Drawing on anthropological conceptions of pilgrimage, our ethnography of professional development at an Israeli Holocaust Memorial follows German teachers on journeys to Israel. Seeking transformative and transferable experiences to combat anti-Semitism in schools, teachers experienced the voyage as a secular pilgrimage rooted in Christian…

This article explores the impact of German Jewish youth educational travel in Israel on changing attitudes toward Israel. The travelers are engaged in direct interaction with the host country, directly experiencing the environments and interacting with members of the host society while touring places with symbolic meaning. The encounters with…

This article examines the practice of pretend Israel trips in Jewish early childhood education. Jewish early childhood educators who work in markedly different preschool settings, and who have differing beliefs about Israel and Israel education, nonetheless converge on a practice of pretend trips to Israel that remains remarkably stable across…

This essay proposes a pedagogy for food writing that is not dependent on decoding or interpretative practices. Instead, writers compose by juxtaposing personal writing with research around some item or issue that might seem insignificant or minor. A minor exigence--in this case, eating and cooking falafel--can be explored so that a larger…

The purpose of this study is to illustrate that travel as experiential education, though not always obvious, often has political or cultural intent or ramifications. Objectives such as promoting cosmopolitanism, nationalism and imperialism, and colonialism may then become obvious by examination of various experiential education travel programs,…

This study examines changes to Jewish day school students' narratives of the history of Israel after a two-and-a-half-week trip there. Seventeen students were interviewed about the history of Israel before and after the trip. Before the trip, most students' accounts lacked logical connections among the different events. The observations on the…

Travel to Israel has been a central feature of Jewish and Zionist education yet it is time for this educational travel to be examined in the context of current cultural trends of travel and transnational experiences. The Jewish educational community has not yet internalized the impact of global trends on the field of travel to Israel from a…

The violent and protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, and Jewish Americans play a significant role in influencing related US foreign policy as well as in promoting positive interactions with Palestinians globally. Diaspora populations have played an important role in international peace processes and American Jews are actively…

The positive impact on the Jewish Identity Development of Jewish Emerging Adults of both the 10 day trips to Israel popularly known as Birthright trips and the service learning trips commonly known as Alternative Spring Breaks has been well-documented. However, the mechanics of how this positive impact occurs has not been well-understood. This…

This article presents findings from a qualitative narrative research study conducted during a journey to Ethiopia undertaken by graduates of an academic program in Israel in 2005. The study focuses on the significance of the journey as a process that helped reconstruct their identity. During the journey, twelve Ethiopian education graduates were…

The authors were invited to teach clinical social work in the Palestinian West Bank. In order to teach, we designed a study exploring how 65 Palestinian social work students described the psychological and social effects of working under occupation. Students described social stressors of poverty, unemployment, lack of infrastructure, violence,…

This paper deals with aging of a remarkable woman from Florida, Wilma E. Davis. After ministering in the Methodist church for over 30 years as the first ordained Methodist minister in the state of Florida, Davis retired and began a PhD program at Boston University at the age of 63. Davis completed her PhD at the age of 68. The pursuit of her…

In the last two decades, higher education institutions have invested significant resources to internationalise, due to economic, political, academic and cultural pressures. Students play a dual role in this process: as customers, selecting institutions based on respective reputations (including the international dimension) and as outputs of…

While Hebrew education maintains a dominant position in Jewish educational contexts, little research has looked at what the practice of Hebrew language education looks like on a daily basis. Drawing from an 18-month ethnography of junior high school students attending a private non-Orthodox all day school, this article critically examines the ways…

This paper explores the impact of conflict on international student mobility. Through an examination of undergraduate, international students studying in Israel, this case study questions how and if a situation of ongoing violent conflict affects international student travel decisions to study in a host country. Contrary to assumptions of…