Some 2.5 million Israeli children in grades K through 12 returned to classrooms wearing masks and bearing negative COVID-19 test results. September 1 is the traditional starting date for Israel’s schoolchildren, and it remained such this year despite calls to delay the start of school until after the Jewish High Holidays, which finish at the end of the month. All students under the age of 12, who are not eligible to receive the vaccine, were required to take a rapid COVID-19 test at home, and come to school with a note from a parent confirming that they had tested negative. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton welcomed first-grade pupils at the Eli Cohen Meuchad School in Yerucham on Wednesday morning, after first taking a first day of school photo with his son, David, a fourth grader, at the door of their Raanana home. Bennett told the students in Yerucham that he had made David’s sandwiches for the first day of school, and noted that “a year and its screens are over, a year and its experiences begin.”