By Morris Malakoff, JTNews Correspondent
There are countless ways a high school student can while away the summer — work, travel, hang out with friends at the beach, or sit and do nothing.
But a new option for the coming summer has been made available to area students: An option that includes the excitement of travel, the experience of being exposed to a diversity of Jewish culture, and an opportunity for a young person to grow into a responsible and contributing member of the greater community.
That option comes from the Nesiya Institute, which offers a year-long program beginning with a six-week session in Israel. The program also includes a follow-up week on the East Coast in December and the completion of a year-long service project in their home community.
While the program has been in existence since 1984, its profile has been raised in Washington this year due to a grant from the Samis Foundation that will help 10 participants from Washington attend this year’s program.
The grant funds an equal number of Israeli participants as well.
“We looked at this program and saw something that worked for the two communities we serve, Washington and Israel, specifically the Kiryat Malachi region,” said Rabbi Rob Toren, grants director for Samis. “This program not only can develop future leaders, it gives young people a unique chance to develop self-understanding through their interaction with both Israeli and North American students of a wide variety of backgrounds.”
Samis is best known locally for providing tuition assistance for K-12 Jewish day school students in Washington State. But Toren said working with Nesiya fits with the foundation’s mission of providing assistance for day schools, overnight camps and Israel experiences.
“For years, since I’ve been here, we’ve been offering scholarship assistance through the [Jewish Education Council] to get to Israel,” he said. “It is a departure in that we have not invested beforehand in one program.”
According to Charles Herman, executive director of Nesiya, the six-week session in Israel is not a typical “teen tour” of Israel.
“Students will see things that most people do when they visit Israel,” he told a gathering of prospective participants and their parents on a visit to Seattle last month. “But what is different is how they will spend their time and the activities they will be involved in while they are there.”
Herman outlined an extensive program that included camping in the Negev Desert, creating art in the Galilee, and assisting in a school and orphanage in Kiryat Malachi, an area near the beach city of Ashkelon made up mostly of immigrants with incomes at or near the poverty line. Students will also spend time in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Samis representatives visited Israel last summer to get a sense of the program and met with both North American and Israeli alumni. Toren said the entourage was impressed with the exposure and integration the participants had experienced with each other, as well as how the trip had “transformed the meanings to themselves as Jews.”
“It’s not just an on-the-bus, off-the-bus trip,” Toren said. “We think that’s particularly [meaningful], kids from very different backgrounds striving to build a community together.”
The Israel trip, which will run from late June to early August, will involve 40 Israeli students and about 80 North Americans. They will travel in buses and stay in established camps. The students’ unfamiliarity with the environment is likely to be both compounded and alleviated by their interaction with people they don’t know — something done by design.
“It is amazing how quickly students of so many backgrounds in terms of language, religion and culture overcome those differences and bond,” said Tami Dayan, the chief operating officer of Nesiya. “I see it happen every year within days of when they all arrive.”
The diversity is more than multicultural in nature. Nesiya prides itself on taking all types of students.
“We benefit not only high achievers,” said Herman. “We give an extraordinary opportunity to all students to experience the richness of their heritage and religion and to develop into leaders and contributors in their communities.”
The Israel experience extends beyond just interacting with the Jewish community. One part of the immersion into Israel includes spending a couple of days at a Bedouin camp near Jerusalem.
“It is a chance for the students to meet Arab-Israelis and to hear firsthand what their perspective is on the issues that surround them,” said Herman.
When the students return home, they are expected to perform a year of community service.
“It is something they can do in a non-profit setting,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be with a Jewish organization.”
The expectation is that it be with an organization that works in Jewish education, social welfare, arts and culture or the environment. The total cost of the Nesiya program is about $9,000, including airfare. The 10 scholarships the Samis Foundation is funding are for $7,000 each and will be awarded to Washington students by Nesiya. They are not need-based, and families of students would be responsible for the difference. Additional funding may be available to help cover the additional cost, both through Nesiya and local organizations.
Herman says that Nesiya is more than a way to spend a summer vacation for the average high school student.
“This isn’t just a way to get a kid to Israel,” he said, “but a way to enrich Jewish life.”