Blog Series for the Groundwork Fellowship
Reflections from the Groundwork Fellowship in Israel
“A country is never one story.
It is a conversation still unfinished.”
A four-day fellowship trip to Israel can reveal many things: innovative social programs, painful memories, hopeful initiatives, and complex conversations about identity and belonging.
This series of reflections grew out of a Groundwork Fellowship organized through Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (CJP), with programming facilitated by the iCenter.
Over several days, we traveled through Haifa, Tel Aviv, the South, and Jerusalem, visited educational and cultural initiatives, spoke with community leaders, and stood in places where recent history still feels painfully present. Along the way, modern Israeli poetry accompanied the journey, offering a way to slow down and reflect on what we were seeing.
What follows are not conclusions, but observations and questions—about Israel, about how narratives are formed, and about what educators and community leaders bring back home after such a trip.
Blog 1. Listening in Haifa First encounters with coexistence initiatives in Israel’s most mixed city—and the different realities people describe living there.
Blog 2. Reading the Country Through PoetryHow modern Israeli poetry became an unexpected lens through which to experience the journey.
Blog 3. The Order of StoriesStanding at the Nova memorial site raises an uncomfortable question: does the order in which we hear stories shape how we understand them?
Blog 4. The Israel Between the ProgramsWhat conversations with Israeli friends revealed about everyday life beyond organized dialogue programs.
Blog 5. Ramadan Karim, Shabbat ShalomA brief encounter in Jerusalem’s Old City shows how coexistence sometimes appears in the smallest moments.
Blog 6. Loving Israel, Teaching IsraelWhat educators bring home from a trip like this—and how different Jewish communities approach teaching about Israel.
Blog 7. Bridges Need FoundationsA question about community: can societies build bridges between groups if the culture of civic community itself is weak?
Blog 8. Three MohammedsA reflection from outside Israel on professionalism, dignity, and one quiet way the world might begin to repair itself.
