For those of you who are still with me in reading my reflections on my recent journey to Israel, you’ve now come to what might be the best part of all.  Let me explain.

                                                               What is Dror Israel?

Approximately eight years ago, I was introduced to an Israeli organization called “Dror Israel.” I was told Dror was not really an “organization,” but rather a “movement.”  Already I was a bit confused.  In Haifa, I was introduced to two projects of Dror. One was an alternative high school for young people who had not been successful in a more traditional setting.  I remember being impressed with the level of creativity and engagement of the students who were clearly being treated as individuals by the caring staff.  I also met with young community activists working with low-income Haifa residents on strategies for successful advocacy in other to identify the needs of their neighborhood and effectuate positive change by working together with the Haifa Municipality.  These young leaders were educators living together communally as an urban kibbutz in an economically challenged neighborhood of Haifa. Over time, I came to better understand that Dror’s mission and activities were hard to explain because there was really nothing analogous to it in the U.S.

By way of further example, at the outset of Russia’s attack on Ukraine almost four years ago, I learned about the amazing work they did in very quickly establishing informal day care educational settings for children in transit locations in Poland to relieve their parents of their stressful refugee status.  The population served were by no means exclusively Jewish.  More recently I had heard a presentation locally by Dror representatives describing how immediately after October 7, the movement established multiple preschools for the beleaguered children of Kibbutz Be’eri on the grounds of the Dead Sea hotel where the entire Kibbutz was evacuated.  This project met the urgent needs of children for a sense of familiarity and normalcy while providing their traumatized parents with necessary respite following their jarring relocation.

Clearly, I understood that Dror’s skillful emergency responses were based on values of humanitarianism, education and social justice.  However, it was still a challenge for me to put all the pieces together to truly understand the “secret sauce” of Dror Israel. So when Eyal Tarchitsky, Dror’s Engagement Director, floated the idea of creating a first-ever Dror travel mission to Israel this past November, I enthusiastically jumped on the opportunity.   I was more than ready to work with him and a few other local supporters to shape the mission and recruit other participants.  Truth be told, I was eager to be back in Israel after a much too long absence, and I could not think of a more promising and unique travel experience.  Post October 7, I firmly believed in the obligation of committed Israel supporters like me to show up in Israel and be counted.

After six days of our Dror Israel mission, I finally came to understand Dror in all its facets, which is admittedly hard to enumerate in an elevator pitch.  They describe themselves as “a leading force for social change in Israel” which numbers over 1300 trained educators who choose to live and work in 14........

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