Shay Yaish left his tech job a year ago, with plans to strike out on his own with a new startup. Frustrated with his inability to come up with an idea for his venture, he told his wife he needed a vacation to help him think. And that’s when it hit him.

“With all the antisemitism around the world, we started searching for safe places for Israelis to visit,” he said. “And then I thought: Why isn’t there a website online where I can find this information easily?”

That idea led Yaish to create Safe for Jews, a Hebrew and English website that uses artificial intelligence, government travel advisories, and community reports to rate the relative safety of countries and cities for Jewish travelers.

Hundreds of people now look at the site every day for help deciding where to vacation, he said.

Traveling while Jewish, especially identifiably so, has always been fraught in certain parts of the world. A rise in global antisemitism in the wake of the October 7, 2023, attacks and international anger over Israel’s response in Gaza have seemingly shrunk the number of places Jews from Israel or abroad can reasonably expect to feel safe from antisemitic attacks or harassment.

Many travelers now think twice before traveling to parts of the world where anti-Jewish and anti-Israel sentiment is especially high, or at least make sure to hide any external symbols that could mark them as Jewish.

“When I first created this site, I thought that anti-Israel hatred would be trendy for a bit,” Yaish said. “I wouldn’t have imagined it would still be like this today.”

Yaish, 34, was born in Tiberias and now lives in Pardes Hanna. He described himself as a “developer at heart” who has been coding since he was 16 years old.

He developed Safe for Jews with the help of AI tools, and........

© The Times of Israel