![\"Ofir](\"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Ofir-Aharoni-in-Gaza-scaled.jpg\")
Ofir Aharoni[\/caption] Balancing service, studies, and family responsibilities, Bar-Ilan reservists embodied that rarest of qualities: excellence on all fronts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"
They fought tank battles in the morning and logged into class via Zoom in the afternoon. They sent in assignments from bases near Lebanon, and timed their brief leaves to overlap with exams. They rushed home for the birth of their firstborn child\u2014then rushed back to their units at the front. For many of the more than 3,000 Bar-Ilan students called into the reserves since October 7th, the battle wasn\u2019t only in Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, or in Lebanon. They also fought to secure academic gains, and to serve as loving spouses and even new parents. And thanks to their heroic determination\u2014and some help from their university\u2014their efforts consistently led to overwhelming victory. Here are three of their stories.<\/p>\n
Ofir Aharoni[\/caption] Having served more than 215 days since the outbreak of war, Ofir jokes that often she felt \u201clike I\u2019m combining a degree with my reserve duty, and not the other way around.\u201d As an officer in a combat tank battalion, finding time to study for tests was especially challenging. \u201cWhile soldiers next to me squeezed in a few hours of sleep, I stayed up to grade metrics and prove claims about linear replications,\u201d she says. While she admits that studies took second place to simply staying alive, she also explains that they were \u201csomething that connected me, if only a little, to \u2018normal\u2019 life outside the war. And I\u2019m grateful for those moments, as I needed them a great deal.\u201d After missing so much time in class, as well as experiencing the trauma of combat, Ofir is open about her need for academic and emotional support. \u201cOn the administrative side, deadlines were pushed back and there were alternative grade assessments. I\u2019m still making up for missed assignments, but the faculty has been nothing but supportive. I even received psychological help, through subsidized meetings with a campus psychologist,\u201d she explains. \u201cI can honestly say that Bar-Ilan is the best university [for] reservists\u2026 I feel like the university has my back.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Amit](\"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Amit-Baruch.jpg\")
\u201cLast year, I returned from reserve duty during the second half of the semester,\u201d says Baruch, who served more than 240 days since October 7th. \u201cAlongside the desire to decompress and digest what I\u2019d experienced, there was the realization that my studies wouldn\u2019t wait for me to catch up.\u201d To keep from falling further behind, Amit\u2014whose choice of a dual degree means twice the number of courses\u2014came to campus just 12 hours after his release, where, apart from a few days\u2019 processing session with his unit, he worked intensively for months to keep from compromising his degree. During his second stint of duty, this time on the border with Lebanon, Amit found himself studying and submitting papers in the early morning at his post. He also tried to arrange his leaves for test times so as to earn credit for all his courses. \u201cThe transition from extreme operational situations to the campus environment within just days was a challenge that I\u2019m still dealing with,\u201d admits Amit. He\u2019s also quick to note that \u201cBar-Ilan provides us with tools to address with the situation. My lecturers were also flexible and invested their time in me. It\u2019s thanks to them that I made it through the year,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n
![\"Aviad](\"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Aviad-and-Amitai-Assaf.jpeg\")
Triplets Amitai and Aviad Assaf\u2014their brother, Ohad, is a student at Ariel University\u2014both spent months in Gaza in their respective combat units. On October 7th, Amitai\u2019s wife was in her ninth month of pregnancy. \u201cWe were dropped off at the base on a Saturday afternoon and began preparing the tanks for fighting. Within a few hours, we were engaging terrorists. That Monday morning, an enemy drone dropped an anti-tank rocket on our tank, missing us by centimeters at most,\u201d he recalls. \u201cExactly one month after the war began, my wife went into labor and I went straight to the delivery room. I stayed home for two weeks, then resumed command of my platoon.\u201d After his discharge in early February, Amitai explains that he threw himself into his studies, trying to make up for all the weeks he\u2019d missed since the beginning of the academic year. \u201cI want to give a special mention to the faculty, who were extremely dedicated and helped all of us reservists catch up.\u201d To date, Amitai has completed two more combat tours in Gaza, and despite \u201cthe marathons of studying that follow,\u201d is still proudly in the race.<\/p>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/2515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}