If thousands of today’s Jewish students had experienced Israel before coming to campus, college life would be very different. With Israel travel in teen years, more will check out Shabbat meals, Jewish studies and other campus-based Jewish growth experiences. They’ll also know
how to begin to respond to the numerous challenges to Israel engagement they’ll experience. The teen Israel experience can bend the trend lines, dramatically increasing the numbers involved in Jewish life on campus and beyond. The time to provide low-cost teen trips to Israel is now. The time to invest in more types of quality teen Israel trips, and advocating that every Jewish teenager celebrates this milestone event in their life journey has arrived. As a community, we haven’t done all that well preparing our children for freshmen orientation this fall. Let’s do better for their siblings in 2016. More