Birthright Trips to Israel Continue Despite Mideast Conflict

 Lila Faria, 19, a student at New York University, heard the whine of a bomb siren for the first time last month in Jerusalem. Along with several dozen other Americans on a trip with the Taglit-Birthright Israel organization, she was quickly hustled into a bomb shelter.

“There was a feeling of uneasiness among the group because it made the situation less exciting and a little more realistic,” Ms. Faria said in an interview from her home in Maplewood, N.J., a few days after she returned. “We suddenly realized that yes, there were bombs being fired, and people could be seriously hurt.”

Ms. Rosenthal said the trip to a conflict zone was a learning experience for the participants about daily life in Israel. “We want them to understand Israel, and that this is a part of Israel, and showing them that something horrible is happening, but life goes on here,” Ms. Rosenthal said. “They don’t have the luxury of being tourists, they have a responsibility to know what’s going on.”

You could really see the elevated amount of security and tension, people were getting more frightened on the trip,” said one of the participants, Nathan Saldinger, 16, of Weston, Conn., who spoke by phone after his return home. “But they kept us out of the way of dangerous places.” Mr. Saldinger’s group chose to leave the country a week early because of the violence. “It was for everyone’s safety,” he said.

Parents are typically the most worried. Ms. Faria’s mother, Deborah Gaines, first started to be concerned about her daughter when she heard that her group was not spending time in Jerusalem. “They were packed away, far off the beaten track, and Lila told me, ‘Wow, we went rafting,’ and it sounded like a great vacation, but not a Birthright trip,” Ms. Gaines said.