Youth Tourism to Israel

Educational Experiences of the Diaspora

Erik H. Cohen

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781845413576
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Industrie de l'hôtellerie, du voyage et du tourisme

This book is a cumulative analysis of an international, longitudinal study of a tour program which brings Jewish youth from around the world to Israel. It is a case study of the longest running and most thoroughly documented, intentionally organized heritage tour program in existence, including a wealth of data never previously published. Issues central to Jewish studies are explored in depth, including cross-cultural analysis of the impact and meaning of the program in Jewish communities around the world. Additionally, it touches on core issues related to identity in the post-modern era, the sociology of contemporary tourism, and informal education and adolescent psychology and sociology. The book is relevant to researchers, professionals and university students in the fields of Jewish studies and tourism.

Chapter 1

Introduction. Jewish Educational Youth Travel to Israel: A Special Case of Diaspora Tourism

This book is the cumulative analysis of a decades-long empirical study of an educational and heritage tour programme that brings Jewish youth from around the world to Israel: the ‘Israel Experience’, as it has come to be known. The Israel Experience is looked at from many angles, both as a specific case study and as an indicator of broader issues and trends. It is analysed as an educational tool, as an example of youth leisure culture, as a key aspect of Jewish identity formation and as a case study in the growing field of heritage tourism.

Issues central to Jewish studies are explored in depth, for example Israel–Diaspora relations, Jewish identity in various diaspora countries, and the role of the Israel visit in Jewish education. For those involved with Jewish studies as researchers, educators or community leaders, this book offers the most comprehensive data and data analysis available on the widely-recognized subject of Jewish youth tours to Israel. Some pertinent factors, such as the history of the Jewish Diaspora and the role played by the modern State of Israel, are distinctive to Jewish studies and are not precisely paralleled in other examples of heritage tourism. The political, sociological, religious and psychological importance of the relationship of Diaspora Jews to Israel, and thus of the tour to Israel, looms large in the Jewish world, and raises numerous issues and questions close to the core of collective Jewish identity. At the same time, the longitudinal, cross-cultural survey of the Israel Experience provides valuable insights into the relationship of non-Jewish migrant and other diaspora populations to their countries of origin, and the role of heritage tourism in the development of ethnic identity, particularly among other diaspora and migrant youth populations.

The book presents the historical and sociological background to the programme, and a cross-cultural analysis of the impact and meaning of the programme in Jewish Diaspora communities around the world. It develops several typologies concerning various issues touched on by the phenomenon of educational heritage tourism for adolescents. The dilemmas and paradoxes facing organizers and policy makers are explored, along with the significance of various alternatives on the future of the programme and the Jewish public. Thus, the Israel Experience is at the junction of many fields of study: education, tourism, adolescence and ethnicity. The findings of the empirical study are discussed in the context of some of the important concepts and theories from these fields, which are provided not as an exhaustive review but as necessary background to position this case study within the relevant fields.

The field of tourism studies is rapidly growing and changing. Heritage tourism, educational tourism, youth travel and religious tourism are all gaining importance and recognition. This book presents a case study of the longest-running and most thoroughly documented, intentionally organized heritage tour programme in existence. As such, it touches on issues central to contemporary tourism studies, for example: the identity of the visitor vis-à-vis the host in heritage tourism, youth travel to a politically volatile region, travel to a ‘homeland’, modern-day pilgrimage, education in tourism and more.

One of the primary goals of the youth tours to Israel is to impact the personal, ethnic and religious identity of the participants. Both implicitly and explicitly, in ways that are planned and in ways that are unintended, the educational visit to Israel is a powerful experience. The trip to Israel has come to occupy a key role in Jewish education throughout the Diaspora. The impact on participants and, by extension, on their home communities, is significant, even remarkable, though limited by circumstances. A pivotal experience, it is still only one of the many influences on the identity of the participants. Additionally, only a minority of Jewish Diaspora youth joins the tours. Thus, this study touches on some of the core issues related to identity in the post-modern era, such as the role of youth travel in identity development, the religious and ethnic identity of minorities, particularly during adolescence, concepts of Diaspora and the search for roots.

Since the era of the ‘grand tour’, travel has been lauded as a valuable part of a well-rounded education (Brodsky-Porges, 1981). Myriad study-abroad and educational travel programmes exist, and have been credited with increasing cross-cultural understanding, broadening the perspectives of the participants, acquiring skill in foreign languages and more (Carlson & Widaman, 1988; Davis, 1996; Kauffmann et al., 1992; Laubscher, 1994). Today's Jewish educators are wrestling with the problem of how to make the religious and cultural tradition understandable and meaningful to young Diaspora Jews who live in highly secularized societies (Rosenak, 1987), or in religious non-Jewish societies (Cohen, E.H. & Bar-Shalom, 2006). The trip to Israel has been cited as an integral part of this goal.

The study also explores issues related to informal education in general. As noted by Kahane (1997), informal education plays an increasingly important role in the rapidly-changing societies and career worlds into which today's youth must integrate. My studies of the tour programme as a whole, and of the individual educational units that make up the tour itinerary, touch on educational issues. Some of these issues are theoretical and pedagogical, including the representation of historical events in various contexts, the transmission of religious values in an educational programme, and the interplay between expectation and outcome. Others are practical, such as the impact of tour length and group size, the recruiting and training of personnel, and the preparation and follow-up for participants.

Additionally, as the participants and counsellors in the tours are teenagers and young adults, the findings of this study contribute to the wider field of adolescent psychology and sociology. In particular, we look at group dynamics, the participant–counsellor relationship, differences between groups comprised primarily of younger and older participants, and identity formation at this critical time of social development.

Targeted studies of the tour programme addressed questions such as ‘what is the Jewish identity of the participants?’ and ‘what are the components of a good programme?’ This cumulative analysis allows us to frame the questions differently. What does the Israel Experience tour programme tell us about Jewish identity? About heritage tourism? About informal education? Subsequent chapters will explore and elaborate upon each of these questions.

In the half century during which the Israel Experience programme has been in operation, the Jewish people have passed through some of the most dynamic, catastrophic and radical changes in their history. At the same time, global culture is in a state of rapid flux, affecting education, personal and social identity, travel and leisure patterns, and more. The visit to Israel is one of the settings in which young Jewish people may express, experiment, learn about and transform their personal and social identities. As such, it provides a window into how changes in Jewish identity are being addressed and processed within Jewish society worldwide. It also provides a baseline for looking at similarities and differences between this and other examples of educational heritage tourism at the turn of the millennium.

Data Analysis Methods Used in this Book

This book presents and analyses data from questionnaires completed by more than 65,000 participants in Israel Experience programmes. Each questionnaire contained hundreds of items related to the demographics, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of the participants, and their evaluation of the program. The data may be compared along a number of variables, including nationality, gender and year of participation. In dealing with such large amounts of data and multiple variables, I have found techniques based on the Facet Theory school of thought, developed by the late Louis Guttman, to be invaluable. The intention here is not to champion one technique over another, but rather to familiarize the reader with the techniques used in the analysis of the data from the ongoing survey of the Israel Experience program (for a comprehensive bibliography of Facet Theory publications, see Cohen, E.H., 2005a).

The technique I most commonly use in analysis of the data presented here is known as Smallest Space Analysis (SSA). The first step in conducting an SSAis the construction of a table of correlations between the chosen variables. Linear or non-linear correlations may be used. In general, I prefer to use the Monotonicity Coefficient (MONCO) procedure, a regression-free coefficient of correlation (Guttman, 1986: 80–87). Correlations range from −100 to +100. The correlation between two items indicates the extent to which respondents who give a certain answer to one item are likely to give the same answer to the second item. The non-linear MONCO correlations are always greater than linear correlations because MONCO measures whether or not two items increase or decrease in the same direction. It is more sensitive (though less useful as a predictor), and recognizes a wider variety of correlations as ‘perfect’. Zero indicates that there is no correlation between the responses to two given items.

The Hebrew University Data Analysis Package (HUDAP) (Amar & Toledano, 2002; Borg, 1981; Canter, 1985; Guttman, 1968, 1982; Levy, 1994) is then used to perform the SSA. The SSA is used to graphically plot the information from the table of correlations on a cognitive map. The SSA represents each item as a point in a Euclidean space called the ‘smallest space’. The points are plotted according to the principle that, the greater the correlation between two items, the closer they are on the map; conversely, the lower the correlation, the further apart they are (Guttman, 1968; Levy, 1985, 1994). The map helps in perceiving the various relationships among the items by revealing distinct regions of correlated data (Canter, 1985; Guttman, 1968, 1982; Levy, 1994; Shye, 1978). By definition, a structure can be found for any data in n- 1 dimensions, where n equals the number of items in the table of correlations. Hence, the smaller the number of dimensions necessary to discern a structure, the stronger the significance and reliability of the findings. The SSA map is interpreted on the basis of content. The plotting of the points is objective, but the division of the map into regions is subjective, guided by the theoretical basis of the study.

Various structures may be found: a sequence of horizontal, vertical or diagonal regions (i.e. from ‘least’ to ‘most’), a series of concentric circles (i.e. from central to peripheral) and a set of wedge-shaped regions emanating from a common centre. This last structure, known as a polar structure, indicates that the content regions have equal status (that is, neither weak vs. strong, nor central vs. peripheral). They may be arranged in sets of opposing pairs. In this case, items with weak or negative correlations are pushed to opposite sides of the map. An item equally correlated to all other items would be placed towards the centre of the map.

After the basic map is generated and fixed, it is possible to introduce and integrate other variables (such as sub-populations) as ‘external variables’. This feature distinguishes SSA from other, similar, multi-dimensional data analysis techniques. First, the correlation is calculated between each external variable (for example, female participants) and the set of selected primary variables that were used to generate the SSAmap. The correlations between the external variables themselves are not considered. The external variables are plotted, one by one, in such a way that the structure of the map is not affected, in correspondence to their correlation with the primary variables, which are fixed. In this way we see the relationship of each of the subgroups to the primary variables, but not their relationship to one another. The external variables tool permits comparison of many different sub-populations within the context of the primary structure (Cohen, E.H. & Amar, 1993, 1999, 2002).

Another data analysis technique used is the Multi-dimensional Partial Order Scalogram Analysis (M-POSAC). This tool also graphically displays the structure of the data but, while the SSA portrays the data according to content variables, the M-POSAC portrays the data according to profiles of the respondents surveyed. It shows the various patterns of responses, and thus enables the researcher to develop a typology of response styles.

To give a simple example of a series of five yes/no questions, respondents answering affirmatively to all five questions (yes, yes, yes, yes, yes) could be given the profile 2-2-2-2-2; those answering in the negative to only the first question (no, yes, yes, yes, yes) could be given the profile 1-2-2-2-2 and those answering negative to only the last question (yes, yes, yes, yes, no) could be given the profile 2-2-2-2-1.

However, there is an inherent difficulty in comparing this set of profiles. A ‘perfect’ order or scale may be found only if every pair of profiles within the sample is comparable, that is if they vary in only one direction (elements of one profile are the same or higher but none are lower than the elements of another profile). Perfect orders are rare. In most cases, profiles vary in both directions.

In the example given above, the first profile may be compared with the second or third because the data vary in only one direction; that is, all of the responses in the first are equal to or higher than the responses in the other profiles. These may be arranged in what is called a ‘perfect order’. The second and third profiles are ‘non-comparable’. It is not possible to say one profile is higher or lower than the other because in the second profile the first digit is lower than in the third profile, while in the third profile the final digit is lower.

The M-POSAC is designed to deal with such situations by creating a partial order, which could be called the ‘best fit’ among the set of non-comparable profiles. The profiles are plotted along two axes, each axis representing one of the variables that the computer programme determines are the most relevant in discriminating between the profiles.

These data analysis techniques have consistently proved valuable in dealing with large survey populations and many variables.

Chapter 2

What is the ‘Israel Experience’?

Jewish society in the Diaspora is facing an existential issue: the question of continuity. Many Jews are gradually assimilating into the predominantly non-Jewish societies in which they live, adopting their values and culture. They live on the fringes of the Jewish community, or are almost completely alienated from it. Community decisionmakers and educators are searching for ways to increase affiliation and active involvement among the general Jewish public. One tactic entails outreach to increase participation in local Jewish community events. Another way of trying to solve this weighty problem is to bring Diaspora Jewry closer to Israel, making it an integral part of Jewish identity in the Diaspora for the next generation.

Each year, thousands of young Jews from around the world participate in educational group tours to Israel.¹ The name ‘Israel Experience’ has been widely adopted for this broad programme,² which began shortly after the founding of the modern State of Israel and whose alumni to date number over half a million. The tours are usually organized abroad by various bodies such as youth movements, religious or community organizations, Jewish schools, etc. in cooperation with a central Israeli entity, the largest of which is the Department of Education of the Jewish Agency for Israel.³

Beginning in 1999, a free 10-day tour to Israel has been offered through the Taglit-birthright israel programme. Taglit (from the Hebrew word for ‘discovery’) brought over 120,000 participants to Israel in the first seven years of the programme.⁴ Israel Experience tours differ from the Taglit-birthright israel tours in several important ways. Most of the Israel Experience tours are linked with the Jewish Agency, the trips are longer in duration, they are targeted to a slightly younger population and participants pay a (sometimes subsidized) fee.

In 2004, the Government of Israel and the Jewish Agency for Israel, with the support of several major Jewish philanthropic institutions, founded yet another educational tour programme to Israel, this one offering long-term visits of between a semester and a year. Named MASA (from the Hebrew word for ‘journey’) the programme provides information, assistance and in some cases financial support for Diaspora youth interested in long-term programmes, as well as helping to develop and improve the programmes available. Through MASA, students may come to Israel for their post high school ‘gap year’ before continuing their studies at home, or they may study at an Israeli academic institution or may come to Israel after completing their university studies.⁵ It may be said that both Taglit-birthright israel and MASA are the offspring of the Israel Experience tour programme.

While reference will be made to these newer phenomena in organized Jewish youth travel to Israel, the primary research for this book concerns the classic Israel Experience programmes. Despite differences between the programmes, as will be seen, the main results of the independent evaluations of the Israel Experience and Taglit-birthright israel programmes have revealed similar characteristics, highlighting the function of the visit to Israel as a larger ...