Ideas for Jewish Travel

There are as many possibilities for Jewish travel as there are Jews and Jewish places. What you choose depends on your educational framework, the age of your students, the time you allocate to traveling and your budget. Here are some varied ideas, designed to get you thinking creatively. They are not intended to be the last word.

• Plan a walking tour of an immigrant neighborhood in your city (which is often where the Jewish immigrants moved to when they arrived). Look for old synagogues, signs of immigrant communities, ethnic foods (Jewish and other).
• Visit the oldest and newest synagogues in your area. Meet the clergy and/or community leaders, find out about the people who use/d this synagogue. What do they have in common? How are they different?
• Plan a Jewish Food Tour. Visit a Jewish population center (close to home or far away) and sample the food from that place. What do/did Jews eat there? What is traditional “Jewish” food and what is borrowed from surrounding cultures?
• If you have the time and budget to fly to another community, consider a Jewish tour of Morocco, Rome, Barcelona/Girona or Buenos Aires. Plan a trip to Jewish communities in the Southern US or Philadelphia to see the Museum of American Jewish History.