In 2015, Honeymoon Israel began running trips for couples with the goal of creating an “on ramp” to Jewish life, building community and establishing an enduring connection with Israel and its people. Since 2015 we’ve brought more than 3,500 couples to Israel, and before October 7, we had three couples applying for every spot we had. We’re re-launching trips to Israel in late 2026 and have a slew of trips open for applications throughout 2027.

We run trips for 20 couples at a time from the same city focusing on couples who are the least engaged in Jewish life. It’s not a traditional Honeymoon. It’s a Jewish/Israel Honeymoon open to couples in their first five years of lifetime commitment. Most of those couples end up being “mixed heritage” couples because that is the majority of the Jewish community. But we also take many couples where both partners were born Jewish and many couples where one partner has decided to become part of the Jewish family. 

What I didn’t originally expect when we started Honeymoon Israel  was how the experience would result in so many of our alumni becoming the leaders of our Jewish communities. 

I want to share four stories of couples who exemplify this trend: 

Mark and Luisa Kaplan from Atlanta participated in an HMI trip in 2023. “What made the timing of HMI so special for us was the stage of life we were in,” Mark said. “We weren’t kids anymore, but we hadn’t quite started building our own family yet. Luisa was open to Judaism, but we didn’t have a roadmap or a synagogue community. HMI gave us that sense of Jewish community and helped us begin to shape what our own Jewish life would look like. Rabbi Sam Kay, who led our trip became that tether to a synagogue and Luisa ended up converting through the Temple. 

Once we got back, our HMI staff person, Elana kept our group together and through follow up coffees with her, she led us to looking at how to get involved more in a leadership role at Federation.”

When they got back from HMI, Federation was just building up their Young Leadership Division. “The Federation took us in and showed us that we could help shape how we envisioned young Jewish life in Atlanta,” Mark said. Mark is taking over as President of the Federation’s Young Leadership Division next year and Luisa is getting deeply involved in the women’s division. “We went back to Israel on a young leadership mission in 2024,” Mark said. “Atlanta has so much potential for young adults to get involved in Jewish life. One of my main priorities in my work with the Federation is to emphasize Israel involvement and Israel engagement.”

Next, I want to share the story of Adrian Heid and Andrew Burnett from Houston Texas. They went on HMI in 2022. Adrian grew up Jewish in Colombia, and Andrew is not Jewish but feels like a full member of the Jewish family. “HMI translated into a robust Jewish life for us but also led to us giving back financially and being involved as volunteers in the community,” Andrew said. 

Perhaps most importantly, Andrew and Adrian now have a lifelong connection with Israel. “HMI is a place where people could ask hard questions about Israel and be in a supportive environment,” Adrian said. “There are other trips that are ideologically driven but HMI is an open and safe environment. So many spaces and organizations right now are afraid to allow conversations that are uncomfortable, and we’re losing a lot of ground with a lot of people. But HMI enables couples to have those conversations. And we’re confident now to talk about Israel.”

After Honeymoon Israel, Adrian got involved with the Holocaust Museum Houston. “We had the opportunity to participate in Kehillah High for high school students to teach something to them through Federation. We taught a class on Jewish communities in Latin America. During that program, I connected with the incoming Board chair of the Holocaust museum in Houston who became my mentor,” Adrian said. “We are both 3rd generation Holocaust survivors. She wanted to jump start a group of descendants in Houston. So, I got involved in that and joined the Board of Advisors and was involved in that for 2 years. We provided tools and resources to train how to tell grandparents Holocaust stories.” The initiative received funding from the local federation and is called 3GHTX.

Adrian was recently nominated to join the Board of Trustees of Holocaust Museum Houston. Adrian also joined the national young leadership cabinet of JFNA and is on his 2nd year in that role.

After HMI, Andrew started showing up at more community events and he was asked to join a Federation young adult advisory committee. He did a federation leadership program called “FedU.” Following that, he was looking for more leadership opportunities and was told about ADL’s Glass Leadership Institute program. “Being part of that as antisemitism has proliferated was transformational for me. I found a place at ADL locally,” Andrew said. “I’ve joined the Regional Board and this past year I became a Vice Chair tasked with creating the Community Partnerships Task Force to spread news about ADL and build partnerships throughout the community. I’m on the ground level building this new system.” Andrew is also in his second year serving on the board of Houston’s Jewish Family Service.

“We’re being given a lot of opportunities to show up and so much of that is because of HMI,” Andrew said. “People have approached us and told us that our work has gotten them to get involved. There’s a ripple effect. The message is: you’re not just welcomed in as somebody who isn’t Jewish, but it’s also yours. Don’t just show up in a supporting role to your partner.”

The third couple I want to share about is Joe Vogelsang and Anna Bilan-Vogelsang from Los Angeles. They went on an HMI trip in September 2023, about a year after getting married. Joe grew up Jewish on his mom’s side, but he was never bar mitzvahed and he felt insecure about gaps in knowledge. He wanted to be able to answer their son’s questions and pass down traditions with confidence. Anna grew up in Dnipro, Ukraine in a post-Soviet household and immigrated to the US at age 7. She wanted their son Oleander to feel secure and confident in his Jewish identity.

Joe went into HMI seeking more clarity about Israel and left with more nuance and deeper empathy for everyone in the region. The visit to the West Bank and Bethlehem was especially eye-opening. “Honeymoon Israel’s experience is nothing like a “propaganda trip,” Joe said. “And we left knowing that Israel is a necessary safe haven for Jews grounded in historical reality.”

“HMI was truly life-changing,” Anna said. “We formed so many deep bonds with other LA couples who are at a similar life stage and asking similar questions.”

After coming home, Anna signed up as an HMI alumni community connector in LA and wants to serve as an ambassador for HMI to help get more couples on the trip. Anna is also interviewing for a JBabies Community Connector role at JFED. The lead for this job came directly through Chelsea Snyder, their HMI trip leader.

After HMI, Joe got a JFED mailer and applied to a year-long young philanthropy program. Later, Joe Attended an Exodus Dinner (Van Jones’s Black-Jewish bridge initiative, co-hosted by JFED’s Stephen Singer) and is now working on getting more involved in JFED’s entertainment alliance. Joe now wants to host his own Exodus-style dinner for the entertainment community.

The last story is about Janusz Sulanowski and Avi Smith who went on Honeymoon Israel from Boston in 2022. Janusz was born in Poland, raised on Cape Cod in an agnostic, culturally Catholic family. He knew very little about Israel aside from its centrality as the setting for a great deal of Christian theology. 

Janusz married Avi Smith, who comes from a traditional egalitarian Jewish family. Avi went to Jewish day school, did a gap year in Israel with Young Judea, and even led a Birthright trip during his college years. 

After Honeymoon Israel, Janusz connected with the HMI Community Director in Boston, Sarah, who recruited him into Kehila, the Boston Federation’s leadership pipeline pilot.  From there, he was recruited onto CJ-Pride, the Federation’s queer Jewish young adult committee. CJ-Pride hosts social events, a Pride Month drag performance in June and occasional service events. It began as a haven for openly Zionist queer Jews but has evolved into a broader community connector initiative that fills a gap as explicitly queer spaces decline in Boston. Their wedding was officiated by Jenn Queen, their HMI trip rabbi — and Janusz says he’d feel remiss not uplifting her contributions specifically.

Janusz was recently invited to participate in Boston’s Israel Connections program, which creates space for Boston’s Jewish community to experience and interact with Israelis and Israeli culture outside the usual geopolitical focus. 

Boston’s latest community survey found that about 10% of the Jewishly-identified population are Israeli immigrants or their descendants — and Janusz credits HMI with helping open that door. Most people he knows through Federation have traveled to Israel, and he says the quality time HMI gives couples with local Israelis translates into a desire to continue the conversation back home.

He’ll also be joining a fall/winter service trip with Repair the World to Haifa, Boston’s sister city, where he’s excited to meet community-focused young adults from Boston. His HMI trip spent only half a day in Haifa, but he liked its vibe even more than Tel Aviv’s — another connection brokered by HMI, and another introduction into Boston’s professional Jewish network.

“HMI was the gateway,’ Janusz explained. “Without HMI, I would never have known to engage with the Federation.”

These four couples are just a few examples of the thousands of couples who have been transformed by the power of an immersive Israel trip with building local community at its core. 

The Board of Directors of Honeymoon Israel also includes four alumni who are helping steer the organization at the highest level. 

And the incredible Honeymoon Israel staff includes 5 alumni of the program who all left other careers to devote themselves to ensuring that thousands more couples could have the experience they did.

Most of our success is due to the trip itself inspiring couples to get more involved, and we work hard to follow-up the trips with effective local engagement. 20% of our alumni report serving on the Board of a Jewish organization within five years of coming back from HMI.

There are many more HMI couples becoming leaders in both the organized Jewish community and in their own more grassroots initiatives.

Especially in this moment when the Jewish community is in such need of strong leadership, if we get it right and give these young people the opportunity and tools, they will be leading our entire community soon and ensure that it is diverse, vibrant and flourishing for many years to come.

Honeymoon Israel is excited to partner with the whole Jewish ecosystem to find ways to plug in as many of these couples as possible. These young families are not the future of our community. They are the Jewish community right now. Let’s seize the moment.