BROOKLYN, NY — A contingent of 300, from Brazil, Australia, Finland, the US and Canada, who spent months studying Israel’s enduring centrality to Judaism, has just returned from the ultimate field trip.
Like art majors exploring the Louvre, the six buses that filled with graduates of Chabad's Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s “The Land and the Spirit: Israel – Why We All Care” course arrived for their Israel mission equipped with the background knowledge to savor the sites.
Netanyahu Speaks to JLI’s Mission To Israel
BROOKLYN, NY — A contingent of 300, from Brazil, Australia, Finland, the US and Canada, who spent months studying Israel’s enduring centrality to Judaism, has just returned from the ultimate field trip.
Like art majors exploring the Louvre, the six buses that filled with graduates of Chabad’s Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s “The Land and the Spirit: Israel – Why We All Care” course arrived for their Israel mission equipped with the background knowledge to savor the sites.
Offered as a culmination of the six-week JLI course, the mission furthered the class’s goal to explain how a tiny sliver of land came to be “like no other on earth.” The course examined Israel’s roots in the psyche of the Jewish people from Abraham’s footsteps through today’s headlines. Continuing the journey in Israel seemed a natural follow-up for participants from many of JLI’s 250 satellite sites.
“Our mission differed from standard tourist and philanthropic trips because of its focus on education,” said Rabbi Efraim Mintz, director of JLI. “It brought the ideas discussed in the course to life.”
As the wind kicked up along mountain ledges mentioned in the Torah, the group delved into passages that referenced those peaks. Where great ones walked and studied, battled and prophesized, JLI students were offered ‘you are there’ moments. They flipped through their “mission companion” texts to study and the writings of sages, kings and prophets who walked and studied, battled and prophesized on those very spots.
