The American Jewish Gap Year in Israel
For more than a generation, American Jewish teens have traveled to Israel for a gap year before college. These students mostly traverse an educational continuum from high school to gap year to college. But the gap year is anomalous, because it seems to be devoted to educational goals that are divergent—either slightly or dramatically—from the educational goals of high school and college.
The goal of this research is to learn about how these students understand their experience on the gap year in Israel, relative to the rest of their educational continuum. Furthermore, in conducting an initial pilot study in the winter of 2024, the research hopes to understand these students’ experience in Israel during Operation Swords of Iron, the war in Gaza that followed the massacres and hostage-taking on October 7, 2023.
A paper presenting findings from initial interviews with gap year students in February 2024 is currently under review. A second phase of the research, following up with the same students one year later, is ongoing.
As part of this project, Jon Levisohn hosted a Spotlight Session about the gap year with four experienced educational leaders on February 29, 2024. Video and podcast are now available.
Research Associate
Esther S. Friedman is a research fellow at CASJE (Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) at The George Washington University and a visiting scholar in the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University. She brings years of experience as a Jewish educator to her research, which explores student voice, teacher belief, and pedagogical responses to ideological diversity in Jewish educational settings. Esther recently completed her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where her dissertation examined how Orthodox Bible teachers in non-Orthodox schools navigate culturally sensitive texts and ideological tensions. Her work bridges scholarship and practice, with a focus on classroom-based inquiry, professional development, and meaning making in religious education.