The pre-military preparatory program that my son completed last week is "Nofei Prat," a mixed program for boys and girls, religious and secular, from Midreshet Ein Prat. At the graduation ceremony, in front of the graduates and their families, Adi Estari, the head of the program, rose to speak, and what he said there hit me like a bolt.

"Kinneret Courtyard is our model," he said. "It was created exactly during the severe crisis of Zionism: Herzl's death, approval of the Uganda plan, and the end of the First Aliyah. There, as here, a small number of young people arrived from Eastern Europe to live a communal life, to prepare themselves for lives of labor and toil, and to study - does that sound familiar?" Only through the year my son spent at the preparatory program did I come to appreciate the greatness of this historic institution: an agricultural training farm established in 1908 on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, whose residents wanted to be pioneers but did not settle for action alone and also invested effort in shaping a worldview. Incidentally, at "Nofei Prat" they make sure to open and close every cycle with a trip to Kinneret Courtyard; it is the model and the cadets must conquer it on foot. Estari continued: "The small place, which at any given time had no more than 30 young people, managed to shift the Zionist needle. Within about ten years, central institutions were established in the courtyard, ideas and dreams were nurtured there, central figures passed through and grew there, and most importantly, they succeeded in returning the Zionist momentum to forward motion. But above all, Kinneret Courtyard reminds us of a simple truth connected to the secret of victory in our struggle: you have the responsibility, the commitment, the exclusive ability to be the ones who will decide where we go in every field, and if we win, both against the enemy and against ourselves."

And during the ceremony I think about the young pioneers who always seemed mythological and all-powerful to me. In the end they were teenagers, the age of these preparatory program cadets, very few in number, with almost zero economic capacity, and look what they managed to establish here. The graduates of Kinneret Courtyard founded the first kibbutzim, and from it emerged some of the institutions that built the infrastructure for the state in the making, such as the Haganah organization, Solel Boneh and the Tnuva cooperative. It probably will not surprise you that Estari is a reserve team commander in an elite unit. He set the personal example simply by disappearing for a few months during the year.

This place is an active house of study, with a beating heart, that continues to develop and examine itself. A few months into the war, the heads of the institutions of the Ein Prat preparatory network felt that the place needed to refine itself. They defined the goal in two words: resilience and spirit, and began to examine themselves on how every cadet completing the preparatory program would enlist in the IDF after forging personal resilience and the Jewish and Israeli spiritual baggage.

Another conclusion they reached is that the windows of the house must open outward. Since then, the preparatory program has also established a settlement farm in the Benjamin region, as well as "Tanach Palmach," a hiking program for high school students that conveys historical content. Every pre-military preparatory program has its own thing, its own style of study, its own experience, but one thing can be said about them across the board: this enterprise is the future of the State of Israel.

In Israel there live about 150,000 teenagers born in 2007, the year whose natives completed a year of preparatory programs this week. 6,300 of them deferred enlistment and went to one of 114 preparatory programs operating across the country. I insist that these 4.2 percent of the age group are Israel's reserves. Why? Because out of 150,000 of their peers, the preparatory program cadets are a quality group that both devotes time and attention to engaging with the cause of our existence here, and also immediately proceeds to realize these values - first of all through meaningful military service and afterward in civilian life.

This week I was also at the graduation ceremony of another preparatory program, "Tzahali," a program for religious girls in Kvutzat Yavne where I have the privilege of teaching. This is a group of girls all of whom enlist in the IDF and whose model is Tamar Ariel, after whom the preparatory program is also named, the combat navigator who perished in the avalanche disaster in Nepal.

"Before our eyes stands the figure of a religious female soldier," as written in one of the texts in which the founders of "Tzahali" formulated their narrative, "a very Jewish, very Israeli and very Zionist female soldier. Strong and steadfast, with a stable backbone, capable of making a decision and standing by it, not frightened by objections and knowing how to create friendships." The year of the girls at "Tzahali" is also devoted to sharpening Jewish identity. They study Bible, Talmud, Jewish law and philosophy and work in agriculture at the kibbutz. I teach there a class we called "Issues in Israeli Society," which in practice is simply an opportunity for me to talk with them about what is happening in the State of Israel, analyze trends, learn data, form an opinion, challenge ourselves and think again.

When I sometimes ask myself why I continue with this - amid all the endless pressure of life - I arrive at the class and remember exactly why. I simply feel that I receive from them, and also from cadets in other preparatory programs that I meet. I receive from them much more than I give. There is in them hope, optimism, joy of life, and Zionism, and all these with a magical simplicity.

Every time it feels to me as if I am walking inside Naomi Shemer's Nahal outpost in Sinai. Most of them are barefoot, often they do not remember where they put the phone a week ago when they arrived, children who until a year ago wore brands in torn shirts that always have written on part of them "Hineni." They left home, most of them for the first time, and moved to live in crowded rooms, in caravans, and they are really, really happy.

This is the same youth that is constantly accused of being the TikTok generation and the attention-deficit generation and the generation of urgency and stabbings. And you come to the preparatory program and everyone is welcoming, and offers you a drink, and asks how the trip was, and almost every girl or boy wants to ask or tell something. At the beginning of the year I came with my wife and young daughters to spend Shabbat in Kvutzat Yavne with the "Tzahali" girls. Since then my daughters have wanted to come with me to every class. They say that children have special sensors for environmental energy; that is probably true.

The pre-military preparatory programs are an island of good, of innocence, of everything that can and should be so good in our lives. Whether it is the Kinneret Courtyard model or the Tamar Ariel model, may both exist. The main thing is that these young people go out safely to military service, return from it safely, and build a model state for us here. We absolutely need them and they are absolutely capable of doing it.