Israel Engagement Fellowship
About the Israel Engagement Fellowship
Exploring, Experiencing, and Enacting Your Israel
The Israel Engagement Fellowship serves Jewish high school students who are eager for intensive, hands-on learning and engagement with Israel. This program serves a diverse population of learners whose relationship to and experiences with/in Israel vary greatly. In serving this diverse target audience, the program provides content-rich experiences to explore Israel – its land, people, culture, and values – and foster their own personal relationship to Israel.
The Israel Engagement Fellowship works to support Jewish high school students in the Greater Indianapolis area by connecting them with Israel in an authentic way, and learning how to engage with and advocate for Israel in a way that makes sense for them. Participants in the fellowship benefit from a space to ask tough questions, challenge each other, and learn relational advocacy concepts and resources from dynamic speakers.
The Fall of 2021 will be the fourth cohort of IEF, with each of the previous cohorts have brought together a diverse representation of the Jewish community. Israel Engagement fellows walk away from the program with an imperative to appreciate and act according to the understanding that Israel and Diaspora Jewry are inter-connected, and that their generation will have joint responsibility for ensuring a vital Jewish future.
Why should a Highschooler apply?
Want to explore your personal relationship to Israel in a meaningful way? Learn from peers and mentors working on college campuses and beyond to have constructive conversations about Israel, discover the many facets of Israeli history, society, achievements, and challenges, and learn the importance of building allies and coalitions to impact change, and gain dialogue skills. Graduate with the knowledge, experience, and confidence to articulate your Israel connection and to grow your relationship to Israel in college and beyond.
- Are you a future leader?
- Are you looking for a unique addition to your college application?
- Are you interested in strengthening your connection to Israel?
The Israel Engagement Fellowship is just what you are looking for! Participants will explore the special relationship between the American Jewish community and the State of Israel as well as their own relationship to Israel, it’s people, culture, and history.
During the eight-part seminar, you will:
- Gain leadership and conflict resolution skills while learning how to impact change
- Discover the many facets of Israel and explore the role of Israel in Jewish history
- Examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and learn from differing narratives
- Develop a uniquely personal Israel story
Testimonals
During my time in the Israel Engagement Fellowship, I have learned about Israel’s past, its government, and its culture alongside fellow Jewish teens. This program has helped me build a stronger connection with not only Israel, but my fellow members as well.
This program has been more than informative. Every week we all meet together and we’re led in a discussion about different events in Israel. We have learned more than just history but also politics, how to analyze the reliability of news sources and even how antisemitism and anti-Zionism affect us every day.
I have found joy participating in the Israel Engagement Fellowship. This has been an amazing experience with an intriguing syllabus where I learned during each and every session. The topic I chose to research for the final project was the divine Israeli food culture that I had the honor of experiencing while in Israel.