When Mark Shpall, head of school at de Toledo High School in the San Fernando Valley in California, thinks about the depth of the pluralistic Jewish day school’s exchange program with Israel, he thinks about an American parent who told the school after Oct. 7, “I don’t want to let my Israeli go. I don’t feel safe letting him go.”
But the school, which says it is “guided by Jewish values and a relationship with Israel and the Jewish people worldwide,” had to put the program on hold after Oct. 7. Nearly two-and-a-half years later, it has resumed its Global Jewish Education Programs in Israel.
“We look at all our programs as exchanges,” Shpall told JNS. “It’s important for us that the partnership will not only be with the students. So it’s a whole family thing. It’s a whole community thing between the two schools.”
Since 2003, de Toledo’s Global Jewish Education programs have centered on a bilateral partnership rather than a traditional educational tour.
Israeli students live with de Toledo families in Los Angeles during the fall semester, and American sophomores travel to Israel in the spring to live with those same families and study alongside Israeli peers.
Typically, most of the 10th-graders at the school take part in a short exchange program, which lasts a few weeks and during which they tour Israel and attend partner schools Ironi Dalet and Lady Davis in Tel Aviv.
A smaller group, 10 to 15 students, tends to join the extended program, studying for a semester at Ohel Shem high school in Ramat Gan and continuing their de Toledo coursework in English.
The return of the program comes after a pause de Toledo administrators said was driven primarily by logistical concerns after Oct. 7.
“Three years away was just too long for us,” Shpall told JNS. “The relationships we have with our partner schools in Israel are just too important, and the relationship our students have with the State of Israel is too important for this to go another year without us coming.”
Israeli students were staying with Los Angeles families on Oct. 7.
“We extended their time a little bit more,” Lior Sibony, director of the program, told JNS, “because they were part of our community.”
When flights could be secured, the Israeli teens were able to return home, which is when the American host family said that it had trouble saying goodbye.
Even during the hiatus in travel, the bonds continued, students remained in close contact, and several de Toledo students traveled independently to visit their Israeli friends over the summer, according to the school.
Now, de Toledo students are again living with the Israeli “buddies” whom they previously hosted in Los Angeles.
“Our school is unabashedly Zionistic,” Shpall told JNS. “We believe in not only the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish homeland, but in the importance of the American Jewish community connecting closely with our Israeli brothers and sisters.”
Landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport after three years away “was very powerful,” Shpall said.
‘It felt real for the first time’
Beckett Friedman, a sophomore at de Toledo, told JNS that he enrolled in the extended program, “because I have a deep connection with Israel, and I really wanted to live like an Israeli.”
Daily life in Ramat Gan has given him a new sense of independence. “I wake up. I go to school on a public bus with random people I never met,” he said. “It feels like I’m an Israeli.”
Maya Rothblum, who is also a sophomore, recently arrived in Israel for the short program. She described an immediate sense of belonging.
“Everyone was so welcoming,” she told JNS. “I just felt like I was everyone’s friend the second I showed up.”
Living with Israeli host families has deepened those ties. “It genuinely feels like she’s one of my sisters,” Friedman said of his Israeli host. “It feels like a family member I never met before, but I had an immediate connection with.”
Administrators at de Toledo note that the timing of the exchange is especially formative. Extended-program students will experience Purim, Passover, Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut living in Israel.
“Those are all major Jewish and Israeli national holidays that will shape their identity,” Sibony told JNS.
For Rothblum, the most meaningful moment came when the plane touched down. “I was so happy, because it felt real for the first time,” she told JNS.
Shpall, the head of school, spent the year studying in Israel as a teenager and still maintains close ties with his host family decades later. For him, the goal is clear.
“It’s the kind of experience I want these students to have,” he said. “The connections I want them to have,” he added. “I want them to really last a lifetime.”
