Masa Israel Journey Blog

Meet the Masa Alumni at TribeFest 2012!

Published : March 21, 2012

Next week, hundreds of Jewish young adults--including 40 Masa Israel alumni--will arrive in Las Vegas for JFNA's TribeFest.

Out of tons of applications, the 40 alumni throughout North America were chosen to receive subsidies for their Jewish communal passion and leadership qualities. F

ollowing TribeFest, each alum has committed to future involvement in his/her local Jewish Federation by spearheading Masa alumni events, speaking about their Israel experiences to community members, and volunteering at local agencies.

Get to know the faces of the up-and-coming Masa Israel leaders:

San Francisco

Mariel “...

My Best Weekend of the Year

Published : March 21, 2012

By Aaron Karas, Young Judaea Year Course

This weekend was easily one of the best Year Course weekends yet, if not the best.

It all started when my friend Yossi proposed to me the idea of traveling up north to the Golan. We talked about it briefly and did a little research about hostels. Friday morning at 10:30, Yossi, Aidan, Edu and I still didn’t have any set plans.

Regardless, we headed to the central bus station in Jerusalem and caught the 963 bus to Kiryat Shmoneh, one of the northernmost cities in Israel. Four hours later, we got off the bus in the Galil.

The next morning, we knew that we wanted to go to Mount Hermon, the famous mountain on the border of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, and the place which usually has the only snow...