The S.F.-based Koret Foundation wanted to know exactly how its first Koret Israel Teen Trip (KITT) affected participants and how it could be improved for next year.
So researchers at the Modern Jewish Studies Institute of Community and Religion of Brandeis University in San Francisco asked the kids. They asked the parents. They asked teen leaders. And they put it all together with a $20,000 Koret grant in the hopes their findings will provide a national model for other teen trips.
Headed by demographer Gary Tobin, a team of five concluded that the trip — about a third the cost and half the length of existing teen trips — still accomplished the goals of Israel travel. Teens reported that the 23-day trip had an immediate and dramatic impact on their Jewish identity.
Before the trip, 72 percent of the teens said they “feel connected to the Jewish people.” After the trip, that number increased to 100 percent. Almost 90 percent of the students reported having few or no Jewish friends before the trip. On return, they reported the reverse “as they now consider other KITT participants their friends,” according to the study.
Discussing the report’s findings, cultural anthropologist and Brandeis researcher Joel Streicker said, “this group meshed and meshed quickly.” He attributed that bonding to the group’s small size (31 teens) and pre-group programs such as a retreat to Camp Arazim in Oakdale “to get to know each other.”
Still, the findings were not entirely positive.
One of the study’s major recommendations is that the trip be extended to four weeks next summer, as most teens reported wanting a slightly longer trip. In personal interviews, they stressed a need for more unstructured free time to shop, relax and socialize with Israeli teens and each other.
While changes are going to be made by a board of directors — including eight teens who took the first Koret trip — the report found that most of the students would not have gone to Israel on a six-week trip.
The reduced price of the trip, which cost participants $1,985 as opposed to nearly $5,000 for other trips, was the critical factor in attracting teens and their families. According to the report, several of the teens would not have been able to go if the trip were more expensive.