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Jewish Journeys
Goucher Hillel offers many opportunities for students to takes steps along their personal Jewish journeys. In addition to becoming involved in Jewish campus life, envisioning and carrying out their own initiatives, and exploring the wider Baltimore Jewish community, students may participate in the following off-campus programs offered through Goucher Hillel.
Our most popular programs are Taglit-Birthright Israel, MASA, and Alternative Breaks.
TAGLIT-BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL
Taglit-Birthright Israel's gift, an absolutely free 10-day trip to Israel, is available to every Jewish young adult (ages 18-26) who has not previously been on an organized peer trip to Israel. Dozens of Goucher students have participated in this life-changing experience since the program's launch in 2000. Trips run during winter and summer breaks. Learn more at www.birthrightisrael.com and be sure to register for Goucher's Summer 2010 trip with Amazing Israel HERE on February 17, 2010.
To stay in the loop about upcoming trips, contact Yona Gorelick.
For highlights from the January 2010 trip, visit bus35.blogspot.com.
MASA
The Government of Israel, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and Jewish communitites worldwide provide joint scholarships for long-term programs in Israel. Whether you wish to study abroad in Israel during your time at Goucher, pursue a graduate degree, volunteer, intern, explore the land, or discover yourself, automatic financial support from MASA can help you participate in any of the 160 programs accredited by MASA. For more information check out www.masaisrael.org/masa/english or contact Yael Lazarus, Goucher student and MASA Representative.
ALTERNATIVE SPRING BREAK
Goucher Hillel provides those students who wish to spend their academic breaks making an impact with a host of service-learning opportunities. For Spring Break 2010, Goucher Hillel is partnering with American Jewish World Service (AJWS) to send thirteen student volunteers to Nicaragua. Goucher Hillel is committed to keeping finances from being an obstacle to anyone's participation. Please contact Yona Gorelick, Goucher Hillel Engagement Director, with any related questions or to express interest in participating in next year's trip.
Past trips have included Alternative Spring Breaks to New Orleans, Honduras, Mississippi and Guatemala. In March of 2006, thirty students from the Baltimore area campuses went to Gulfport, MS, to help victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. During the week in Gulfport, the group was able to replace 17 roofs and help rebuild an entire home. In addition to working hard in those ways, the group able rescued and found a new home for a mistreated puppy the group named Tikvah (Hebrew for "hope").
Notes from Savannah, GA (from the Goucher Hillel Spring 2009 Newsletter):
Frisbees, grassy fields, and the insistent sun rays of the southern United States greeted us as we pulled up in front of the hostel that was to be our home for the following week, but we were not at the start of a typical college student vacation. Eight Goucher students journeyed to Savannah, GA, this March, to volunteer for the entirety of their spring break. Goucher Hillel’s partnership with Jewish Funds for Justice allowed us to be matched with Union Mission, an organization that provides Savannahians experiencing homelessness with housing, medical attention, job training, and other essential services. During our week of service-learning, we discovered deep intersections between poverty, hunger, and staggering illness rates. We tasted greens straight from the earth and weeded local farm beds that grow produce for a restaurant we later patronized. We heard from Farmer D, a pioneering Jewish organic farmer and activist, and we tended a garden at one of the Union Mission shelters that is used for teaching and empowering low-income communities to eat healthily.At Magdalene House, an emergency shelter for women and children, we had the opportunity to prepare and serve dinner for 40. Our group sat in on a nutrition class at the shelter, which offered us new lenses for the marathon of menu planning, budget-conscious grocery shopping, and meal preparation that was to follow. "Although it was the most tiring day of the trip, it was the most morally fulfilling day for me. It’s one thing to do things for the shelter, but to feed [the residents] and see their happy faces when eating a full meal pretty much made the trip for me," reflected Goucher sophomore Maegan Burke.
The next day, we volunteered at Starfish Café, which has trained hundreds of individuals to work in the food services industry and support themselves as they move out of homelessness. As Deborah Cohen ’12 pointed out, "nothing adds more flavor to food than knowing the proceeds for the restaurant are used to train people to enter into the workforce. There is no better investment than helping to shape a successful future for someone with delectable food on the side."
Shabbat brought with it student-led services, a visit to the third oldest synagogue in the U.S., a very memorable walking tour through Savannah’s historic district, and the opportunity to pause from our work and think about how to bring our new knowledge and enthusiasm back to Goucher and beyond. The Rabbis’ teaching of lo alecha hamlacha ligmor, v’lo ata ben chorin l’hibatel mimena--"it is not upon you to complete the work; neither are you free to desist from it"--rang as true for us that Shabbat as it does today. Trip participants are hard at work making arrangements for Goucher’s leftover dining hall food to be donated to local centers in Baltimore. Having organized a health resources library at Union Mission, students are already doing advance planning for December 1, World AIDS Day.
Perhaps the most powerful encounter of the trip was that with Howard, an upbeat and dynamic advocate for individuals experiencing homelessness. Howard, now in his forties, was beaten and left for dead in a drug-related incident as a young man. He now deals with right side paralysis and speech aphasia, able to pronounce only five particular words without the assistance of a computer or interpreter, but his personal accounts of recovery, faith, and homelessness came across loud & clear. As Howard taught us, "Do what you can to help, and no way of helping is truly ever small!"