ERETZ

R

ecently, Metro Detroit Jewish youth joined the burgeoning new tourism 
in Israel following the two-year COVID-19-caused hiatus. The Teen 
Mission 22 (TM22), formally the “Sue & Alan Kaufman & Family Teen 
Mission to Israel,” June 20-July 15, is joining an upsurge in visitors to the 
Jewish state that dropped by 91% from 2019 to 2021, according to the 
Israel Government Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
More than 110 Detroiters — teenagers, counselors, rabbis and staff — disembarked at 
Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport June 21 and were greeted by voices of welcome from the 
Israeli teens joining their buses, Israeli counselors and Israel-based Partnership2Gether 
staff, all singing “Shalom Aleichem.”
TM22 is the first such community trip since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic 
began. Organized by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, community congre-
gations and Tamarack Camps, the biannual experience is comprised primarily of teens 
entering their senior year of high school. They are joined by several high school grad-

Detroit 
 
Teen Mission 
 
returns to Israel 
 
in force.

Back to the

NATHANIEL WARSHAY 
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

34 | JULY 7 • 2022 

FROM THE 
PARTNERSHIP2GETHER REGION

Promised Land

