The Future of Israel Educational Travel

From transformative teen programs like RootOne to life-changing Birthright and Masa  trips, studies have shown that Israel educational travel has been the most essential tool for building a lasting connection to Israel. But October 7th has presented a new set of challenges in the field. 

This week on Adapting, David Bryfman talks with Anna Langer, who oversees the Israel Education Travel Alliance, a collective of over 140 organizations that facilitate Israel trips for North American participants. Their conversation—full of personal anecdotes and frontline insights from southern Israel—doesn’t shy away from how Israel educational travel is adapting to a new reality. This episode is essential listening for anyone who cares about the future of Israel engagement and Jewish identity in uncertain times. 

This episode was produced by Dina Nusnbaum and Miranda Lapides. The show’s executive producers are David Bryfman, Karen Cummins, and Nessa Liben. 

This episode was engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughan of NJV Media. 

If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a 5-star rating and review, or even better, share it with a friend. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and be the first to know when new episodes are released. To learn more about The Jewish Education Project visit jewishedproject.org where you can find links to our Jewish Educator Portal and learn more about our mission, history, and staff. We are a proud partner of UJA-Federation of New York. 

Transcript

David Bryfman: 0:00

We are recording today's episode of adapting on february 14, 2025 and I'm joined by my colleague and friend, Anna Langer from the Israel educational travel Alliance. And today's conversation is not just about her work, but about the emerging field of Israel, educational travel, and a recent trip to Israel whereby people came together to discuss what the future of Israel educational travel looks like in a post October 7 world. But as you'll soon see, it's more than just about Israel educational travel. You've heard about some of the programs, like birthright, route one and masa, honeymoon, Israel momentum. It's more than just about the programs. It's about what they represent in the ongoing chapter and evolution of the relationship between Israelis and people all around the world, not just Jews, which is something which we do explore as well, and I'm sure you will enjoy today's episode of adapting as much as I did, not just for what it tells us about this field, but also about the issues that it shares with us and the questions that it asks us and challenges us about Israel today, in the world in which we live, this is adapting the future of Jewish education, a podcast from the Jewish education project, where we Explore the big questions, challenges and successes that define Jewish education. I'm David Bryant. ANNA Lange is the vice president of North American Israel strategy at Jewish Federations of North America, and one of her roles there is overseeing the Israel educational travel Alliance. In full disclosure, I am also part of the Israel educational travel Alliance as the co chair with my colleague from birthright Israel, Liz sikolski, but it's today that I'm really pleased to have this conversation with Anna, and welcome her to adapting today.

Unknown: 1:34

Thank you, David. Glad to be here. Anna, can you tell us

David Bryfman: 1:38

about your first trip to Israel, and if there's anything specific about that first trip that was particularly meaningful to you, wow,

Unknown: 1:49

okay, my first trip to Israel was in 2008 it was two days after I had graduated Mount Holyoke College, and I showed up on a trip that My cousin was supposed to join me on, and canceled at the last moment, a birthright trip meeting in JFK with just a duffel bag and no idea of what was going to come next. So first, I'll say just about everything was a surprise from the moment that I landed at Ben Gurion airport and I realized that Jews weren't only doctors, but were also air traffic controllers and janitors and and also that the food was really good, and it wasn't just bagels and Chinese food, as my aunt and uncle and grandparents had prepared me to believe Jewish cuisine was. But I'll tell you two things that struck me the most. The first was when I walked the streets of Israel for the first time. I could not believe. I could not wrap my head around the fact that I was in the place that my grandparents had dreamed of going, not only that they had dreamed of going, but their parents before them and their grandparents before them, but specifically my grandparents, Holocaust survivors that they had yearned for with every fiber of their being, for their own safety and security, and that I could actually be there walking on those streets was a miracle to me. And the other piece was while I was on my journey and spending, you know, two seconds trying to catch some shut eye on the birthright bus in between the Dead Sea and Masada. It turned out I was much less interested in catching those few moments of sleep than I was in hearing about the experiences of the Israelis who were on the bus with me. Those Israelis the same age as myself, were in senior positions in the army, where they were making life and death decisions on the day to day for their own peers, and the level of maturity, the level of sophistication of the challenges ahead of them, and recognizing that if my family history had been slightly different, that I could have been in their shoes. Blew my mind and forever placed me in the position of thinking, Okay, I'm gum. Ve gum. I could have been them, and so I will be. And that's actually what drove me to make Aliyah later in my 20s, because I see that it's just sliding doors. I might have ended up there, and I want to wake up each day and think about myself as what it would have looked like if I were because they are us too. And that's the thing that broke me open. I'm always going to be gum ve gum. I'm never just going to be one thing again. So

David Bryfman: 4:35

for those in the audience who do not know what the ieta is, tell us what it's all about.

Unknown: 4:41

So the ITA is the Israel educational travel Alliance. The ita represents 140 organizations who take North Americans on trips to Israel to introduce them to Israel, mostly for the first time. So some of our partners include. Birthright. Route one, which David breichman is very familiar with, teen trips to Israel. Momentum, which takes trips for mothers. AIPAC eye track, taking trips for non Jewish individuals to Israel as well. And all of the ITA partners have a few things in common. The first is that they are focused on bringing individuals to Israel to develop a connection to and support for Israel among participants, and for those who are bringing Jews, sparking Jewish identity among Jewish populations as well. So we're 140 organizations strong, non profit partners in the US, and we also work closely with Israel based operators of trips, including tour operating organizations and tour educators, who design and implement trips directly on the ground. So everybody

David Bryfman: 5:54

here is familiar with trips to Israel. They've been going on for decades and decades, and all of a sudden, you're now talking about an organization which brings them all together. So why do they need some collective body to help them coalesce? Well, luckily,

Unknown: 6:06

the field dreamed this up by itself, for itself. So starting in 2020 the ITA was actually sort of founded, initially as a WhatsApp group, which, knowing that we're dealing with Israel, feels particularly appropriate. So if you can put yourself back in the memory of the COVID crisis of the first few weeks of learning that the world was shutting down, a number of the leaders of the Israel travel organizations that we now represent birthright honeymoon to Israel momentum realized that they needed some information from each other about the immediate adaptations that they were making to their trips. Were they still sending trips? Piece number one, what were they telling their recruited participants whose trips might now be canceled or delayed? How were they moving forward with marketing? Were they continuing to market and recruit? It started very organically among these leaders who were looking to each other for answers, solutions and for peers to think these challenges through. And from there, the expansion of the ieta was was actually very fast. I've been involved with ieta since those initial conversations, which expanded to include funders who were supporting the field of Israel educational travel, to think about what these decisions were other organizations who needed working groups to think through the questions of getting money back from airlines, for example, things as practical as that, as things to as complicated to What would be the education that we would offer instead of Israel trips, when it turned out, the trips were not able to happen, and from there, Ita has grown in its function and in its capacities over the past five years, to truly be a network space And to best practices sharing apparatus to help to support the field of Israel educational travel, not only in its continued goal to bring people to Israel to develop that caring and connection, but also to support the field through many continued crises and adaptations from COVID into The judicial reforms and now through the events of October 7 and the war, this has been a field that has continually faced enormous challenge and has needed each other to adjust.

David Bryfman: 8:31

So on one hand, this could be an episode about the things that we picked up during COVID and what we've previously called COVID keepers adapting, being one of them. But this is one of those things that many people in the community have said should have existed long before, and it took something like COVID to bring the field together to talk about these issues. And then no one expected, like all of us, no one expected the events of October 7 to really formalize and crystallize the need for this collective to come together. So I want to move a bit away from talking about the IATA specifically, and more about the issues that you're confronting and what we're all dealing with as a field. And maybe let's just start off with the hardest question of all of what are the challenges now facing the Israel educational travel field after October 7?

Unknown: 9:18

Wow. First, the challenges are just as big as the opportunities. I think that one of the true assets of Israel educational travel is that every challenge presents an enormous opportunity as well. So the first challenge that the field of Israel educational travel has is to bring Israel trips, to bring our field back at scale. Now. Why is that a challenge? Certainly, it's a challenge for all organizations right now to think about going back to a routine when it comes to Israel, but for the field of Israel educational travel, this challenge is uniquely important. Important and unique in its own right. Number one, Israel, educational travel is the most important tool that we know, that we have to develop connection and caring for Israel among Jews and non Jews alike. Pew studies from birthright, recent studies from boundless Israel, all point to Israel educational travel as being one of the, if not the most important mechanism for developing that caring and connection. Why is that a challenge today? That's, as I said, both an enormous opportunity and a tremendous challenge, because the content that happens on trips matters so significantly to the the outcomes that they produce and to developing that ongoing connection and caring for Israel among its participants, so how to adjust the core narrative of what Israel educational travel says Israel is about in a post, 10, seven or more for Israelis, the ongoing, terrible day and night of October 7 is an enormous challenge that has yet to be answered by any one organization or community. How we are sharing our story, and what that story is, I think, really differs depending on our audiences, on our communities, and what we want that story to be, look significantly different even this year than last year. So last year, we know that Israel educational travel trips were mostly about solidarity, showing caring and connection directly for the people of Israel and reinforcing existing ties where we had them. This next year, we are writing the new chapter, the next chapter in the story of the Jewish people, about who we are, individually and as a collective. Coming in and through this period of challenge and change and solidarity is certainly an aspect of that. But how we are integrating October 7 and October 8, for those of us living in North America, into that shared story, is the challenge and the opportunity of Israel educational travel this next year. So Anna,

David Bryfman: 12:17

I realized, as I asked the question, and then certainly is you responded to it. We sort of, in some ways, we jumped right ahead, right we jumped right ahead to what we're doing. And I think part of the the challenge of this conversation is the acknowledgement that here in North America and around the world, we're trying to return back to not normal, but return back to what we know works. And Israel is still in this in this period where it's not fully recovered, or not fully out of the aftermath of October 7. And here we are talking, I don't want to use the word privilege necessarily, but we're talking from this place of a different perspective, where we're talking about our need to get our young people to Israel. And then you and I both know, and we were both there recently together, that that Israel is going through its own its own trauma, its own recovery, and we're both cognizant of that, even though our work mandates demand us to try and get back to, I'm loathe to say, as normal as possible, but are returning to the way we want things to be. Yeah, I

Unknown: 13:11

think that hits the nail on the head. Look, Israel travel has been an extraordinarily important aspect of Jewish American life for over 25 years now, we are now celebrating birthrights 25th anniversary, which has been a watershed for Jewish community in so many ways over these past 25 years, myself included Israel, educational travel has been foundational to How Jewish American North American communities think about developing and enhancing true connection and caring for Israel over a generation at this point, and our need to return to that not only is true at this specific moment, but actually has been true since the founding of ieta. So as we were talking about before you know, Iita came out of this moment in 2020 when we were losing access to our most important pipeline, again, not only for developing caring and connection for Israel, but I used to work at Hillel International. And I can tell you that many of the Israel leaders that I worked with at Hillel International, the student leaders, elected to become student leaders because of a transformative experience that they had on an Israel educational travel journey, and that to me, when I was in those shoes, meant I was missing the pipeline of people of next generation of leadership that I needed for the continuity of Jewish community and to continue to enhance and build those connections to Israel among the next generation so that need to return to some version of normal on our side, I'd say, is almost an imperative of us trying to create the fabric that ties our community together, while simultaneously. Dealing with the realities of October 8 Judaism over here, which I think is our version of living in the long night of October 7 is the change to Jewish identity and how we are asked to atone for Israel, relate to Israel, and stand up for Israel in public settings now in America as Jews because of the way that the war is being put on center stage and center plate in American discourse, in our schools, on our social media, in all aspects of Jewish life. So

David Bryfman: 15:33

let's get down to the on the ground, because you and I have been to Israel now a few times since October 7, and we know from our own experience that every time we go, we meet with someone or we see something that I wouldn't say necessarily shakes us to our core. But I've had those experiences as well. Share with the audience some experiences you've had recently where even you as someone organizing these trips, is like, come into contact with Israelis or with people in Israel and said, Wow, that's just something I needed to hear directly from them.

Unknown: 16:03

Yeah, wow, you are so right that it happens every time, no matter how many times I go. So one arc of our experience comes to mind for me during our Israel educational travel alliance leader summit just recently, this January in Israel, we spent one day where we took half of the group to the south and half of the group to the north to explore how to share the stories of war. Moving into 2025 and David, I think you and I have probably both been down south many, many times since the onset of the war on October 7, 2023, but the thing that just shook me to my core this time was going down to the south with a mixed group of nonprofit leadership who build and design Israel educational experiences from within the IATA community, and those tour educators that we work so closely with to implement and to see our vision through on the ground. And what I learned when I went down south with that group is that some of these tour educators who have not been working this last year, who have been serving in millewee or taking care of children while their spouses are in millim or unable to work in this field because of the slowdown of trips they were going to the south For the first time, witnessing Israelis react to being in the south for the first time. I don't really have words to describe it, because they also lacked words to describe their own experience. And what struck me about that is that many North American trips have been going there many times over, as you and I have and so even the experience of the story that we're telling of Israel today looks so different depending on what experiences and access you have been provided. And what was really opening to me as well was to hear the Israeli guides themselves talk about how they needed to be there together, to process, to be in community, and wanted to be in conversations with us about how we understood what these sites signified to our communities and what stories we were hoping we would be able to share collectively.

David Bryfman: 18:32

So it's probably true to say, at least for the near future, that Israel trips will now have different sites on their radar. I think it's safe to say that very few Israel educational trips ever went to any of the communities near the Gaza envelope before they may have driven through steroto, maybe, but now that's going to be certainly part of the the tour itinerary, and what a crass use of frame as itinerary. But the Nova festival site is going to be a place where all groups will want to, I guess, make a pilgrimage to and to and to bear witness, and to to say cutish, to say the memorial prayer there as well. And I think it's something that you and I have discussed before, that the tendency to focus on visiting the kibbutzim that were, you know, massacred and destroyed, and the side of the Nova festival that will be part and parcel of what we do. But you also had another experience there, which I want you to tell the tell the group about, because I think out of all of the devastation of October 7 came some stories of heroism and resilience. So talk to us a bit about one of those visits that you had down south this time.

Unknown: 19:37

Yeah, for sure. And before I move to that David, I just want to note and recognize one of the reasons why we we went down south, is because the kibbutzim are closed for public audiences this year, per the request of their residents, and understanding and designing itineraries for. 2025 needed to put on the table. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go? Which stories are we going to tell now that the kibbutzim are not going to be a part of our itineraries, how do we want to bear witness? Is it just Nova? Is it Nova and people? Is it Nova and volunteerism, service learning, to be able to build and serve these communities again, and to give us the opportunity to truly explore what the value proposition is in taking groups down south and to give the space for us all to process and think about educational design together. So So you mentioned two incredibly unique individuals that our trip had the opportunity to spend time with. So we had a, I'm going to say, once in a lifetime opportunity to spend time with a nova survivor. And as he calls him as our Nova survivor, Shalev calls him Eunice, his angel, his savior. Shalev is a young Israeli, former IDF participant who went away on his big trip abroad, following his army service, and came back just a little bit early to be with some friends on holiday back in Israel for Simchat Torah, and ended up being invited by some friends to go down to the Nova Festival, where he went and was having a absolutely fantastic time until the beginning of the morning, when, of course, the events of October 7, as we now understood them, began to unfold, and while Shalev and his friends were trying to escape with their lives, they ran eventually around eight kilometers to a farm where they found a greenhouse, and they started to hide in the greenhouse until they realized that there were people there at the farm, and the person who was there at the farm was this man who They did not know at the time was named Eunice, who came in and asked them what they needed and who they were. They were, of course, very fearful of him, because he was Arab in appearance. And Eunice ended up offering them shelter, a place to charge their phones, water, a place to begin to heal their their sore wounds, and to clean up when all of a sudden, a group of Hamas terrorists arrived at the gate to the farm that they were all at. And out of a tremendous fear and lack of knowledge of what was going to happen, Shalev and his friends decided to hide, and the place that they found to hide was underneath the greenhouse structure that they had been in before, just a few short inches off of the ground, about a foot off of the ground, they crawled underneath this building and laid down On the floor while listening to the interaction between Yunus and the Hamas terrorists at the gate, which they didn't understand at the time, it was all conversant in Arabic. But what they did understand was that there was a demand for the Jews. Yehud is what they heard over and over again, and they had no idea what was going to happen to them. They thought that there was a chance that this man to save himself or his family or otherwise, might decide to give them up. So there they lay at risk for their lives for hours until the Hamas terrorists eventually left. They tried many different times in many different gates, and after the Hamas terrorists left, they heard that Yunus was calling for them, but out of fear, they didn't know if he had struck a deal with the terrorists and was going to give them up, or what was going to happen. And it wasn't until Eunice actually found them, stuck his face underneath the building and found them underneath there, and he laughed, and he said, my friends, you are okay. Did they realized then that they were okay and they were going to survive, a truly incredible story in its own right. But then from there, let's add the following. It wasn't until our group came to Israel and asked Shalev and Eunice if they would speak to us together that the two of them reunited at Eunice's home for the first time, and for the first time, brought their families together to meet each other and to give each other the much wanted and yearned for, hugs and thanks for saving each other's lives and recognizing that they were all part of the story of Israel, and that experience was life changing for so many of us who were able to be there, that it was the first time that these people were able to come together, live in person, and bring their families together. So let's bring this

David Bryfman: 24:58

down to some basic. Which I think many of our audience will relate to. So many, if not most, maybe even all, Israel trips have traditionally had this experience where they go and they spend the night in a better intent at the footsteps of Masada, so they can wake up at five o'clock the next morning and climb Masada. And in that better intent they have. I wouldn't call it a simulation, because it's sort of, it's sort of real, but it's a touristy type representation of the better ones. It's a bit of a caricature, I guess, in some ways, of participating in Bedouin culture, although that's what tourism and educational tourism has often been about, and now the story of October 7 sheds a whole different light on the Bedouin community, the role of the Bedouins in actively saving so many Israelis from Nova, the fact that Bedouins themselves were taken hostage and later found to be killed on October 7. I'm using this as a particular example to show how we still might go to the Bedouin tent. And there's still another part of the story to be told. And I guess this is part of the complexity now, of there's a different Israel educational experience that's demanded of us right now, and you're at the forefront of leading those changes. So speak a bit about that broader change here, I guess.

Unknown: 26:15

Yeah, I think you said that beautifully, David. If I can speak at sort of the highest level. I think that one of the big and most important changes that we're witnessing in the Israel educational travel space is a shift from travel as as a means to an end as Israel as the landscape by which we build Jewish identity and connection and caring to Israel that's really focused on a journey, a trip and a travel experience to Israel, educational travel being rich and sophisticated as education in and of itself, and the example that you just gave of the difference between engaging with the Bedouin experience as More of a surface level interaction and engagement with a different kind of culture and a different kind of community. Now, we have both the opportunity and the obligation to think more about what it means to engage with the Bedouin community in the story and landscape of Israel today, and that layered complexity brings on a whole nother level of educational sophistication of intention in design and implementation of trips, and also requires a different kind of skill set from the people who are involved, from everyone who is thinking about the trips, to The people who we are selecting to be our speakers on those trips. Right? We're talking about a kind of richness, a kind of authenticity and a kind of vulnerability that we have seen in a post 10 seven environment that is crucially important to the kinds of trips that we know we want to continue to design and develop in this year ahead.

David Bryfman: 28:03

So earlier in the conversation, you mentioned opportunities, and I think one of the biggest things that we've seen in the last, you know, 15 months or so since Israel, travel has, you know, I wouldn't say returned, but gradually returned to some sort of like regularity or pattern, I guess, is the Advent or the reinvention, or the reincarnation of volunteerism as a key part of what these trips are doing. And I want you to speak a bit about volunteerism, not so much in terms of people coming to Israel and like doing something, picking fruit or helping out the community, but what it represents for the possibility for the changing relationship between Israelis and diaspora Jews. Because one of the things that has struck me most since I've been there is, yes, it's been good for me and for the people that we've brought to Israel to get to Israel, but the smile that we bring to Israelis faces us showing up has also been really powerful. So talk a bit about volunteerism and what you think it represents. Yeah,

Unknown: 28:56

my experience has been very similar. The number of thanks that I have received for coming to Israel or bringing groups to Israel has truly been extraordinary and service learning, I think, is a tremendous example of a shift from thinking about Israel and each other in sort of more of a transactional way, to thinking about each other As part of a whole that can build and CO design the future of the Jewish people hand in hand, literally and figuratively, right, going out together into the work of rebuilding Israel through shared experiences and a shared commitment to doing that work. So we know from it as data that 75% of trips to Israel this last year included service learning as a core component of them. That's up from from very, very few of them before October 7. So first thing is that this has been an enormous new. Component of Israel educational travel experiences, and many of these trips have actually been designed and focused on service learning in their own right. For example, the onward volunteerism experiences, which are multi week programs focused solitarily on service learning. What we generally see and understand from these experiences is that they place all of us as a shared collective in a larger picture of the Jewish people who are working together to build and rebuild Israel for the future. And I think there are two things about that that are particularly encouraging and important about where we go from here and the continued integration of service learning into Israel trips in 2025 The first is that on an impact level, we see really important changes in the way that Israel trips are impacting and creating change in the participants, both the Israelis and the North Americans, through service learning. So as you said, for the Israelis, there's a true sense of us building a real, meaningful relationship and having each other's best interest in heart, right, joining hand in hand to build the future of Israel together, but on the North American side, what our data points to is that trip participants are walking away from these service learning experiences with a sense of empowerment and a true sense of agency. And that is a tremendous and remarkable outcome of doing this hands on work, is a sense of being an agent in the story of the Jewish people. And my hope is that we're going to see that translate back into North American context, with a sense of true ownership and agency in this next chapter of our story. So

David Bryfman: 31:54

in your response there, you referred to the sense that this is a moment of Jewish peoplehood, and when the people are Jewish, people are coming together. But one of the things which I think may surprise some listeners as well is that the ITA community also includes non Jewish groups that bring participants to Israel as well, especially Christian groups, passages being one of them, but iTRAQ also brings graduate students who are not necessarily Jewish, but talk to us a bit about the importance of the ITA community also including these non Jewish allies as part of this community that we're trying to establish together.

Unknown: 32:26

So we've been really privileged to have these other partners who work with non Jewish groups join the ieta because they share our common goals of building connection to and support for Israel. And many of these partners have been deeply involved in the development and design of trips even before i eta right. APAC is a part of our coalition as well, and APAC, in many ways, helped to create and design what we think of as allyship trip itineraries and opportunities over these past 30 plus years, the importance of having these groups as part of ITA, I think, is twofold. It has impacts on them and it has impacts on us. The impact on them is that these organizations are committed to sharing the narrative of the Jewish people that we feel as a community is reflective of who and what we are at any point in time, and their commitment to doing that has meant that they have decided to show up as full and complete members of our community so that they can hear, reflect and absorb the stories that we want told about us, by us, for us, and reflect those in their context in ways that are meaningful and directly in relationship with our communities, that that's piece number one, sort of the impact that they're able to have in reflecting who we are. But additionally, these communities represent a lot of the voices and people who want to amplify the Jewish support for the Jewish community and support for Israel back at home, and so these communities, their involvement in ieta is also helping to build the structure and the landscape of the interconnected and woven communities that we're going to return to after our trips, and knowing that we have peers and colleagues and allies on the Campus in our workplaces who support us have our back and are members of a shared community with connection and support to Israel.

David Bryfman: 34:28

Great. All right, Anna, question, without notice, you're somebody who has worked as both an educator and you've worked in the foundation world, and now you're working for a Jewish communal organization. What's the brief story of of how you evolved and and what took you on this journey? It's an entire episode. But what do you enjoy most about the work you're doing now and how it intersects with all the things that you've been doing?

Unknown: 34:52

Look, that's, that's a great question. I'm going to try to keep it as short as possible. Look, I got into the Jewish community because. Um, as I said, I went on a birthright trip, and what that showed me was that there was an active story of a community that was telling me that I had something to do with it, right, that I belong to it, and I've chosen a few different routes about how I wanted to engage with that over time in my professional career, most recently being in the philanthropic setting, and then choosing now to come back into the field. And what I'll share with you was my really big motivation. And the difference that I see right now is that philanthropy has an incredibly important role to play in catalyzing change, supporting and driving towards the next level and steps that we can have as as Jewish community, both by encouraging that change and then and pushing slightly where it's appropriate, and then seeing that through with with funding and support and guidance and coaching. The one thing that I know is that at a time of increased anti semitism and anti Zionist forms of anti semitism. The Jews have each other. That's where I started, and that's where I'm gonna end for me as a career and and it's my obligation and it's my privilege to be able to build upon that so

David Bryfman: 36:13

and a last question for you in the one which I've asked almost all of my guests on adapting, who's an educator who has inspired and maybe even transformed you along your journey. Oh

Unknown: 36:22

my gosh. To list them would not be fair, and I have to tell you that it was a tremendous privilege to look out at the ITA Leaders Summit recently and realize how many of the educators who were in that room had transformed my life. So first, I owe a debt of gratitude to so many people who have been with me along the way, but there's one that I'm going to shout out right now, in particular because of the number of ways that she impacted me directly in my current thinking about my work. And that is my colleague, my friend, and my fellow ginger Shelly kdar, head of the Connect unit at the Jewish Agency for Israel currently, and my first boss at Hillel International, while we're working together to found the Israel department there. And Shelly taught me so many things about Jewish leadership and about Israel, and about how we as a Jewish people have a story and a history to bind us together that can guide and return us to where we can be of best service to each other in times of challenge and crisis. But there's one specific thing that I'm going to tell you that she has said to me that has stuck with me every single day since I have chosen a profession in Israel, education, and that is a really uncomfortable, challenging place for a lot of people. And Shelley gave me this word of wisdom. She said to me, comfort is not a Jewish value. In fact, discomfort is a Jewish value, and that, to me, is our intellectual tradition. It's our heritage. It's how we know how to talk to each other. Is across difference and Israel. Education is the opportunity for us to be authentic in our Jewish skin and to bring each other closer together through our continued learning and striving to see each other across our differences.

David Bryfman: 38:21

Anna, thanks so much for joining us on adapting today. I knew this would be an insightful conversation, and we'd start talking about your actual role, and then really broker into like, the key issues that we're all grappling with. And I think that that's so clearly evident, that the work you're doing embodies so much of your passion, and you can feel so drawn to as both your personal and your career path are seemingly intertwined. So thank you so much for sharing with us all today.

Unknown: 38:49

Thank you, David, it's been a privilege. Today's episode

David Bryfman: 38:52

of adapting was produced by Dina nussenbaum and Miranda Lapides. The show's executive producers are myself, Karen Cummins and Essen lieben. Our show is engineered and edited, as always, by Nathan J Bourne of njv media. If you enjoyed today's episode of adapting, please leave us a five star rating on Apple podcast. Leave us a comment, and even better still, share it with a friend to learn more about the Jewish education project. Visit us at jewished project.org, there you can see and learn about our mission history and staff. And as always, we are a proud partner PGA Federation of New York, thank you as always, for listening today. You.