Reply To: Sem and Security

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#1034718
writersoul
Participant

I almost posted the same thing, except that I have no hesitations about going.

My dad pointed out that statistically, I’m more likely to have something happen to me in NYC than in Yerushalayim and that driving home from our family vacation last night was more dangerous than my flight to Israel will be. Statistics are, of course, not infallible and these things do have common characteristics and clusters which make statistics unreliable, but his point still stands. I don’t believe that I’m that much less safe in Israel. There is less SECURITY, there is more DOUBT, but there is no less safety in terms of mortality. There’s an availability bias as far as terrorism is concerned, but technically, the odds of a person being harmed in a terrorism attack in Israel are lower than the odds of being harmed in a car accident there, and the odds of being harmed in a car accident there are very similar to the odds of the same thing happening here.

Eretz Yisrael is an amazing place and sem is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Of course, as the ones paying (presumably) it is your parents’ prerogative as far as what to do, but as long as your seminary has been in contact as far as the safety measures that they have put in place for the coming year, I think that it is more than reasonable to allow you to go to sem with a feeling of security.