Only three weeks ago Cal Teich, a businessman from New Jersey, was not sure whether he should send his teen-age daughter to Israel this summer. He was concerned that as a result of the disorders in the territories, Israel might not be a safe place to travel.
But last week, Teich said that his 17-year-old daughter, Andria, is definitely going to Israel this summer.
Teich has just returned from a “fact-finding mission to Israel” with a group of 29 other parents of members of various American Jewish youth groups.
The week-long trip was sponsored by the American Zionist Youth Foundation and El Al Israel Airlines, which provided free airfare. The trip was arranged in response to concerns, fanned by media reports, about safety in Israel in the wake of nearly four months of violence in the West Bank and Gaza.
“To me Israel felt very safe indeed,” Teich said in an interview. “It is a whole different feeling when you are there. Now I have no qualms whatsoever with sending my daughter there this summer.”
For all but two of the 30 parents, it was their first visit to Israel. The trip included stops in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and northern Israel, many of the sights their children will visit this summer.
According to Aviva Lavi, a spokeswoman for El Al, the airline has reserved 10,000 seats for American Jewish youth who will be going to Israel this summer. Last year, she said, about 8,000 youth, all members of Jewish youth groups, traveled to Israel with the company.
“All of the Jewish youth groups and agencies that send kids to Israel have three times as many inquiries for 1988 as they did for 1987, ” Ina Strauss, director of the AZYF’s Israel Program Center, said in a telephone interview. “If we could convince the people who are already interested, but hesitant, to sign up their children, we will do better than last year.”
Strauss pointed out that the Jewish youth groups do not travel to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where the disturbances presently are taking place.
“Every child that goes to Israel this summer will be getting the same positive experiences that tens of thousands of Jews have gotten in the past summers,” she said.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
