Gabriella (Violet) Sonnenschein, a 25-year-old Kansas City native, was on her Masa Career program, Top Israel Interns, when her entire life changed.
Gabriella grew up very connected to the Jewish community in Kansas City. Her family founded the Mitzvah Garden Project, a project created to share the joy of growing food with neighbors and the community while providing nutritious food for families in need. Mitzvah Garden is a nonprofit that donates 100% of its harvests to local food pantries.
Their mission is to teach people about the agricultural roots of Judaism. "It takes a garden to grow a community,” Gabriella said. “I grew up on the values that growing food together keeps a community together.”
Gabriella and her family thrived on the value of growing the Kansas City Jewish community one plant at a time. On the other side of the world was a boy in Haifa that would change her life forever.
While on a Masa Career fellowship program in Tel Aviv, Gabriella decided to audition for a role in a musical. "It was my way to immerse myself into Israeli culture," she said. She landed the role and began attending rehearsals. "The rehearsal was at a co-living space in Florentine that Kesem lived in at the time,” she continued. “He was coming home from work when he heard us practicing our lines and came up to us. Honestly, the rest is history.”
Not long after, Gabriella and Kesem, whose name means “magic” in Hebrew, became a couple and fell in love.
Kesem, 22, is an Israeli business developer at a gaming company with a natural talent for freestyle rap who performs in Tel Aviv at least every other week. "His family has turned into my family. They are my support system in Israel,” Gabriella said.
Gabriella says that she was never particularly interested in coming to Israel, but her desire to gain professional skills combined with her strong connection to the Kansas City Jewish community made a Masa Career program the natural choice.
"Kesem and I may have been brought up on different continents, but we share the same values,” Gabriella said. “We bond over spirituality, community, and our Jewish identity. If it weren't for my Masa program, I never would have met the love of my life."
More about Masa Israel can be found at masaisrael.org.
