Traveling to Israel today still has valuable lessons to teach - opinion

The Israel Educational Travel Alliance (IETA) recently met in person for three days. Created during the pandemic, the IETA was designed to be a professional community, to bring together the dozens of organizations that bring tens of thousands of people to Israel every year.

The trust and respect developed and cultivated during the pandemic are vital now as the field faces unprecedented challenges in a post-October 7 world.

Below are some of our personal reflections after spending a few days with 175 professionals dedicated to the field of Israeli educational travel. We eagerly anticipate gaining further insights into the Convening’s impact and takeaways from the broader IETA community in forthcoming reports from the IETA.

1. The war is still going on.

As much as we want people to return to Israel en masse right now, we must continually remind ourselves that there is still an active war in Israel, with all that entails. This includes hotels filled with evacuees, many tour guides and tour industry professionals on reserve duty, and many parts of Israel still inaccessible to tourists.

2. Israel will never be the same.

Although we might talk about PTSD, for many Israelis, there is still nothing “post” about their current situation. This is still a country in trauma, and despite many, many active signs of strength and resilience, the country is not the same as it was on October 6th. Such a realization necessitates that the Israel experience for participants cannot and should not look the same as in previous years.

3. Israel and Jewish educators will never be the same.

Just as the trauma for every Israeli is real and palpable, so too is the trauma of the collective Jewish people. In order to be the best educators that they can be, all Jewish educators, especially those involved in Israeli educational travel, must take care of themselves and process their own thoughts, opinions, and emotions before they begin dealing with pedagogy.

4. As long as people want to go to Israel, we should be going.

Even though there is still a war, and even though the country is in trauma, as long as people want to go, we must enable them to have meaningful educational experiences by traveling to Israel.

5.  We must focus on quality.

The success of Israel experience programs has often been determined by the number of people they attract. Indeed, these numbers prior to October 7 were extraordinarily impressive, especially as they included people who were often less connected to the Jewish community. While attracting as many people to Israel as possible should always be a high priority, we should always ensure that the quality of these experiences is never compromised. Now is an appropriate time to consider the equilibrium for success that balances both the quantity of participants with the quality of the various existing and new experiences that we provide.

6. Nothing is as powerful as the Mifgash (Encounter).

The Israeli experience is so much more than just visiting sites. Rather, the enduring power of the experience is encountering Israeli people, along with places. Close to 20% of the IETA conference participants were Israelis, demonstrating that the Israeli experience is a cross-cultural encounter, possibly the best bridge between the community of Israelis and of Jews around the world. These encounters should be fostered in good times and challenging times; never underestimate the power of a hug that signals “we are here for one another” and that “you are not alone.”

7. Get educators to Israel now.

Given that Israel has been so transformed since October 7, educators accompanying trips to Israel must experience Israel themselves before they are responsible for educating trip participants. With regular travel disrupted, the community should invest now to bring all educators to Israel. This will enable them to understand better the enormity of the war’s impact on Israel and the transformations subsequently needed in Israel educational travel experiences. Simply, our Israel and local educators need to become culturally bilingual.

8. This is a Jewish activism moment.

October 7 happened to the Jewish people. As a community we will be judged not by what happened to us on that fateful day, but by how we responded to those tragic events. There are many ways our community can and should be activated right now. To begin with, we should encourage people to participate in volunteer opportunities to help rebuild Israeli society. We should also encourage non-Jewish allies to travel to Israel now more than ever. Regardless of whether one is ready or not quite ready to travel to Israel, we should all mobilize to bring the hostages home. As we have learned over time, meaningful activist engagement experiences like these have lasting positive effects on a generation of Jewish people.

9. Two peoples are in one land.

It is impossible to “finalize” and know with certainty what Israel education will look like in the future. Nor is it our responsibility as an IETA community to make political or ideological statements. But now is the time to recognize that Israel education writ large has failed to educate effectively about the Palestinian people and Arab Israelis. Our participants demand and deserve a comprehensive, complex, and contextualized Israel educational experience. At the same time, our concern and care for teaching the other narrative should not come at the expense of more overtly teaching our own. We need to double down on proudly teaching Zionism (both its history and literal definition) and the successes of Jewish liberation.

10. We are a powerful collective.

You may have heard about Birthright Israel, Honeymoon Israel, iTrek, Masa Israel Journey, Onward, Passages, RootOne, and other Israel educational travel opportunities.  But we doubt that you’ve heard about the power of these organizations, when they all work together. It took COVID-19 for us to realize that we are not competing against one another. In the aftermath of October 7 there is a commitment to the collective being so much stronger than the sum of its parts.

With support from Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and a variety of communal foundations, the IETA is a clear example to all in the community about the power of collaboration in times when it is needed more than ever.

David Bryfman and Liz Sokolsky are the co-chairs of the Israel Educational Travel Alliance. The IETA is housed at the Jewish Federations of North America. This convening was made possible through generous support from the Jim Joseph Foundation, Maimonides Fund, Mosaic United, and the Israel Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.