After a several-year hiatus, an opportunity to study abroad in Israel has returned to the university.
Maryland-in-Haifa is the latest addition to the university’s semester and year-long programs abroad. Finalized this spring, the Haifa program will send its inaugural group of students to the University of Haifa in the spring of 2010. The program coincides with an unrelated cut in funding for the Maryland Hillel’s Taglit-Birthright Israel, which sent Jewish young adults on a free 10-day trip to Israel.
The 15-credit semester abroad program includes a specially designed resident credit course on societal conflict resolution, Hebrew or Arabic language study and elective courses. Students will also have guided fieldwork and internship options.
“We have a few students signed up already,” said Study Abroad Office coordinator Pernille Levine. “While it is much too early to get a sense of how many students we will get, we are very optimistic that we will have a lot of applicants.”
Earlier this year, Taglit-Birthright Israel announced large cuts in the number of available slots for the trip, open to 18- to 26-year-old Jews. Maryland Hillel, which sent 40 students to Israel on a Birthright trip last summer and 80 in January – the highest number of any Hillel in the country – was unable to organize a summer trip this past year, said Allison Buchman, director of student life at Hillel.
The study abroad program offers students who miss out on Birthright, along with non-Jewish students, the opportunity to travel to Israel.
Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, is a port city for international commerce built on Mount Carmel and a major center for the Israeli technology industry, according to the Study Abroad Office website. The description of the program emphasizes Haifa’s ethnically diverse communities and the multicultural nature of both the city and the University of Haifa.
The Haifa program succeeds a former university program housed in Tel Aviv, said Hayim Lapin, director of the university’s Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies. The program was canceled when the State Department put Israel on a travel advisory list during the Second Intifada, which began in 2000. The university has a policy of not sending students to countries on this list, Lapin said.
The impetus for reestablishing a program in Israel came from a group of students who began brainstorming in 2006, said Omri Arens, a recent graduate who helped push for the program’s creation. The Lebanon War stymied the process that summer, he said, and it wasn’t until December 2007 that the Pro-Israel Terrapin Alliance created a committee to look into renewing a semester-long study abroad program in Israel.
In the meantime, the Study Abroad Office had begun short-term, university-sponsored summer trips to Egypt and Israel.
“Students were still studying abroad in Israel, so obviously there was a demand,” Arens said. “But there wasn’t a [semester-long] program through Maryland. That’s why we stepped in and wanted the administration to re-establish a program so [students] could see a side that they aren’t seeing through the media.”
Arens said the issue with the Tel Aviv program’s cancellation was the State Department grouped the entire state of Israel with the more turbulent Gaza Strip and West Bank regions under one entity, which he believes misrepresented the danger.
“It’s obviously not the same thing when you go to Gaza as when you go to Tel Aviv,” Arens said.
While Levine said she doesn’t see Maryland-in-Haifa as a substitute for the Birthright program, she said many other students will be interested. The Study Abroad Office will continue to receive applications on a rolling basis until Oct. 15, she said.
newsdesk.dbk@gmail.com
