DeToledo High School 10th-grade students will never forget their semester in Israel in March 2026. Shortly after arriving for the exchange program, the war with Iran began on February 28.

At 8:30 a.m., while staying in an apartment building in Jerusalem, the students heard sirens and quickly rushed six floors down to the underground parking garage. “No one panicked,” recalled Head of School Mark Shpall. “They handled it with great calmness. It helped that they were already awake and weren’t jolted out of bed.”

What may have also eased the students was the almost nonchalant way Israelis around them reacted. Some even set up folding tables and chairs for a picnic right there in the parking garage. Yes, Iran was sending ballistic missiles to Israel, but life, and meals, must go on.

“I was most surprised by the strength of the community here,” said student Aiden R. “Even in such a difficult time, people are active, joyful, and present in a way that’s really inspiring.”

The Jewish high school, located in West Hills, was founded in 2003 and has been running an exchange student program for 23 years. Each year, Israeli students arrive in Los Angeles in the fall and stay with deToledo families; in the spring, American students travel to Israel and stay with the same families they hosted.

This year marked the first trip to Israel since the October 7 attack. Initially, nearly forty students were scheduled to depart, but some parents, concerned about the possibility of war with Iran, withdrew their children.

In the end, twelve students participated in the extended three-month program beginning February 15, and a week later, fifteen students joined the shorter three-week program. All were excited to reunite with their Israeli friends, whom they had met a few months earlier at their school.

The American students said that despite coming from different countries and realities, they felt they were similar in many ways.

“We talk about school, friends, music, and what we want to do in the future,” said student Aiden R. “But there’s also a difference in perspective. Israeli teens carry a sense of responsibility and maturity that comes from living in Israel. Conversations about army service or security are just part of their reality. At the same time, there’s a shared understanding of what it means to be Jewish that creates an immediate connection between us.”

On March 28, after visiting Kibbutz Lotan in the Negev, the two student groups from Los Angeles met in Jerusalem to spend the weekend together before joining their host families in Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan.

Once the war began, Shpall informed the parents back home that they were going to arrange for their kids to return to Los Angeles as soon as possible.

“Most parents actually advocated very strongly to keep the kids there,” said Shpall. “They wanted their kids to have the experience of being with their host families and living in Israel. There was a hope that the war would end quickly.”

The students were well prepared for the possibility of war. Prior to their arrival in Israel, they were briefed on what to do in the event of sirens. Upon arrival, they were also shown where the mamad (reinforced safe room) was located.

“They were not exhibiting any fear, but after the fourth and fifth times they heard the sirens—about every two hours—and needed to rush to the mamad, they started getting annoyed,” recalled Shpall.

Once they got to the mamad, they were usually on their phones, played card games or went to sleep.

It was a surreal experience for students who had never heard sirens in their lives, let alone the sound of explosions. From the moment the war began, there were no more trips, sightseeing, visits to the Old City of Jerusalem, or outings to the market to shop for souvenirs.

“At first, it was intense. Hearing sirens and running to shelters is something you only see on the news,” said deToledo student, Beckett F. “Once the shock passed, we felt connected to the Israelis and found a lot of strength from one another. I don’t regret going. If anything, it made me feel more connected to Israel and to the Jewish people.”

Soon after the war began, the group moved to a hotel in town that had a mamad on every floor. Students were allowed to go out to nearby restaurants on Ben Yehuda Street that remained open, but were required to stay within 60 seconds of the hotel so they could return quickly if sirens sounded again.

With Ben Gurion Airport closed and flights canceled, the students had to travel to Taba, Egypt, near the Israeli border. From there, they flew to Rome on March 5 and then continued to Los Angeles the following day.

The second group—who were still waiting for flights—joined their host families in Ramat Gan and later flew back to Los Angeles from Ben Gurion Airport on El Al on March 20.

“They are proud and glad that they went,” said Shpall. “Nobody said they wish they hadn’t gone. Their parents were happy about it as well, and they were quite appreciative of everything we did for them.”

The school also has additional exchange student programs with schools in Madrid, Rome, Mexico City, Hungary, Uruguay, and Istanbul, but the Israel program is considered its most significant.

“We are 100% committed to our exchange programs, and we definitely plan to continue our program in Israel,” said Shpall.

He added that the experience was one deToledo students will never forget, giving them a real-life understanding—far beyond what any classroom could teach—of what it means to live in Israel during wartime: not only the tension, the destruction, and the constant need to ensure safety, but also the resilience and strength of the Israeli people during such times.

When asked if they would consider going back despite their scary experience, the students all agreed that they would. Beckett F. said that the experience has only strengthened his connection to Israel. “I would absolutely come back. Both to see it in a different moment and to explore all the places we didn’t get to visit. I can’t wait.”

As the crew of Artemis II looped around the far side of the moon on April 6, the astronauts on board broke a human distance record set more than half a century ago.

The four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen — traveled roughly 252,756 miles from Earth, surpassing the record set by the crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970.

At one point during the flyby, Orion passed within about 4,000 miles of the moon’s surface. As it moved behind the moon, the crew entered a planned 40-minute communications blackout before reestablishing contact.

“It is so great to hear Earth again,” Koch said after the signal returned.

The mission also produced an image seen by only a small number of people in history: Earth rising over the lunar horizon.

Jared Isaacman, a Jewish entrepreneur appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as NASA administrator, called the occasion “a milestone.” For the first time in more than half a century, he said, “humans are laying eyes on this side of the Moon again. Artemis II’s trajectory will also reveal parts of the Moon no human has ever seen before. This is how we push the frontier forward.”

At the mission’s furthest point, Isaacman pointed to the distance achieved by the crew. “Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy have traveled farther from Earth than any humans in history and now begin their journey home,” he said.

Isaacman is a billionaire entrepreneur, pilot and commercial astronaut who commanded the first all-civilian orbital mission in 2021 and later became the first private citizen to perform a spacewalk. Trump nominated him to lead NASA as part of an effort to expand partnerships with private space companies and accelerate human spaceflight.

Astronaut Jessica Meir, who participated in the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, shared an image on social media of the moon during the historic flyby. “Turns out my four NASA Artemis friends are somewhere in that frame, too,” Meir wrote on X. “As are the rest of you, as the blue glow of Earth’s atmosphere draws the Moon in.”

Jeffrey Hoffman, who in 1996 became the first Jewish astronaut to read from a Torah in space, talked about how confined it was when he first went to space — even on the Space Shuttle. “Those quarters, it’s funny, if they had to do that on the surface of the Earth, in gravity, it would be almost intolerable,” he said on TikTok. “But there’s something about when you’re in zero gravity and you’re floating around, somehow you don’t get claustrophobic in the way that you do normally in a similar volume on Earth.”

Between 1985 and 1996, Hoffman spent over 50 days in space, including 25 hours of extravehicular activity (EVA) outside of the orbiter. He flew on five space shuttle missions. The crew capsule, Integrity, has 60% more space for the crew than the last missions to the moon in 1972.

“So they’re going to be doing just fine,” Hoffmann said about the Artemis II astronauts. “Even back on Gemini, when two people spent 14 days in a tiny little Gemini capsule, they couldn’t have done it on the Earth, but in space, they said it was okay.”

Hoffman also compared the Artemis II flyby to Apollo 8. “Apollo 8 took place at the end of 1968, when there were tremendous disturbances in our country. There were riots in the street, and here we are now going around the moon again while the country is at war,” Hoffman said. When Apollo 8 orbited the moon in 1968, commander Frank Borman, Command Module pilot James A. Lovell Jr. and Lunar Module pilot William A. Anders became the first humans to go beyond low-earth orbit.

“Apollo 8 was often referred to as the one good thing that happened in 1968. And I wonder if maybe this Artemis mission, despite all the problems that our country is having and that we’re having in the world, this at least is something good that humanity is doing, and that we can look at with pleasure and say at least something is going right at the moment.”

As the crew approached the moon, they also heard from one of the last generation of astronauts to make the same journey. Lovell, who was also the commander of Apollo 13, died in August 2025 at age 97. Before he passed away though, he recorded a message that Mission Control transmitted to Artemis II during the flyby.

“Hello, Artemis 2, this is Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. Welcome to my old neighborhood,” Lovell said in the recorded message. “When Frank Borman and Bill Anders and I orbited the moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity’s first up-close look at the moon, and got a view of the whole planet that inspired and united people around the world. I’m proud to pass that torch on to you as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars for the benefit of all. It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be, but don’t forget to enjoy the view. So, Reid, Victor and Christina and Jeremy, and all the great teams supporting you, good luck and Godspeed from all of us here on the good Earth.”

The first Jew in space was Boris Volynov, a Soviet cosmonaut, in 1969. The first Jewish astronaut in space was Judith Resnik, who flew aboard STS-41-D in 1984 on the first flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. She later died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The first Israeli astronaut was Ilan Ramon, who flew on STS-107. He died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Ramon had brought a Holocaust-era Torah and a drawing of the moon made by a teenager murdered in Auschwitz. Both were lost in the disaster.

By some measures, 16 Jews have been to space. Some do not count space tourists such as actor William Shatner, who flew aboard the Blue Origin capsule in 2021. Since the Blue Origin vehicle is autonomous, some do not count that as going to space even though it climbed over 100 km (62 miles) above earth. Though there is no identifiable boundary of where earth’s atmosphere ends and space begins, for the sake of determining who has been to space, scientists have accepted the Kármán Line, 100 km (62 miles) above earth as the boundary.

Reid Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, is not Jewish. But during the flyby, a tribute was made to his late wife. Jeremy Hansen proposed naming a lunar crater in honor of Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020. “It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call that Carroll,” Hansen said.

The Orion spacecraft is now on its way back to Earth, with splashdown expected in the Pacific Ocean on April 10.