By Sara Rosenbaum, Chief Impact Officer, JCFR
July 17th finally arrived and after months of planning and fingers crossed that Covid would not interfere, two Richmond teens, Jane Heffron and Noah Krumbein, joined nine other teens from the Southeast Consortium on a two-week trip to Israel.
Once on the ground, they were joined by Israel partners to share in the experience of learning and traveling together to see Israel in a unique experience.
Each American teen was hosted in an Israeli home in our Partnership Region of Hadera to have wonderful home hospitality and be immersed in Israeli life. They were joined by Richmonders, trip chaperone JCFR Chief Impact Officer Sara Rosenbaum, and Benny Winkelmann, P2G Fellow.
During the trip, they saw the sites of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Masada, the Dead Sea, and much more. They spent a significant amount of time in Richmond’s sister city of Hadera-Eiron while living with their host families.
While in the P2G region they also explored the North of Israel with day trips to the Golan and Haifa.
Parent Melissa Krumbein noted, “We had been talking to our child about going to Hadera for 2 years with the teen trip. They were very excited to travel without us and to meet kids from the southeast consortium and Israel. They still talk about the trip to everyone that visits us.”
She noted, “It was important to send them in this trip post covid to start the normalcy of travel.”
Check out a video the teens made to share their experience – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vm3cBG9mw0
This program is a unique summer experience in Israel for both American and Israeli teens. American teens travel to Israel and are hosted by Israeli families in the Hadera-Eiron Region.
The framework of this experience is a joint trip that includes traveling in Israel with an emphasis on home hospitality, getting to know the Hadera region and exposure to various places and projects in the country. The joint experience of discovering Israel together plants the seed for a connection to Israel, strengthens Jewish identity, and develops strong personal relations between the participants.
If you know of someone interested in this type of Israel travel program for Summer 2023, please contact Sara Rosenbaum at srosenbaum@jewishrichmond.org for more information.
For more photos, see below and Federation Facebook page.
