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Congregational trips focus on study, prayer
Members of 4 return from summer tours
RANDI BAROCAS
Staff Writer
Congregants from four Valley congregations that took trips to Israel this summer experienced much more than Masada and the Dead Sea.
They were taken on educational excursions that enabled them to experience the land of Israel through study with leading scholars and prayer at some of the holiest sites in the world, their rabbis said.
Rabbis William Berk of Temple Chai, B. Charles Herring of Temple Kol Ami, Rick Sherwin of Beth El Congregation and Chaim Silver of Young Israel all coordinated congregational tours to Israel to teach their members about the history of the Jewish homeland and how it pertains to Jews today.
While the rabbis admit that some of the congregants who made the long journey wanted to and did climb Masada, swim in the Dead Sea and shop in Tel Aviv - among other things - other priorities prevailed, they said.
Those priorities included providing congregants with a different kind of group trip than the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix's semi-annual Community Mission to Israel, said Berk, who met 10 of his congregants in Israel for an extension of the advanced studies program he offers at Temple Chai. (Berk recently returned from Israel, where he was living on sabbatical for six months.)
Although Berk has taken temple members to Israel before - both in 1993 and 1995 - this was the first study trip, and no children attended. He planned this trip in response to "a couple of different issues that have come up in Jewish life," he said.
"One issue is that the old-style UJA (United Jewish Appeal/federation) trips to Israel don't work anymore. They don't transform somebody's life," Berk opined.
"It used to be you'd take people to Israel and show them Jews living in tents. In recent years, it wasn't tents, but absorption centers: 'Look at the Ethiopians.' It breaks your heart and you feel for these people and want to do whatever you can to help them. Now we don't have (many) people in absorption centers," Berk explained. "We have an Israel with a booming economy. So what Israel are you going to show (people)? The Israel of the kibbutzim? The kibbutzim are closing down. ... Now it's a happening scene in Tel Aviv.
"So the question remains, 'How do you take people to Israel?' And the answer is, 'You take them there and you study with them," Berk said. "Studying in Israel is powerful, potent and magical."
Rabbi Chaim Silver of Young Israel of Phoenix, who brought 38 people on what he refers to as "The Israel Experience," couldn't agree more. And he said his trip was different from federation's Community Mission in several ways as well.
"This was not a mission to Israel. We weren't going to do anything for the land of Israel," said Silver, adding that this was the first Young Israel trip to the Jewish homeland since he joined the congregation two years ago. "We were going to see what we could gain and take with us from the land of Israel. ... We were going to see what Israel could give us - how we could come away as better people."
Community or congregation?
Federation's Community Mission, unlike synagogue trips, strives to expose people to the programs the federation has helped fund in Israel, as well as how those who support federation financially have contributed to Israeli communities, noted Art Paikowsky, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.
Paikowsky said that while it's true Israel's economy has improved dramatically in the past decade, there are still communities that can benefit greatly from federation dollars.
"I think that the work (federation) is doing is still very relevant," he said. "The ones typically suffering in Israel are new immigrants who are coming in large numbers, and who find themselves under-employed and even unemployed. If you really take a hard look at the absorption record of the Ethiopians in particular, we still have a long way to go.
"One of the things we certainly try to focus on (with the missions) is Israel-Diaspora relationships. Not only do we look to the latest update on the peace process, but also how we (can) bridge the gap between our two communities," Paikowsky explained. "Beyond that, we also want to give people a quality touring experience and a quality educational experience."
The educational objectives of a federation mission, however, are quite different from those of a synagogue trip, the rabbis said. While federation missions, according to Paikowsky, strive to expose participants to "current issues of the day," synagogue tours aim to enlighten congregants about the religious and historical significance of the land, said Herring, who had 22 participants on his tour - the third one he has organized at Kol Ami.
Synagogue tours also are more "homogenous" and do not have to remain as religiously "neutral" as a federation mission, Herring said. "Federation ... functions on a more secular plane ... and a more political level than we do," he said. "Our focuses are different."
The priority of a congregational tour is to create a spiritual link and to find a way for Israel to speak to the religious soul, said Sherwin, who had 29 attend the second Beth El trip. Sherwin said he first organized a synagogue trip to Israel in 1996, and that he hopes to offer the tour every two or three years.
"We're not looking for people to simply be turned on," he said. "We want people to be awakened."
Regardless of who is sponsoring the tour, Paikowsky said it is important for Jews to experience Israel.
"Whenever there is a trip to Israel (whether it's federation or congregational), there is a broad range of things that happen, and they are all good," Paikowsky stressed. "They all contribute to the well being of our community. (Visiting Israel) creates Jewish connections, and that's part of building community."
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