With hikes, paddleboats and even donkey rides, a recent trip for 13 local teens had the familiar ring of many American summer camps.
But participants on the monthlong journey to Israel say they’ve come home with much more than sunburns or mosquito bites. They say they’ve returned with an abiding tie to the Jewish state.
“Everywhere we took a hike, there was a story behind it,” said Joanna Eisenberg, a 15-year-old San Lorenzo youth who participated in the Summer Youth Experience in Israel sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay.
“Now I can tell you, ‘I love Israel.’ I’ve been there,” she added.
While worries about ongoing Mideast violence prompted many American Jews to make other plans for their kids this summer, Eisenberg said her biggest fear was that the locally organized trip to Israel would be canceled. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, the Bureau of Jewish Education decided for the third year against running its teen trip to Israel.
Other nationwide groups are sending youngsters to Israel, but in numbers far lower than in past years. New York-based Habonim Dror, a labor Zionist youth movement, includes eight Bay Area youngsters in its contingent of 75 teens visiting Israel through mid-August.
Rabbi Glenn Karonsky, executive director of the East Bay federation’s Center for Jewish Living and Learning, called the Israel trip “a corner piece to building Jewish identity. That’s why we have maintained it under every circumstance we could.”
The trip, which was equally divided between northern and southern Israel and avoided stops in more danger-prone big cities, went off without a hitch, according to Karonsky.
Asked if she ever felt frightened for her safety, participant Sophie Litschwartz of Berkeley was unequivocal. “Not even a little,” she said.
“It definitely felt good to do something,” added Litschwartz, a 15-year-old Berkeley High student, noting that traveling to Israel “involved so little effort on my part” but was greeted appreciatively by many Israelis she met.
The sense of appreciation goes both ways, according to Litschwartz, who said the tour taught her “what Israel means to me” and how strongly she associates with being Jewish. “I take it all less for granted.
“I intend to go back,” she said. “I didn’t see Jerusalem. I really want to go back and see it.”
For Eisenberg, though, the absence of stops in busy tourist centers may have heightened her sense of connection to the people and the country.
“It was probably a little more fulfilling,” she said. “We got to see the back roads, got an opportunity to talk to people who live in Israel.”
One such encounter took place early on, when the teens stopped to rest during a donkey ride in Zipori. Their guide was puzzled. “Aren’t you watching the news? Why did you come?” Eisenberg recalled him asking. “We all kind of had the same response. It’s Israel, that’s why we came.”
Participants gave the trip high marks for simply being fun.
“I can’t think of anything that wasn’t fun except for getting up really, really early,” said Jerry Cohen, a 15-year-old Orinda youth. But Cohen said even a 4 a.m. wake-up call was worthwhile when he and other participants made it to the top of Masada in time for the sunrise.
“We were like the first or second group up there,” he said. “There were maybe 1,000 other Jews up there watching the same sunrise we were.”
Joe Schickman, a 16-year-old from Berkeley, described the trip as “an all-around great experience.”
While a four-day simulated stint in the army was enjoyable, it was hard work as well. “I don’t know if we give soldiers enough credit,” said Schickman. “It was a really good experience to be in their shoes for like a week.”
Heather Hoffman of Palo Alto pointed to a camel ride, a visit to a kibbutz and an evening on a floating disco in Eilat as three of her favorite activities.
While Israelis talked about an anemic tourist season, Hoffman said she encountered teens from France, Poland, Russia and “all over the United States.”
The teens said they made connections with Israeli youngsters as well. Eisenberg and others learned to play an Israeli-version of backgammon during a five-day stay on a kibbutz in the Kineret.
Later in the trip, the local teens hooked up in Sde Boker with six Israeli teens from the federation’s partnership community. One evening, the group had a lengthy talk about what it means to be Jewish and Israeli, Eisenberg said.
“While I was so far away from home, I was still at home,” she said. Though she missed “burritos and American pizza, I still was in a place that was comfortable.”