Teen trips to Israel may never be the same.
Last month, a group of Bay Area students went on the first Koret Israel Teen Trip (KITT), an experimental program designed to encourage more teens to visit the Jewish state. At 23 days, this trip was far shorter than the six-week community trips offered previously. At $2,000, it was also about one-third the usual cost.
The Koret Foundation, which is sponsoring this experiment with a $60,000 grant, hopes that by 2001, 50,000 young people nationwide will be taking this streamlined summer trip every year.
Employing research conducted by Brandeis University demographer Gary Tobin, KITT hoped to attract more teens to Israel by reducing the trips’ duration and cost.
“This was a less expensive alternative. I don’t think I could’ve gone otherwise,” said Ben Anjo, a junior at Los Altos High School. Anjo and most of the other 31 trip participants met Sunday for a reunion and house party in San Mateo. They swapped photos, ate burgers and talked about the trip that most would never have taken if not for KITT.
“I thought six weeks was too long,” said Leah Neary, 17. “I didn’t want to be away from home for that long.”
When Neary won a prestigious scholarship to a Southern California leadership camp, she felt even more troubled about spending a summer in Israel. She was able to undertake both the camp and the Israel tour by “cramming six weeks into three” on the trip. “We saw everything; we just didn’t spend as long.”
Josh Weiner, 16, also had other plans for his summer. The Menlo High School student was set on attending a tennis camp. If not for the shorter Israel program he, too, would have stayed home.
“I was lucky,” said Weiner. “If there wasn’t a shorter program, I would have missed out. It was the best three weeks.”
Jewish teens have reported to Brandeis researchers that visiting Israel was the most significant Jewish event in their lives. Every year about 4,500 U.S. teens, including some 300 from the Bay Area, tour the Jewish state.
“We’re not competing with the six-week trip. We’re giving another option,” said Yossi Cohen Meidan of the East Bay’s Israel Center. Meidan is something of an expert, having previously led 14 teen missions to Israel. This one worked well, he said, but it wasn’t without kinks.
Just five more days, he said, would round out the trip — allowing for an archeological dig, more time in Tel Aviv to experience modern Israeli life and seminars on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A report by the Modern Jewish Studies Institute of Community and Religion of Brandeis University echoes Meidan’s recommendation. The trip’s planners hope major findings from this study will influence the ongoing national debate on how best to connect American teens to Israel and their own Jewish identities.
The shorter trip seemed to have instilled in Bay Area teens many of the desired and best-known effects of the traditional six-week trips. Some parents of these returnees, for example, note a change in the social lives of their youngsters, who will meet regularly in the months to come and will form a chavurah.
“My kid had no Jewish friends before this,” said Larry Karp, whose 18-year-old daughter Sheri went on the Koret trip. “It gives a kid another chance to bond with Jewish kids in the Bay Area.”
Karp’s daughter left Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo after her bat mitzvah. She was never confirmed.
Confirmation or other formal, post-b’nai mitzvah Jewish training has always been a requirement for participating in the trip sponsored by the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education. In fact, that trip began in 1970 as the culmination of religious school for a confirmation class at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.
While Koret hopes a trip open to unaffiliated teens will widen the pool of participants, “there is concern among the rabbis of the community,” according to Rabbi Stephen Pearce of Emanu-El.
Some religious leaders worry that “this [trip] would take away the carrot, the pot of honey at the end of religious school education,” he adds.
However, Pearce contends that the Koret trip is not a threat to his synagogue’s confirmation program. He praised the experiment, saying, “Let’s call a spade a spade. This trip can do more for kids than any religious education program.
“Being there? There’s no substitute for that.”
Animatedly discussing the current crisis in Israel, the students seemed to prove Pearce correct about the power of visiting the Jewish state. Sitting around a table, they were not only catching up and listening to music, but also debating the media’s coverage of the Middle East.
These very youngsters will take an active part in shaping future Koret trips.
About eight students will sit on a planning board, and will also be enlisted to help recruit next summer’s crop of teens.