Connect with us

RSS

Conservative movement is suspending its Israel gap-year program, citing budget woes and ‘recruitment challenges’

(JTA) — The Conservative movement is suspending its Israel gap year program for high school graduates, months after narrowly averting a closure for this year with an urgent fundraising appeal.

The program, called Nativ, is run by the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement’s congregational arm. Over more than four decades, Nativ has historically attracted high school graduates who are affiliated with Conservative synagogues, schools or camps, or who are seeking a program that is gender-egalitarian as well as kosher and Shabbat-observant.

In the past, Nativ has enrolled upwards of 80 students. But in recent years, the program has shrunk substantially and this year enrolls fewer than 20 teens, all housed at the movement’s Fuchsberg Center for Conservative Judaism.

Now, “new economic realities, recruitment challenges, and the changing nature of what young adults are looking for in their gap year” have all contributed to ending the program, according to an email sent to Nativ alumni on Thursday morning by Conservative movement leaders, including USCJ CEO Jacob Blumenthal.

But the leaders said they were working with “movement partners in the field of Israel education and young adult leadership to reimagine the program for the future.”

In an interview, Blumenthal, himself a 1985 alumnus of the program, said he believed a Conservative movement gap-year program could resume as soon as fall 2025. “Assuming we want to offer a program to begin in the fall of 2025, it means we need to start recruitment next fall, so I’m expecting we’ll be doing research and planning over the next eight months,” he said.

The gap-year marketplace has evolved in the 40-plus years since Nativ launched, with a growing group of Orthodox yeshivas and seminaries enrolling a larger number of U.S. teens, a pluralistic program operated by Young Judaea thriving, and newer egalitarian programs such as one by the Shalom Hartman Institute drawing some teens who might have attended Nativ in the past.

“It was ahead of its time in offering a gap year for students between high school and college,” Blumenthal said about Nativ. “Now, there are many organizations that offer these programs and we need to find out a little more about what we can best offer.”

The suspension comes at a time when the Conservative movement is shrinking. In the 1950s and 1960s, the movement was the largest denomination of American Judaism, but today, according to the 2020 Pew survey, while 17% of American Jews still identify as members of the Conservative movement, the movement has experienced a substantial net loss. One of its two rabbinical schools significantly slashed tuition this year in a bid to draw more students after selling its campus. And the lone Conservative day school in Manhattan announced that it would this year.

A decade ago, facing a budget shortfall, the movement suspended its college program, KOACH, following a year when it narrowly survived through emergency fundraising. The movement does not operate on college campuses today.

In March, the movement put out a call for emergency aid for the current Nativ cohort. “We will not be able to run Nativ 43 unless we raise $100,000,” the program’s director and assistant director, Sara Miriam Liben and Deb Shafran, wrote in an email to alumni. USCJ contributed to closing the gap but declined to say at the time by how much.

The program opened as scheduled in mid-September. After Israel was attacked on Oct. 7, participants quickly pivoted their volunteer programming, packing meals for soldiers and playing with children whose families were evacuated from the country’s north and south. Some gap-year participants headed home and returned at a later date.


The post Conservative movement is suspending its Israel gap-year program, citing budget woes and ‘recruitment challenges’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

RSS

Saudi Arabia Rejects Israel PM Netanyahu’s Remarks on Displacing Palestinians

US President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk in the midst of a joint news conference in the White House in Washington, US, Jan. 28, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Saudi Arabia affirmed its categorical rejection of remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about displacing Palestinians from their land, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

Israeli officials have suggested the establishment of a Palestinian state on Saudi territory. Netanyahu appeared to be joking on Thursday when he responded to an interviewer on pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 who mistakenly said “Saudi state” instead of “Palestinian state,” before correcting himself.

While the Saudi statement mentioned Netanyahu’s name, it did not directly refer to the comments about establishing a Palestinian state in Saudi territory.

Egypt and Jordan also condemned the Israeli suggestions, with Cairo deeming the idea as a “direct infringement of Saudi sovereignty.”

The kingdom said it valued “brotherly” states’ rejection of Netanyahu’s remarks.

“This occupying extremist mindset does not comprehend what the Palestinian territory means for the brotherly people of Palestine and its conscientious, historical and legal association with that land,” it said.

Discussions of the fate of Palestinians in Gaza has been upended by Tuesday’s shock proposal from President Donald Trump that the U.S. would “take over the Gaza Strip” from Israel and create a “Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling Palestinians elsewhere.

Arab states have roundly condemned Trump’s comments, which came during a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza war that Israel has been waging against the terrorist group Hamas, which controls the narrow strip.

Trump has said Saudi Arabia was not demanding a Palestinian state as a condition for normalizing ties with Israel. But Riyadh rebuffed his statements, saying it would not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.

The post Saudi Arabia Rejects Israel PM Netanyahu’s Remarks on Displacing Palestinians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Egypt to Host Emergency Arab Summit on 27 February to Discuss ‘Serious’ Palestinian Developments

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Egypt will host an emergency Arab summit on 27 February to discuss what it described as “serious” developments for Palestinians, according to a statement from the Egyptian foreign ministry on Sunday.

The summit comes amid regional and global condemnation of US President Donald Trump’s suggestion to “take over the Gaza Strip” from Israel and create a “Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling Palestinians elsewhere.

The post Egypt to Host Emergency Arab Summit on 27 February to Discuss ‘Serious’ Palestinian Developments first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Thai Nationals Held Captive by Hamas in Gaza Return Home

Relatives hug a released Thai hostage, who was kidnapped during the deadly October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and held in Gaza, as the hostages arrive in Thailand following their release, at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport, in Samut Prakan, Thailand, February 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

When Surasak Rumnao, 31, left his home in Thailand’s rural Udon Thani province three years ago to go across the world to the southern Israeli town of Yesha for agriculture work, his family never imagined they would lose touch with him for over a year when he was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in October 2023.

He and four others were reunited with their families this weekend after their release from captivity in Gaza.

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists abducted more than 250 people, including Israelis and foreign nationals, in their October 2023 attack on Israel.

During the attack, Hamas terrorists killed more than 40 Thais and kidnapped 31 Thai laborers, some of whom died in captivity, according to the Thai government. Later that year, the first group of Thai hostages was returned.

Surasak’s mother, Khammee Rumnao, was relieved that her son was not mistreated and has returned to his home, about 620 km(385 miles) northeast of the capital, Bangkok.

“He mainly got to eat bread, he was looked after well and was fed all three meals (each day). He got to shower, he was looked after well,” Khammee said, and that he ate whatever his captors had.

Her son does not plan to go back and wants to use the knowledge he gained in his agricultural work in Israel at their home, she said.

His grandparents and other relatives came to their home to welcome him home.

His stepfather, Janda Prachanan, was elated.

“I couldn’t find the words to describe how happy I am, that my son is safe and finally home,” he said.

Earlier on Sunday, the other returnees, dressed in winter jackets, were met with tears of joy from their families who were waiting for their arrival at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.

“We are all deeply touched to come back to our birthplace … to be standing here,” said Pongsak Thaenna, one of the returnees said. “I don’t know what else to say, we are all truly thankful.”

Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa, who met the hostages in Israel after their release last week, expressed relief.

“This is emotional … to come back to the embrace of their families,” he said. “We never gave up and this was the fruit of that.”

Before the conflict, approximately 30,000 Thai laborers worked in Israel’s agriculture sector, making them one of the largest migrant worker groups in the country. Nearly 9,000 Thais were repatriated following the October 7 attacks.

The workers primarily come from Thailand’s northeastern region, an area comprising villages and farming communities that is among the poorest in the country.

Thailand’s foreign ministry said a Thai national is still believed to be held captive by Hamas.

“We still have hope and continue to work to bring them back,” Maris said, adding that this includes the bodies of two deceased Thai nationals.

The post Thai Nationals Held Captive by Hamas in Gaza Return Home first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News