Combining touring with learning, the first ever Rohr Jewish Learning Institute mission to Israel brought more than 300 Jewish adults from 35 communities around the world for a weeklong educational exploration of Israel. Judging from the responses of those who went, the tour, with its emphasis on Torah study, was unlike most others.
Israel Mission Provides Spiritual Component to Course
Combining touring with learning, the first ever Rohr Jewish Learning Institute mission to Israel brought more than 300 Jewish adults from 35 communities around the world for a weeklong educational exploration of Israel. Judging from the responses of those who went, the tour, with its emphasis on Torah study, was unlike most others.
“We’re walking in the footsteps of our fathers,” said Tania Moghrabi-Cook, a veteran Israel traveler from Zurich, Switzerland, as she visited the holy city of Safed. “I think everyone should visit with JLI. You learn so much and get a lot of insight, both religious and historical.”
Moghrabi-Cook, whose great-grandfather resided in the northern Israeli city home to the synagogues and resting places of Jewish mystics over the centuries, decided to join the mission with her mother and daughter after taking three JLI courses.
A Chabad-Lubavitch organization that coordinates in-depth Jewish learning programs across the globe, JLI offered the Israel tour as a finale to its fall 2007 course, “The Land and the Spirit.” Organizers wanted to provide a spiritual experience that would cement the course’s lessons and connect travelers to their roots in the Holy Land, all while remaining with the same students and local rabbi that taught their course.
