesn't really matter, because both in the giving and the receiving, everyone has benefited: our country, you, and your hanichim. The joy of "doing" and creating were with me from the moment I sent my resume to the Jewish Agency. It seems that the people who "pull the strings" and the madrichim that you find here are different from any other community of people that you meet in your day to day life. As a professional educator I have had contact with a wide variety of communities, but never with a group of people like these.

To be a madricha with Magic Moments requires you to "broaden" your shoulders and horizons in order to carry all that it involves and to be prepared to give all you have:
a) Your time - because you will have to abide by a full and intensive schedule.
b) Your abilities - because you will have to give as much as you can in many diverse areas.
c) Your best skills in interpersonal relations - because you will have to solve numerous personal conflicts along the way.
d) Your creative abilities - because you will continuously have to dream up new ideas to suit the group that you work with.

In my position as a madricha I was fortunate and happy to meet a group of diverse hanichim who, if at the beginning did not know one another, in time became a cohesive "family". I worked with each one in an organized way and tried to give each one of them the chance to show his own special character, because only in this way he would easily give the best he could. I had to think of special and meaningful ways to show through them our country in its strengths and weaknesses.

The warmth with which we were received by each member of our host community, the coordinator, host family, people of the community, the rabbi and even the non-Jewish community that asked to take part in our activities, gave us the necessary strength to give, to explain, to represent and to relate as best we could, in order to paint the most realistic picture of our country possible. In this way we actually gave the British Jewish community and all who we came in contact with the opportunity to know the real Israel. In turn we had the privilege of getting to know about life in the Jewish community outside of Israel, and how such care is taken in preserving their "Jewishness" within the broad spectrum of diverse communities where they live.

The Yom Hazicharon ceremony was an emotional experience for us all, and we returned home with new insights, longing for our host families and a desire to continue giving, each in our own way. Each one of us returned different from how we left, from the very moment we left the borders of Israel.

So in the end (and this is only a small part….) I am sure that you will already begin sending in your resumes for the Magic Moments 2009 Delegation!

Iris Rosen -  Magic Moments 2008 Madricha - Ma'ale Yosef