Israel trip builds understanding, camaraderie and connections among EWS staff
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The Braun Family Israel Trip was established in 2017 to send EWS employees to Israel for free every two years over the next decade.
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After traveling across Israel together, a group of teachers and staff from The Emery/Weiner School discovered why EWS has such a strong connection to the Jewish state.
The second installment of the school’s biennial Braun Family Israel Trip sent a dozen EWS employees to Israel last month – at no cost to the participants – where they spent eight full days touring Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Galilee, Golan Heights, West Bank and the northern Negev.
In order to qualify for the trip, participants must have worked at EWS for at least five years and have never visited Israel before. Whereas the program’s inaugural cohort two years ago was comprised mostly of teachers, this year’s group was heavy on non-faculty members of staff, including those from EWS’ business office, admissions office, counseling office and building maintenance team. Similar to the previous trip, though, the majority of EWS employees who went to Israel this summer aren’t Jewish.
“If their goal was to get us to fall in love with a place, and if their goal was to deepen our connection to our school, that definitely happened and that can only be a positive thing for the institution, as a whole,” said Trip Galleher, a world history and economics teacher at EWS, who spoke with the JHV shortly after returning from Israel.
Galleher said he isn’t Jewish. Having taught at the school for seven years, he has seen that EWS has an “obvious” connection to Israel, especially during the school’s annual observances of Israeli Independence Day, Memorial Day and the fact that EWS students study Zionism and travel to Israel at the end of their senior year, he noted.
“I understood the connection intellectually, but I didn’t really understand the emotional resonance before,” Galleher said. “But, now that I’ve gone to Israel, myself, everything totally makes sense why our school does what it does, in terms of Israel education.”
Throughout the journey, the group had opportunities to spend time with local Israelis and learn their stories.
“All of the meals that we had with people from the country, those were, for me, the highlights,” Galleher said. “We had lunch with a Palestinian Christian family [in Bethlehem], which was absolutely eye-opening in a positive way.”
For Caroline Sarnoff, EWS’ director of Admissions and one of only two Jewish members of the group that traveled to Israel this summer, her most profound experience in Israel took place on Shabbat at the Kotel.
“I was awestruck,” Sarnoff told the JHV. “At that point, we had been in Israel for about five days. We were so immersed in the culture and had learned so much. That Shabbat became a defining moment at the Western Wall, because it all came together – the culture, the history, the people, the excitement, the songs that I had learned from childhood.
“It was a beautiful night. It was a spectacular evening, and there was this celebratory feeling that felt a little overwhelming, but in an amazing way,” she said.
EWS’ Braun Family Israel Trip is a first-of-its-kind program, launched in 2017, that sends school faculty and staff to Israel every two years over a decade.
“Our goal is to provide a biennial opportunity for Emery/Weiner faculty and staff to experience the State of Israel, firsthand, empowering them to instill love, understanding and appreciation for Israel in the students,” said Gabriel Braun, who funded the program together with his wife, Marian, and their children Dan and Taryn Braun.
“We want to expose Israel to teachers who theoretically know about Israel, hear about it on the news and have students who travel there, but otherwise haven’t had the opportunity yet to relate to Israel on the personal level,” Braun told the JHV.
Those who have benefited from such an opportunity described the experience as “transformative.”
EWS’ head of school, Stuart Dow, touted the program’s merits after traveling to Israel with the first two cohorts.
“It helps [our faculty and staff] understand why Zionism and why Israel play such a central role in the Emery experience,” Dow said. “Why do we celebrate all these Israeli holidays, Yom Ha’Aztmaut, Yom Hazikaron? Why do we have an Israel club? Why do we require Zionism [as a course]?”
“Helping non-Jewish members of our faculty who are very committed to the school and to our kids and the community, but who probably don’t really understand that powerful connection to this other country so far away, I think this is the most effective way we can help them understand it, both intellectually and particularly emotionally,” he said.
Beyond helping EWS faculty and staff to experience that connection, themselves, the Braun Family Israel Trip also serves as an expression of “goodwill,” Dow noted.
“You take someone who has never been out of the country, in some cases, on an extraordinary experience like this, it’s life-changing and it reaffirms how much we value them,” he said.
Galleher said he appreciated the fact that the trip’s itinerary included visits to sites that are holy to Christians, like himself.
“I’m glad I saw the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden of Gethsemane and I even went into the Jordan River to do a renewal of my Baptismal vows,” he said. “But, none of that stuff had the same emotional resonance that meeting people who live there and who are living in all the beauty and complications that are the State of Israel. That, I found most appealing.”
Galleher said the trip provided him with new material for his classes.
“I teach world history and we are heavy on the development of agriculture in history and how that process played out,” he said. “We got a lot of that on the trip. Israel and that region sit at the apex of agricultural development, so I have a lot of literal, concrete things and pictures and takeaways from visiting these sites that I can actually use in class.”
In terms of a personal takeaway, Galleher said visiting Israel offered him a more complete, yet more complicated, view of Israel.
“Being a history teacher, I thought I had the complication down. I thought if you read all the books and you keep up to speed on the current events of a place, you will get it. I didn’t really get how complicated and messy Israel is until I went there,” he said. “I think of history as a puzzle, and your experiences with history are like puzzle pieces. The more pieces you throw at it, the clearer the picture becomes.
“I’m all for the complications,” he added. “I love that.”
Trip participants said they were surprised by how safe Israel actually is, compared to how it often is portrayed in news stories focused on conflict.
“When you’re there, you realize that the people, whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian, they’re just wanting to build communities, have families, live in security and prosper. That’s what everyone wants,” Galleher said. “I was surprised by how peaceful people can be living within such tensions.”
Sarnoff agreed.
“I was surprised by the fact that people from different cultures and religions coexist, particularly in Jerusalem,” she said. “They live side by side. They eat at the same cafes and they shop at the same markets.”
Sarnoff said the trip helped build camaraderie among EWS faculty and staff.
“This was a great group of colleagues, from different divisions and different departments,” she said. “We helped each other and enjoyed traveling together. I feel fortunate that I was able to travel with really smart people who could embrace the culture and history from so many different perspectives.”
Galleher added, “What’s really awesome about this trip is that it doesn’t have to be just teachers. They want anyone who works at the school and has been there for five years or more.
“Our school is very tightknit,” he said. “You feel like you’re part of a big family. After going on vacation with them, you feel it even more so.”
Galleher and Sarnoff both expressed gratitude to the Braun family for sending them to Israel.
“I’m so thankful to the Brauns for making this a reality,” Sarnoff said.
“I can’t believe it took me this long to get to Israel,” she added. “It certainly won’t be this long until I go back.”
The second installment of the school’s biennial Braun Family Israel Trip sent a dozen EWS employees to Israel last month – at no cost to the participants – where they spent eight full days touring Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Galilee, Golan Heights, West Bank and the northern Negev.
In order to qualify for the trip, participants must have worked at EWS for at least five years and have never visited Israel before. Whereas the program’s inaugural cohort two years ago was comprised mostly of teachers, this year’s group was heavy on non-faculty members of staff, including those from EWS’ business office, admissions office, counseling office and building maintenance team. Similar to the previous trip, though, the majority of EWS employees who went to Israel this summer aren’t Jewish.
“If their goal was to get us to fall in love with a place, and if their goal was to deepen our connection to our school, that definitely happened and that can only be a positive thing for the institution, as a whole,” said Trip Galleher, a world history and economics teacher at EWS, who spoke with the JHV shortly after returning from Israel.
Galleher said he isn’t Jewish. Having taught at the school for seven years, he has seen that EWS has an “obvious” connection to Israel, especially during the school’s annual observances of Israeli Independence Day, Memorial Day and the fact that EWS students study Zionism and travel to Israel at the end of their senior year, he noted.
“I understood the connection intellectually, but I didn’t really understand the emotional resonance before,” Galleher said. “But, now that I’ve gone to Israel, myself, everything totally makes sense why our school does what it does, in terms of Israel education.”
Throughout the journey, the group had opportunities to spend time with local Israelis and learn their stories.
“All of the meals that we had with people from the country, those were, for me, the highlights,” Galleher said. “We had lunch with a Palestinian Christian family [in Bethlehem], which was absolutely eye-opening in a positive way.”
For Caroline Sarnoff, EWS’ director of Admissions and one of only two Jewish members of the group that traveled to Israel this summer, her most profound experience in Israel took place on Shabbat at the Kotel.
“I was awestruck,” Sarnoff told the JHV. “At that point, we had been in Israel for about five days. We were so immersed in the culture and had learned so much. That Shabbat became a defining moment at the Western Wall, because it all came together – the culture, the history, the people, the excitement, the songs that I had learned from childhood.
“It was a beautiful night. It was a spectacular evening, and there was this celebratory feeling that felt a little overwhelming, but in an amazing way,” she said.
EWS’ Braun Family Israel Trip is a first-of-its-kind program, launched in 2017, that sends school faculty and staff to Israel every two years over a decade.
“Our goal is to provide a biennial opportunity for Emery/Weiner faculty and staff to experience the State of Israel, firsthand, empowering them to instill love, understanding and appreciation for Israel in the students,” said Gabriel Braun, who funded the program together with his wife, Marian, and their children Dan and Taryn Braun.
“We want to expose Israel to teachers who theoretically know about Israel, hear about it on the news and have students who travel there, but otherwise haven’t had the opportunity yet to relate to Israel on the personal level,” Braun told the JHV.
Those who have benefited from such an opportunity described the experience as “transformative.”
EWS’ head of school, Stuart Dow, touted the program’s merits after traveling to Israel with the first two cohorts.
“It helps [our faculty and staff] understand why Zionism and why Israel play such a central role in the Emery experience,” Dow said. “Why do we celebrate all these Israeli holidays, Yom Ha’Aztmaut, Yom Hazikaron? Why do we have an Israel club? Why do we require Zionism [as a course]?”
“Helping non-Jewish members of our faculty who are very committed to the school and to our kids and the community, but who probably don’t really understand that powerful connection to this other country so far away, I think this is the most effective way we can help them understand it, both intellectually and particularly emotionally,” he said.
Beyond helping EWS faculty and staff to experience that connection, themselves, the Braun Family Israel Trip also serves as an expression of “goodwill,” Dow noted.
“You take someone who has never been out of the country, in some cases, on an extraordinary experience like this, it’s life-changing and it reaffirms how much we value them,” he said.
Galleher said he appreciated the fact that the trip’s itinerary included visits to sites that are holy to Christians, like himself.
“I’m glad I saw the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Garden of Gethsemane and I even went into the Jordan River to do a renewal of my Baptismal vows,” he said. “But, none of that stuff had the same emotional resonance that meeting people who live there and who are living in all the beauty and complications that are the State of Israel. That, I found most appealing.”
Galleher said the trip provided him with new material for his classes.
“I teach world history and we are heavy on the development of agriculture in history and how that process played out,” he said. “We got a lot of that on the trip. Israel and that region sit at the apex of agricultural development, so I have a lot of literal, concrete things and pictures and takeaways from visiting these sites that I can actually use in class.”
In terms of a personal takeaway, Galleher said visiting Israel offered him a more complete, yet more complicated, view of Israel.
“Being a history teacher, I thought I had the complication down. I thought if you read all the books and you keep up to speed on the current events of a place, you will get it. I didn’t really get how complicated and messy Israel is until I went there,” he said. “I think of history as a puzzle, and your experiences with history are like puzzle pieces. The more pieces you throw at it, the clearer the picture becomes.
“I’m all for the complications,” he added. “I love that.”
Trip participants said they were surprised by how safe Israel actually is, compared to how it often is portrayed in news stories focused on conflict.
“When you’re there, you realize that the people, whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian, they’re just wanting to build communities, have families, live in security and prosper. That’s what everyone wants,” Galleher said. “I was surprised by how peaceful people can be living within such tensions.”
Sarnoff agreed.
“I was surprised by the fact that people from different cultures and religions coexist, particularly in Jerusalem,” she said. “They live side by side. They eat at the same cafes and they shop at the same markets.”
Sarnoff said the trip helped build camaraderie among EWS faculty and staff.
“This was a great group of colleagues, from different divisions and different departments,” she said. “We helped each other and enjoyed traveling together. I feel fortunate that I was able to travel with really smart people who could embrace the culture and history from so many different perspectives.”
Galleher added, “What’s really awesome about this trip is that it doesn’t have to be just teachers. They want anyone who works at the school and has been there for five years or more.
“Our school is very tightknit,” he said. “You feel like you’re part of a big family. After going on vacation with them, you feel it even more so.”
Galleher and Sarnoff both expressed gratitude to the Braun family for sending them to Israel.
“I’m so thankful to the Brauns for making this a reality,” Sarnoff said.
“I can’t believe it took me this long to get to Israel,” she added. “It certainly won’t be this long until I go back.”