Penn students return from their first tour of Israel

Some eighty students from the University of Pennsylvania recently returned from a 10 day intensive trip to the holy land as part of the Mayanot-birthright Israel excursion organized locally by the Jewish Heritage Programs and Lubavitch House at Penn.

Students visited ancient cities like Jerusalem, Tzfat, Taiberies and Jaffa as well as more modern centers like Tel-Aviv. Students met with two members of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), a Rabbi and holocaust survivor who was a friend of Anne Frank.

Two buses each led by student staff members as well as a Lubavitch House Rabbi spent the time learning about their heritage and culture in a trip that participants say would strongly impact their lives.

Taglit-birthright israel provides the gift of first time, peer group, educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26. Taglit-birthright israel’s founders created this program to send thousands of young Jewish adults from all over the world to Israel as a gift in order to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity among world Jewry; and to strengthen participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people.

The Penn section of the program was organized in conjunction with the Jewish Heritage Programs and Lubavitch House at Penn.

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