Thanksgiving in Jerusalem and the future of Jewish identity
This week’s surge of American teens exploring gap-year programs reveals more about Jewish continuity than any survey ever could.
If you were walking down Jerusalem’s Rechov Emek Refaim or Ben Yehuda Street this Thanksgiving week, you would have heard an unexpected chorus: American English. The speakers weren’t tourists. They were parents and their teenage sons and daughters visiting yeshivot, midrashot (seminaries), mechinot, and other gap-year programs, hoping to choose where these teens will spend the year after high school.
This annual parade of families says something essential about the future of Jewish identity. The “gap” these programs fill is not the year between high school and college. It is the widening gap between Jewish ancestry and Jewish literacy; between saying “I’m Jewish” and living as a Jew with confidence, purpose and knowledge.
For decades, we assumed that Jewish identity could be maintained by minimal affiliation — a few holidays, a Hebrew school education, a bar or bat mitzvah, a youth group trip. But the last few decades have challenged that assumption. Rising assimilation, antisemitism on campus, and the increasing politicization of Jewish identity have exposed what many parents quietly knew: familiarity is not enough. Jewish students need depth. They need grounding. They need to experience Judaism not merely as an inherited label, but as a living way of life.
Organizations such as Masa Israel Journey, along with individual yeshivot, midrashot, and other programs, now bring thousands of young Jews to Israel annually for immersive study and experience. These programs provide something many teens cannot get elsewhere: daily life as a Jew among Jews, in Jewish time, learning Jewish ideas and practicing Jewish responsibility. Whether in the beit midrash, on a hike in the Judean Desert, doing community service in Jerusalem, or debating ethics with Israeli peers, a gap-year student learns through living. That education changes people.
We see it clearly when these students return to the Diaspora. They lead Jewish organizations on campus instead of being intimidated by them. They speak about Israel knowledgeably, not defensively. They date and marry other Jews at significantly higher rates. They invest time and resources in the communities they call their own. They volunteer, they advocate, they teach, they take ownership of their Jewish future rather than outsource it to their parents or institutions.
If we care about Jewish continuity — not in theory, but in practice — then supporting gap-year programming is no longer a luxury. It is strategic, preventive communal investment. We have data showing that immersive learning creates informed alumni who remain part of Jewish life long after their year in Israel ends. Yet not all families can afford this opportunity. That gap must be filled as well.
Some families walk the streets of Jerusalem this week because of scholarship funds made possible by donors who understand exactly what is at stake. One such example is the Alisa Flatow Scholarship Fund, created in memory of my daughter, Alisa, who was murdered in a 1995 Iranian-sponsored terror attack while studying Torah in Israel at Nishmat. Rather than extinguish her dreams, that act of violence has helped hundreds of young women pursue them. The scholarship ensures that Alisa’s passion for learning becomes part of the Jewish future rather than a memory of a Jewish past.
Communities invest in what they believe matters. If Jewish literacy, Zionist identity, and strong Jewish leaders matter, then making gap-year study accessible must be treated as a communal priority, not a private choice. We subsidize early childhood education, synagogue programs, trips to Israel, teen fellowships and Hillel initiatives because they strengthen the Jewish people. A year of deep study and service in Israel should be no different.
So yes, it is unusual to hear so much English in Jerusalem on Thanksgiving. But what you are hearing is not tourism per se. It is a community deciding not just who our teenagers are, but who they will become. It is the sound of investment — not in a trip, but in continuity; not in a slogan, but in identity; and not in nostalgia, but in the Jewish future itself.
