Rachel Adams’ recent trip to Israel “put it all together.”
For the 17-year old senior at Nicolet High School, that meant finally visiting the land that filled her studies and finally seeing that place that she had learned to love from afar.
“I love Israel but had never been there. If anything, the trip reinforced my personal support, how much I love Israel,” she explained in a telephone interview after her Jan. 2 return.
Adams traveled to the Jewish state in a private trip with two other Nicolet Hebrew students: Mara Alpert, 16, and Avital Deskalo, 15. The three, with chaperone Joyce Gutzke, spent almost three weeks of December touring the country, including five days in the Sovev Kinneret area, the Israeli region linked to Milwaukee via Partnership 2000.
That segment, they said, was unequivocally a highlight of the trip and certainly the most important result of the visit. It was a continuation and deepening of friendships that began when a group of Israeli teenagers visited Milwaukee last summer as part of P2K’s Teen Mifgash program.
“The relationship we have with those kids is just amazing,” said Adams, adding that she loved having the chance to “hang out with them, stay with them, meet their friends and families, and go to school with them.”
During their days there, the Milwaukee students visited Beit Yerach, the high school with which Nicolet is paired in P2K’s Education Bridge program. They spoke with students in an English class, sharing details about their lives in Milwaukee and answering questions.
“Their school is very free, compared to Nicolet. The kids have free reign. We told them about our school and they laughed,” Adams said.
“Being with my friends from Israel and seeing how Israeli teenagers live differently from us was just an amazing thing. It’s so different being Jewish in America from being Jewish in Israel and it was so amazing experiencing it in their shoes,” said Alpert, who had never visited the Jewish state before.
Developing those personal relationships was one of the trip’s goals, said Nicolet Hebrew teacher Suzanne G. Weinstein, who planned the trip.
“I planned to show them the country that I love and how people live in Israel,” Weinstein said. “I wanted them to know how important those relationships and the ties that bind are. They can be lifelong ties and it’s not just what we give to the Israelis but what we gain too.”
Weinstein also hoped that the trip would make real some of the things that the teens had learned in her classes. “You make the personal connection between what’s going on in the classroom and real life and that’s so important. So you read the poetry of Rachel and then you go see her grave.”
Though the basis of the trip may have been Hebrew, the group traversed the country, visiting sites from Eilat to snow-capped Mt. Hermon. “Though it was pretty educational, it was really loose,” said Deskalo, who had been to Israel four times previously.
Individualized and personal
Weinstein has organized two previous trips for her Nicolet Hebrew students. A trip planned for December 2000 was cancelled because of the current intifada. Last month’s trip happened, Weinstein said, because of student and parent motivation.
This trip offered something different from the larger community trip, Adventure Israel, said Weinstein. That teen tour, locally sponsored by the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center and the Israel Center of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, is planning to send a delegation this summer after three years with no local participation.
“Mine is open only to my Hebrew students and is more language-based,” she said. “It also takes place during the school year rather than in the summer. It’s a different kind of trip — smaller, more individualized and more personal.”
This tour also differed from Weinstein’s previous school trips, which were school-sponsored. This trip, however, ended up being a private trip with no school sponsorship or funding.
Weinstein had approached the school board in August about sponsoring the trip, and it had approved doing so, she explained to The Chronicle. However, in November, the school revoked official sponsorship because of security concerns.
That meant Weinstein could not accompany her students. But Nicolet agreed that the five school days that the students missed would be considered “excused absences.”
Funding was private also. Students and their families raised almost $3,000 from their synagogues, the federation and private donations. Parents supplied the rest of the funds.
Adams, Deskalo and Alpert all said they’re already plotting their return to the Jewish state, perhaps after high school.
Adams, who will graduate high school this spring and is considering attending a year of college in Israel, agreed. “This trip showed me that I really have to come back soon.”
P2K is a program of the Jewish Agency for Israel and is supported by funds from the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Annual Community Campaign and other federations across North America.
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