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August 10, 2001/Av 21, 5761, Vol. 53, No.44
Students buck trend, go to Israel
JULIE WIENER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - Jennifer Kessler of Los Angeles always knew she would spend a year between high school and college studying at a girls' yeshiva in Israel.
Her modern Orthodox day school, Shalhevet, usually sends at least a third of the graduating class to Israel, and among the children of her parents' friends, "everyone" goes to Israel.
But when it came time this year for Kessler, 17, to firm up her plans to attend Midreshet Lindenbaum, a prestigious program in Jerusalem, it wasn't easy.
Her parents, who canceled a family trip to Israel due to concerns about the violence, started worrying.
And a close friend studying in Gush Etzion, a bloc of settlements near Jerusalem, complained to her that the drive-by shootings on the road to Jerusalem kept him virtual hostage at his yeshiva for days on end.
Nonetheless, Kessler is scheduled to depart at the end of August.
In the Orthodox world, she is fairly typical.
While American Jewish tourism to Israel is way down, and American enrollment has dropped sharply at secular institutions like Hebrew University of Jerusalem, post-high school yeshiva programs in Israel are - so far - an exception to the trend.
- Almost 2,400 American yeshiva and seminary students will be departing for Israel in the next month, according to Sheryl Stein, a spokeswoman for El Al Israel Airlines. The number is "a drop" from last year, "but not significant," Stein said.
- Yeshiva University, centrist Orthodoxy's flagship institution, reports that almost 1,000 recent male and female high school graduates will be under its auspices in Israel at Bar-Ilan University and 36 yeshivot and seminaries, the same as last year.
- Yeshivat Har Etzion, a boys' yeshiva in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, expects 45 students this year, the same as last year.
Why, at a time when Israel's tourism industry is on the rocks, are Orthodox students still flocking to the Jewish state?
Ideology plays a part.
"My mother has always said if people stop going to Israel then the Palestinians have won," said Kessler.
Rachel Singerman, of Baltimore, said, "It makes a difference that we're going to be with people in a time of crisis."
In addition, other factors have kept enrollment fairly stable, say observers.
For one thing, pre-college Israel study has become a standard rite of passage for modern Orthodox Jews.
Another reason Orthodox study programs aren't affected the way other Israel programs, say yeshiva officials, is because their primary focus is on study, rather than traveling around the country.
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