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JEWISH NATIONAL FUND-USA TRAVEL & TOURS

Volunteer in israel.

Rebuild Israel With Us

We Stand With Israel

TOUR ISRAEL WITH US IN 2024

Jewish National Fund-USA is currently running much-needed volunteer missions in Israel for variety of ages and groups, from teens to adults. JNF-USA Volunteer in Israel Missions are your opportunity to build Israel now and make a difference for the future. Rebuild communities with us by planting, cleaning, painting, and repairing to prepare them for returning evacuees.

Spend 4 meaningful days with us providing hands-on support to our beloved friends from communities across the Israel Envelope and the Galilee. When you help a community move back, watch a child walk into their school, dance with an IDF soldier, see the gratitude in a farmer’s eyes, you will never be the same. You will be part of history.  First there was Herzl. Then there was Ben-Gurion. Now, there’s you .  Make history. Volunteer in Israel. 

Volunteer in Israel With Us

“Our experience on the Jewish National Fund-USA volunteering mission was so meaningful. “ - Zachary Narrett. 

Read more about our mission participants’ experience here.

UPCOMING TOURS

Volunteer in israel: 4 day mission.

An exceptional chance to volunteer & build Israel now.

Upcoming Tours

VOLUNTEERING DAY TRIPS

Volunteer for a day with Jewish National Fund-USA in Israel

SOLO TRAVELER MISSION (30S & 40S)

Experience, volunteer, and make a difference in Israel. Join other like-minded solo travelers in their 30s & 40s.

• June 30, 2024 - July 07, 2024

PARENT-TEEN VOLUNTEER IN ISRAEL MISSION

Bond with your teen on this meaningful experience helping the land and the people of Israel.

TEEN VOLUNTEER IN ISRAEL MISSION

An exceptional chance for high school students to volunteer in Israel now.

AMHSI ALUMNI VOLUNTEER IN ISRAEL MISSION

Join fellow AMHSI alumni on an experience volunteering & rebuilding in Israel.

COLLEGE STUDENTS VOLUNTEERING TRIP - ALTERNATIVE BREAK

Volunteering opportunity for college students with JNF-USA's Alternative Break

EDUCATORS' MISSION

An International Educators’ Seminar in Israel powered by Keren Kayemet L'Israel

• July 09, 2024 - July 16, 2024

FAMILY TOURS

A meaningful family trip with Jewish National Fund-USA.

• December 22, 2024 - December 29, 2024

WOMEN FOR ISRAEL VOLUNTEER MISSION

Women's Mission - An exceptional chance to volunteer in Israel now.

SUNSHINE TOURS

Specially designed tours of Israel for active seniors.

• May 04, 2025 - May 13, 2025

2ND ANNUAL BROTHERHOOD MISSION TO ISRAEL

Bond with your Israeli brothers & raise money for the land and the people of Israel.

HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS FOR ISRAEL MISSION

One-of-a-kind opportunity exploring Israel’s healthcare system and innovative medical breakthroughs.

• February 16, 2025 - February 23, 2025

SUKKOT, PASSOVER, AND HOLIDAY DAY TOURS

Join Jewish National Fund–USA’s holiday day trips in Israel.

• October 21, 2024
• October 21, 2024 - October 21, 2024

PRESIDENT’S SOCIETY MISSION

Experience Israel like never before on a tour reserved for our members of President’s Society. New mission dates coming soon.

LEADERSHIP MISSIONS

Exclusive experience for leaders and JNF-USA ambassadors.

QUEEN OF SHEBA - WOMEN'S MISSION TO ISRAEL

Embark on a journey with fellow women supporting Israel. New mission dates coming soon.

SOUTHERN ROOTS TOURS

Travel to Israel with friends old and new from the South. New tour dates coming soon.

TASTE OF ISRAEL TOURS

Experience the rich flavors of Israel’s north through food, wine, and cooking. New tour dates coming soon.

INTERFAITH TOURS

Discover the diverse cultures, communities, and religions that were born in Israel and coexist today. New tour dates coming soon.

CONGREGATIONAL TOURS

Come home for a visit.

Join our weekly day tours once resumed. Volunteer day trips are currently running regularly.

Jewish National Fund-USA is a living, breathing organization and it's part of building the future of Israel. On every trip, they show me something I've never seen or heard of or shine a new light on a place I've been to and loved before. They have the connections to offer a perspective on Israel that most tourists never get to see. – Dr. Kenneth Fried

About Jewish National Fund-USA's Travel & Tours

Jewish National Fund-USA is currently running volunteer missions in Israel. Additional tours have been postponed to late 2024 and early 2025. We look forward to returning home; visiting our communities in the Negev and Galilee, meeting the special people that make Israel the incredible land it is, and taking a behind-the-scenes look of how vision comes to life with Jewish National Fund-USA's work on the ground. 

Discover the magnificence of southern Israel and the Negev, take in breathtaking views of the Galilee, experience the rich culture and multi-layered history of the old city of Jerusalem, visit the iconic neighborhoods of Tel Aviv, enjoy authentic cuisine, but most importantly, make memories that will last a lifetime. Start your adventure by exploring Israel’s iconic sites including the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv's sunny beaches, Masada's grand views, and more. From there, take the path less traveled to explore Israel’s north and south. Travel to southern Israel with us; get glimpses of blooming fields in the Negev desert, taste delicious local fruits and vegetables, and meet the farmers who are making innovative agri-tech advancements. Get to know the people who have made new lives all across the region, and see how we inspire the transformation of the sand dunes into vibrant communities. Northern Israel brings with it a change of scenery. Travel through the lush green mountains, experience local wineries, enjoy an authentic kibbutz experience, and connect with local artisans, businesses, and entrepreneurs who make the region into a thriving community. Join us on our exclusive, curated, high-end tours that will take you off the beaten path. Find the trip that's right for you. We've got your backstage pass to Israel.

Read about our travelers' experience  here.

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JEWISH NATIONAL FUND-USA TRAVEL & TOURS

Volunteer in israel: 4 day mission.

AN EXCEPTIONAL CHANCE TO VOLUNTEER & BUILD ISRAEL NOW.

Join one of our impactful Volunteer in Israel opportunities  and make a difference for the future. Be a part of our rebuilding efforts to make a difference for the people in Israel – the farmers, evacuees, returnees, soldiers, store-owners, and more. 

Spend 4 meaningful days with us providing hands-on support to our beloved friends from communities across the Israel Envelope and the Galilee. When you help a community move back, watch a child walk into their school, dance with an IDF soldier, see the gratitude in a farmer’s eyes, you will never be the same. 

Volunteering Highlights:  

Rebuild Israel's southern kibbutzim affected by October 7, by planting, cleaning, painting, and repairing communities for returning evacuees.

Spend time with evacuees and the people who are providing lifesaving efforts to support them.

Work together on farms, picking vegetables and other crops to help prevent a massive shortage in the Israeli market and ensure that no farmer is left alone.

• Meet with Israelis, soldiers, survivors, and influential figures to hear firsthand about the ongoing situation and personal experiences.

“ Our 4 volunteer days were meaningful to all of us. All of us were grateful for the opportunity to contribute, in whatever way we could, to the war effort. ” – Karen Kolodny

View Sample Itinerary  |  Book Today

More Volunteer Opportunities in Israel:

What's Included:

Not included:.

Flights and pre- and post-tour extensions • Travel insurance 

Eligibility Criteria:

Applicants must be at least 18 years of age

Applicants must be able to perform 4-6 hours of physical work a day 

Mandatory zoom orientation pre-trip

Upcoming Mission Dates:

Summer dates:  .

June  23 – 27, 2024

June  30 –  July  4, 2024 |  July  14 – 18, 2024

August  18 – 22, 2024

Fall Dates:  

September  1 – 5, 2024 | 8 – 12, 2024

November  24 –  28, 2024

December  15 – 19, 2024 | 22 – 26, 2024

Winter Dates:  

January  19 –  23, 2025

February  9 – 13, 2025 | 16 – 20, 2025

Mission Pricing:

$3,000 per person for single OR double occupancy ; the price is the same regardless of room occupancy.

If you are traveling alone you will automatically be placed in your own room.

JNFuture Sabra and Root Society Members**:  $2,000 per person   for single OR double occupancy; the price is the same regardless of room occupancy.

**Donors aged 22 – 40 who have made a gift of $360+ to the 2024 campaign.

*A $500 non-refundable deposit per person is mandatory to secure your registrant

*All volunteer options are subject to change due to changing needs and situation on the ground.

FAQs  | Book Today

SCENES FROM PREVIOUS TOURS

What an amazing experience to help the land and the people of Israel. It's anything I could ever imagine, a thousand times over. - Lauren Lizerbram

Other tours.

2nd Annual Brotherhood Mission to Israel

Parent-Teen Volunteer in Israel Mission

Volunteering Day Trips

Teen Volunteer in Israel Mission

Queen of Sheba - Women's Mission to Israel

Leadership Missions

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How this Jewish Chicago day school pulled off a last-minute, multi-generational Israel service trip

( JTA ) — Teddy Gutstein’s first Israel trip, which came in kindergarten, featured all the classics: an El Al flight, falafel and a visit to Jerusalem’s famous Mahane Yehuda market.

The only catch was that the whole experience occurred in his classroom at Chicago Jewish Day School. The school sends its eighth-graders on an annual Israel trip, but as a kindergartener, Gutstein settled for a flight simulation video and some Bissli.

Fast forward to this school year, and Gutstein, now 14, is finally ready for his turn on the actual trip, run through Chicago’s Jewish federation and IsraelNow, an organization that brings Jewish eighth graders to Israel from cities across the United States. The trip caters to nearly 200 Chicago-area students each year; CJDS is the only school that sends its own cohort.

Gutstein couldn’t wait for his first real taste of Israel.

“Through the years, we’ve just been learning Hebrew and learning about Israel,” Gutstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’ve always wanted to go. Some of my friends have gone, but me personally, I have never gone. So I obviously really wanted to experience it.”

But as the Israel-Hamas war raged on into the early months of 2024, IsraelNow made the decision to cancel its February and March Israel trips for all participating cities. The cancelation made Gutstein’s trip one of a slew of Israel journeys to be upended in the wake of Oct. 7 as airlines have canceled flights in the face of incoming rockets and some Jewish organizations have thought twice about bringing their constituents to the vicinity of a war zone, even as others have gone despite the risks.

When CJDS seemed like it was going to join the ranks of institutions scrapping their trips, the choice did not sit right for everyone.

“We work so hard to connect our students to this country, and for them to understand they are part of this bigger Jewish nation. And then in one of its greatest times of need, we stay away from that,” Tamar Cytryn, CJDS’s director of Judaic studies, told JTA. “It felt counter to who we are as an institution, and to our goals.”

Sam Rodin, the director of IsraelNow Chicago, told JTA that the organization decided to cancel its trips out of concern for the mental and physical health and safety of the students. Rodin said the group determined it “wouldn’t be able to provide a meaningful and educational experience that would be safe.”

In lieu of its Israel trip, IsraelNow had offered a program in Northern California, in which some CJDS students participated.

At first, that decision meant that an already difficult school year was destined to end in disappointment for Gutstein and his classmates. But Cytryn said the school’s administration began to look into pathways to make the trip happen, taking inspiration from the Jewish National Fund’s mission trips through which American Jews have been able to safely volunteer throughout Israel.

CJDS staff began working the phones, selling community members and donors on their vision for the trip — which Cytyrn said was to expose students to Israeli life pre- and post-Oct. 7 — and soon the funding started to pour in, including from the federation.

The school ultimately raised enough money to send 16 students, each accompanied by a parent or grandparent, and four staff members to Israel — at a cost of roughly $6,500 per participant. (Families contribute up to $2,750 toward the trip throughout their children’s time at CJDS.)

Even after CJDS raised the money it needed to run its own trip, which the school had never done, a string of flight cancellations complicated matters even more. But 48 hours before students and their parents boarded flights on May 14 — and after several hectic phone calls with donors, parents and the school’s travel agent — everything finally fell into place.

“It was such a roller coaster,” Cytryn said. “We were going, it was canceled. We were going to try to do it again. We got tickets, they were canceled. We tried to secure additional tickets, we couldn’t afford them. And then eventually, somehow, miraculously, it worked out.”

The nine-day trip featured a combination of popular tourist destinations and holy sites such as the Western Wall, the Dead Sea and the beach in Tel Aviv, and volunteering with organizations whose work has been affected by the war. Trip participants worked with HaShomer HaChadash, an organization that facilitates volunteer services at farms in the Galilee and Negev, where they picked kohlrabi and sorted cucumbers and tomatoes. They also packed first aid kits with Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency response service.

L-R: Damien Conover, Teddy Gutstein and Josh Gutstein pack tomatoes at a farm in southern Israel. (Hagit Lewis)

At each turn, Israelis shared their experiences from Oct. 7, including the group’s security guard Omri, who had spent six and a half weeks serving in Gaza during the war. They also visited Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and met with family members of victims of the Nova music festival massacre.

Many Jewish day schools canceled their annual trips this year in response to the war. But others have persevered, sending their students despite the disruption. Eighth-graders from  Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, New York, were believed to be the first middle-schoolers from a U.S. day school to visit Israel since Oct. 7 when they landed in April. Later in the month, eighth-graders from the Leffell School in Westchester County were in Israel when Iran sent a volley of rockets toward the country. High school seniors from Ida Crown Jewish Academy in the Chicago area volunteered in Israel for nearly a month beginning in December , while the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in suburban Washington, D.C., sent its high school seniors for three months as is the school’s tradition; they returned earlier this month.

Cytryn said the experience of witnessing Israel at such a complicated moment reminded her of life in America after 9/11.

“There’s this tension between life continuing — we went to the beach one day, and there were plenty of Israelis on the beach with us,” Cytryn said. “And then being reminded and being brought back to the reality of hostages still in Gaza, the country still at war, and figuring out how to deal with those two tensions juxtaposed to each other.”

For Gutstein, the dichotomy was difficult to grasp.

“On one hand, this is a country that’s fighting a war against a terrorist organization,” he said. “But on the other, life has to go on. And I don’t really know how Israelis find balance in that. But I follow the example of our security guard and our teachers — three of our teachers who came were Israeli.”

Cindy Zadikoff, who went on the trip with her daughter Eden, said it was especially meaningful for her and the other adults to watch their children experience both emotional extremes.

“I think what will be really helpful is we all did a reflection that night after we came back from Hostages Square,” Zadikoff, 52, said. “And we were saying, there’s going to be a time where we need to unpack that with our kids. Right afterwards was not the time, they’ll probably want to talk about it in their time as well. But because we were there with them, too, and we really felt it, too, it will also help us have, I think, some conversations that we might not have been able to have.”

L-R: Cindy Zadikoff, CJDS head of school Judy Finkelstein-Taff, Sheri Kushner and Margalit Segal pick kohlrabi on a farm in Israel. (Hagit Lewis)

Zadikoff also said the trip will help the students as they prepare to graduate from Jewish day school, and for many, attend public high schools in the fall, where they may be exposed to antisemitism or anti-Israel rhetoric.

“They’ll be able to feel proud to be Jewish, they’ll be able to know that the narrative that they’re hearing is not real,” Zadikoff said. “They’ll be able to have that love of Zionism and Judaism that hopefully the school has instilled in them through all of this time, but I think was just made that much deeper because they’ve now seen Israel, they’ve met Israelis, they know what the reality is.”

That shift had already begun to set in for Gutstein, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, where Northwestern University has made headlines for its response to the campus’ pro-Palestinian encampment . Gutstein said he had seen the encampment while out for a run and was surprised, and a little scared, to see the protests reach his hometown.

But while in Israel, Gutstein said, he felt able to be more outwardly and proudly Jewish. After Shabbat ended, he and a few friends joined a dancing circle at the Western Wall.

“Sometimes, especially in the States with all the antisemitism going around and the college campuses, you can’t fully be Jewish,” Gutstein said. “But right then and there, I felt fully Jewish and it was so meaningful.”

Cytryn said several of the students echoed a similar sentiment.

“So many students at our first reflection session said that they were struggling with the irony of coming to a country where there is an ongoing war, and coming to a country where people are mourning the loss of family and friends, and coming to a country where people were still actively working to get hostages released from Gaza, and feeling more safe walking around this country as Jewish people than they feel in America,” she said.

Speaking to JTA just minutes before heading to Ben Gurion Airport to fly home, Gutstein said he already missed Israel.

“While I was here, I didn’t really comprehend the fact that I was in Israel, you know what I mean?” Gutstein said. “But I know the minute I get out, I’m just going to be missing it so much, which is not a feeling I normally have. Camp is special, and school is special, but I don’t miss those places like I’m going to miss Israel.”

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Hezbollah rocket fire burns wide swath of largest forest in Israel

Almost everything was lost in just two hours of biriya forest fire, and 18 years of daily investment in rehabilitating the magical forest after the second lebanon war went up in flames; more than 14,000 acres believed burned in such fires since october 7.

Delta to resume Tel Aviv service from New York-JFK on Friday

Nonstop daily service resumes June 7 after extensive security risk assessment, as the airline continues to closely monitor the situation in Israel.

Delta will resume daily nonstop service to Tel Aviv (TLV) from New York-JFK this summer, operating the route on an Airbus A330-900neo that will provide customers with nearly 2,000 weekly seats from New York to Israel.

The decision to resume the route on June 7, 2024, which was temporarily suspended in October 2023, follows an extensive security risk assessment by the airline. Delta continues to closely monitor the situation in Israel in conjunction with government and private-sector partners.

In recent months, Delta has strengthened its presence in Israel through a codeshare arrangement with EL AL Israel Airlines. Delta customers have access to EL AL’s direct services to Tel Aviv from major U.S. cities like New York-JFK, New York-Newark, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami and Fort Lauderdale. With the reinstatement of Delta’s New York-JFK service this summer, customers have additional travel choices connecting North America and Israel.

For booking and more information, visit delta.com .

• Tel Aviv , John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK)