United Synagogue Youth: Trips In Israel/ Europe Recently Updated

In 1956, 12 USYers traveled on the first “USY Israel Summer Pilgrimage”. Since then, thousands of Jewish teens experienced Israel with USY. Whether they traveled to Poland, or spent the summer volunteering in Israel, or spent a week completing IDF training, the summer was spent helping Jewish teens create community, build on their Jewish identities, develop a love and understanding of the complex holy land of Israel, and bring home what they’ve learned.

Experiential travel helps our teens understand the Jewish and secular culture, sights, sounds, foods, and so much more of the incredibly special places we are able to visit. On EPIC Eastern Europe/Israel, we spend the first week and a half of this journey criss-crossing Eastern Europe to both bear witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust, and experience the lasting impact of Jewish culture on large cities like Warsaw, Prague, and Berlin, and small villages in between. Through this experience, we carry on the memory of those we lost, while actively renewing and returning Jewish voices to the communities we visit. Of course, like all of our EPIC Israel experiences, this is capped with four weeks in Israel as we go “home” and continue telling our thriving Jewish story.