Local Birthright Evacuee Shares Miraculous Tale

It’s not every day that a random cruise ship captures the attention of the entire world. Then again, it’s not every day that a cruise ship exoduses a warzone carrying more than a thousand young Jewish Americans, who had cut short their Birthright trip while conflict broke out between Israel and Iran.

David Cohen was on that cruise ship and shared a firsthand account of his experiences with the AJT… from the first days of the itinerary, where the program went as expected … to the final days of his, and his Birthright group’s, harrowing escape from a rocket-filled warzone back home to the safe-and-sound shores of America.

Cohen is a 2016 graduate of North Springs, having attended Roswell High School previously where he was a member of the school’s Jewish Student Union from 2013 to 2015. He attended The Davis Academy from kindergarten through third grade and had his bar mitzvah in Tel Aviv. Cohen is a 10-year veteran of Camp Barney Medintz. He graduated from Georgia State University in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. After working for Cobb and Douglas Counties Departments of Public Health during COVID, Cohen went back to school for his master’s in chemistry in January 2021 and graduated in summer 2022.

AJT: What was your original itinerary for the Birthright trip? And how much of that itinerary was your group able to accomplish before the war broke out?
Cohen: We arrived at JFK on Sunday, June 8, and in Israel the morning of the 9th. I had made it a point to not look at the itinerary because I didn’t want any expectations or spoilers into what we were doing. On day one (the 9th), we met our tour guide, our Israeli security guard/medic, and boarded a bus to Ayelet HaShahar — a kibbutz up north. At our first stop of the day in Yokenam, I had bought a pack of Israeli cigarettes, an apple, and a pastry so I could practice my Hebrew. That night, we went to the pool, ate dinner, and in our activity, we penned letters to our future selves about: a) why we were in Israel? b) what we wanted to learn or gain? c) what do we think will be most impactful? d) how do we identify with Israel?

We never got these letters back. Some of my new friends were late to the activity because they were playing basketball with some of the local children. After the activity, we were released to go to bed, but almost everyone stayed up to get to know each other better. That night before bed, our trip leader posted a picture of a sign pointing to the bomb shelter just in case we needed to find it. This was funny, because out of 40, only two could actually read the Hebrew. She explained that it was sure to be quiet, but just in case.

Day Two (June 10)

We had our first challenge, a hike of Mt. Arbel. Our tour guide explained that these roads and these paths were the same that had been walked for thousands of years, that Israel was the land bridge between Africa and Asia. It was heavy. He explained that for thousands of years the only freshwater was the Sea of Galilee, and that bandits lived in the caves to raid the caravans. After the hike and after lunch, we went to the Sea of Galilee and tubed behind a boat. It was very fun. That night back at the kibbutz, we again stayed up late getting to know each other better. The chemistry was palpable.

Day Three (June 11)

We went up into the Golan Heights to Moshav Sha’al and helped an IDF farmer pick apples. At first, we were told we would be doing apricots, and so our Hebrew word of the day was Mish-Mish, which means, “apricots”. We learned a little bit about the history of the area, why it was strategically important for the military and safety of Israel, and we learned a lot about the incredible water usage and technology that allows Israel to be successful in agriculture. We left the farm and went to the Amiad Winery that made wine out of everything except for grapes. Blackberries, espresso, chocolate, you get the idea. A side note — I have been in recovery and sober for 10 years, so I smelled and gave my drinks away. They gave everyone a good deal on the wines and spirits and liquors, and so people stocked up to bring home to their families. This will become important later. Once we left the winery and had lunch, we went on a tour of Tzfat, which was incredible. Unfortunately, all the synagogues were closed to us, but we still got a great lecture, and I was lucky enough to corner a rabbi in his art shop and pick his brain about Judaism and the war. For me, it was very powerful. After Tzfat, we went ATV-ing in the mountains, which led to some really funny moments. Back at the kibbutz that night, our activity was cancelled to allow us time to chill.

Day Four (June 12)

We took E-bikes around the Carmel Forest (no serious injuries). Then we met with the Druze in Usfiya to learn about their culture, and finally, we drove to Jerusalem and left the north behind. Once we got settled in the hotel, we had a little activity preparing us to get some more Israelis from the IDF to join our group, we had a night out in Jerusalem in the Machne Yehuda Shuk (market). What a wonderful experience that was; to see all the people out and about living happy and full lives and partying and dancing. Really such a great experience.

Day Five (June 13)

Wow, I just put together right now that all this started on Friday the 13th for the Israel time zone. Wild. We woke up in the middle of the night to our phones screaming at us in Hebrew (which again, none of us can read). Luckily, at the top it said, “Extreme Alert,” in English so we got the gist and headed to the shelter.

I’ll now just summarize everything we did not do using the itinerary as a reference: Old City of Jerusalem (a small group rented bikes and went on Saturday but it was closed); Kotel; Israel Museum; Yad Vashem; Mt. Herzl; camping and climbing Masada; Dead Sea (except we stayed there as part of our evacuation, we did not do it as a whole group); Nova memorial; Hostages Square; Tel Aviv at all.

AJT: Where were you and your group when the conflict started? Where did you go to stay safe?
Cohen: We were in Jerusalem when the escalation occurred. The first alert came through just about 3 a.m. We had gotten back from the Shuk a couple hours before, and everyone was tired, most people had been drinking. People were really scared, going door to door to wake up those that had not yet risen. No one knew where the shelter actually was. I ended up playing the role of traffic guard at the very bottom of the stairs, directing people to the bathroom, to get water, or finally, to the shelter. I was scared, but I knew the math. The IDF shoots down 99 percent of the incoming, and the ones that get through are aimed at Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem. Even the ones that are aimed at Jerusalem (or that fall short) should be aimed at apartments, not hotels. Even if they miss, I knew we would have to be really unlucky to be hit. At the same time, I carried my emergency medical kit with wound packing, tourniquets, chest seals, 3L of water, and two head lamps everywhere I went just in case. If a rocket did hit our hotel, I knew that if we survived the impact, we would surely be buried and up to us to hold out until we could be dug out. I carried that backpack everywhere until we were in Tampa.

All of our programming started happening in the shelter. Our trip leaders scrambled to find us Israeli speakers to come and hang out with us. Our trip leaders were sent from the heavens, truly. They worked so hard to find us speakers and they absolutely nailed it. I often said that I knew our itinerary was scratched because of the war, but they could have fooled me. Rabbi Dov Ber came to our hotel and gave us a little lecture and knocked it out of the park. We got lectures from a married couple in the IDF, from three Orthodox women who made Aliyah, from our geopolitical expert, just to name a few, and they were all excellent.

In the hotel with us was another Taglit trip that was 18-22, and they acted like it. Not talking s*** or anything, but the difference in maturity was very evident. As a result, our trip was allowed to leave the hotel, while they were confined into it. For our trip, the only real rule was to make sure that you were within five minutes of a shelter, and to travel in groups smaller than five. Some of us went to the Old City, some went to a famous bridge, others went to different parks and synagogues, all making sure we could find the shelter if needed. We would practice in the morning, “Sleecha, efo miklat?” “Sorry or excuse me, where is the shelter?”

On Sunday night (June 15), we found out we were being bussed to the Dead Sea hotels to muster with a bunch of other Taglit trips. I think we were all pretty scared of the bus ride. It’s hard to explain, but we were comfortable in Jerusalem; we knew where the shelter was, we knew the area. We knew where we could go and what was open. When we found out about the bus ride, everyone had the same question, what do we do if the alarms go off while on the bus? The answer did not make us feel good. Get off the bus and into a ditch? Lie down and cover your head? That did not sound appealing. Luckily, we made it to the Dead Sea without incident, but the bus ride was the most tense we had been since the first night of alarms.

I really am struggling to describe what it was like in the shelter during the alarms in Jerusalem. I can break them up into two types. Type one happened when the alarm went off before everyone had gone to bed — either during Shabbat on Friday night, or during the afternoon. In the type one shelter, it was like a huge party. Everyone was singing and dancing, you had to yell to each other just to have a conversation. Someone broke out an acoustic guitar and played, “Wonderwall,” and, “Take Me Home Country Roads,” and people would drink. I know I made it a huge point to try to breathe life into the party, to make everyone laugh and be comfortable, and to generally raise up the “vibe.” I wasn’t alone in that, but I can’t speak to others’ motivations. I knew that if I slowed down and thought about what was going on that it would be too much, that I would cry or panic and that wasn’t going to do anyone any good. So, I did a combination of giving these negative feelings to G-d and the feelings I couldn’t give I shoved way down and pretended that everything was sababa (our first Hebrew word of the day, meaning, “cool,” which quickly became our Taglit group’s motto).

The type two shelter happened in the middle of the night. Everyone who had been sleeping ran down the stairs the first two nights and stumbled down the stairs the rest of the time. Here, there was no singing or dancing. People slept standing up or lying on the ground or in chairs. Most people talked about anything. Again, I tried to crack jokes and check in on my group, make sure everyone was OK, and no one was panicking. Again, what would panic be good for? I knew we were in one of the safer spots in the country, and if we did get hit, at least I had my supplies and training. I took a Safety Survival and Resilience training/course just in case. I was unique in that my parents had returned from Israel a week before my Taglit trip left, and so I knew a little about the alerts and the safety. My family in Holon does not go to the shelter when the alarms sound. I realized that our Israeli bus driver did not go to the shelter either, and so I breathed a little easier than most. If it wasn’t bad enough for the Israelis, why would I panic? And yet, when I sat quietly that logic would fail me, so I didn’t dare to sit quietly.

AJT: The world, thanks to social media, saw a clip of the cruise ship to Cyprus. What was the energy like on that voyage?
Cohen: The cruise to Cyprus. That was a [expletive deleted] fever dream. We found out that we were going on a ship (that is all the info we got) from Ashdod to Cyprus at 6 p.m., Monday, June 16. We had to make a decision if we were getting on the ship by 6:30. No one knew anything. People were asking our trip leaders about life jackets, how our safety would be guaranteed, how we were getting home from Cyprus—all perfectly reasonable questions, but these were answers even the people above our leaders didn’t know. I was alone on the balcony of my hotel room when the email came in. I smoked a cigarette quietly thinking about my decision. When our leaders explained that we were either getting on the boat or finding (and paying) for our own ways home, there was not much of a decision to be made. At that point, for levity, I started joking with everyone about taking a “booze cruise in the Med.” We thought we were going on a barge, or some military ship.

Honestly, being on the cruise was the most scared that I ever was during the evacuation. The email we received the night of June 16 asked us to keep the travel plans private, which I knew no one really did. I didn’t even call my partner off of my phone (I work in the U.S. government) in case my phone was bugged. Crazy, I know. I didn’t tell my parents about the ship until we were in Cyprus. Someone in my Taglit group asked about the Miklat on the ship, where the shelter was if we had a missile alert. We all laughed at him. The reason I was so scared about this boat was because I knew if a missile hit us, we were [expletive deleted]. I didn’t want to swim in the ‘Med. My backpack and supplies and training would be useless. I would be helpless. When I voiced that in private, my friends would say that the IDF navy was following us, that Iran would not shoot at us because they would not want to start a war with the U.S. None of that made me feel better. I thought that I would die on the ship. The only thing that made me feel better was to not think.

For me, who is 10 years sober from alcohol and drugs, and in a happy committed relationship, I needed to dance that much harder, as ridiculous as that sounds. I could not handle thinking about sinking to the bottom of the ‘Med, nor could I think about getting home and how long that was going to take. I definitely couldn’t think about my family in Holon, or the Israeli children we played basketball with in the north. I could not think about the sweet couple my Taglit group brought to tears because we stopped at their shop and bought delicious fresh squeezed juice. Or the rabbi in Tzfat who owned the art shop that spoke to me about G-d. I was getting out and they were not. I could escape and they could not. This was not what I signed up for Birthright to learn about. And also, it was exactly.

Some of my group saw missiles being intercepted and impacting that night from the deck of the cruise. I fear that if I had been on the deck with them, I would have lost it when they asked if they were heading towards us. The energy on the cruise was insanely positive. It had to be, for if it had not, I feel we all would have been on the deck crying. I knew we weren’t safe yet, so I could not let the facade down. Maybe the younger groups felt differently.

AJT: We heard reports that the planes from Florida did not show up as expected. Is that true? Were you and your group stranded in Cyprus?
Cohen: We landed in Cyprus and were split into four groups. My Taglit trip was in group Yellow. To be honest, I really did not care what was happening to us. I was 100 percent focused on keeping the energy high, the vibes good. At the Dead Sea, and probably before then, I fully took on an alternate persona of “Waffle House Guy,” a dumb, overweight, American tourist who wore crazy shirts and a camo Waffle House hat that always had a cig hanging out of his mouth and something stupid to say. I did this specifically to keep everyone in good spirits. I wasn’t paying attention to flights, groups, time, dates, plans, anything.

My bus got to the Cyprus airport at maybe 8 a.m.? I think we got our tickets around 2 p.m. and boarded a flight at 5. Then we were told we couldn’t take off because a document issue with one of the guys on the plane. When the document issue was sorted out two hours later, the pilot then told us that we couldn’t fly anywhere that night because we missed our curfew to refuel somewhere. Some people on our plane just about rioted. At this point, I just didn’t care. I was laughing about how ridiculous this whole thing was. Then we were told that we could take off and we did. This whole ordeal took five hours on the tarmac. The big takeaway was that we knew nothing. Nor did our trip leaders, nor did the higher ups at Taglit. It was an insane situation.

I heard in post that our plane was the only plane to show up. When we were at the gate in Cyprus, we had to take a bus to the plane instead of a normal jetway like we are all used to. While we were waiting at the gate (for two hours), an email came out explaining that the planes from the U.S. Embassy did not arrive as expected and that they were working on another solution. I didn’t care. I had no choice but to have faith in the Embassy and in Taglit to be taken care of. If that meant staying in the airport for 12 more hours, that’s what it meant. There wasn’t a real alternative for me, so I didn’t care. Eventually, we boarded the bus to get on the plane, and all the worrying about our plane was for naught. When we boarded our plane, it was a s***box. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but there were no screens, no Wi-Fi, no chargers. Very different from our cushy El Al flight to Tel Aviv. It mattered to some, but my group didn’t care. What we did care about was that a headrest became detached, and armrest came off. There were ashtrays in the bathrooms. One of my good friends from the trip happened to be an airplane mechanic, and he swore the plane was probably flight worthy. Again, I didn’t care. The pilot wouldn’t fly a crap plane. The U.S. wouldn’t send a crap plane. I was over it. Que sera sera and all that. After the fact, I heard that our plane was the only plane to show up. I heard rumors that people spent the night at the airport, or at the bus depot, or back on the cruise ship, but I did not verify. I did not care. It didn’t matter to me. Even now I have been completely unplugged from the news, I just can’t handle any of it.

When I was finally alone in the Tampa airport, I broke down before my flight to Atlanta. It was the first time I was really alone. I was feeling a sense of safety at finally being out of harm’s way, feeling guilty for being safe and having so much fun during the evacuation, feeling like I was away from my family (the others on my Birthright trip) never to be all together again. Also, a huge call to be transformed, as a person, but especially as a Jew. And wrestling with what that means, was, and is, overwhelming. When I got back to my apartment in Georgia, I basically collapsed into bed following a shower. I slept for 15 hours. The next morning, my partner left for work, and I basically cried all day. I did not want to do my laundry because it felt like I was closing the door on this chapter of my life. I know that is stupid. It didn’t matter. Then I popped a fever and have been bedridden since Friday night. I haven’t wanted to talk about it to my friends, for fear they will not get it. I have not felt this alone since I was 15. When I got home, my feet and legs were so swollen from standing and walking that I could not fit into my sandals.

Overall, I would not hesitate for one single second to take this trip over again, exactly the way it worked out. The trip was incredibly impactful and transformative. There have been whispers about our group retaking the exact same trip with the same tour guide and trip leaders in a year from now, G-d willing. I would jump at the chance and opportunity. Even if we don’t go together, I know I will be back. Nothing could keep me from Israel. I have never felt more connected to a place and a land in my life.