Photo by Shulamit Seidler-Feller

Immersive Education

Encounter offers an immersive experience in the West Bank for Jewish leaders and influencers. Our executive level Intensive Leadership Seminars are for senior Jewish Leaders and include pre- and post-travel programming as well as a four-day travel component in Bethlehem and surrounding areas, East Jerusalem, and Ramallah.

Photo by Shulamit Seidler-Feller

Executive Leaders

Our Intensive Leadership Seminars are by-invitation-only programs designed for high-level Jewish communal leaders. Each Seminar cohort is comprised of leading Jewish professionals in their various fields and select lay leaders committed to a more nuanced, informed and constructive engagement with Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Seminars include a four-day delegation to the region with focused travel in Palestinian communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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Encounter gave me an opportunity that I had long been missing: to listen to the stories, perspectives, and experiences of Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As a passionate supporter of Israel who yearns for peace, this experience was critical to a more complete understanding of the complexity of this land… Rabbi Adam Raskin Senior Rabbi, Congregation Har Shalom
Essential and transformative. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl Senior Rabbi, Central Synagogue
I have totally opened to a new perspective on the conflict, one that I thought I understood but I now realize that I did not. Rabbi David Schuck Rabbi, Beth El Synagogue Center
Incredibly eye-opening, educational. It offers Jewish communal leaders a unique opportunity to get unfiltered facts about the current conditions. Deborah Lauter Executive Director, NYC Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes
Encounter's value is being one of a kind in creating a thoughtful, safe space [and a] responsible and diverse cohort of inspiring colleagues who can support each other in engaging the conflict in our communities. It offers Jewish leaders access to the voices we want to be talking to and with and about from the other side of the messiest, most personal global conflict we are in some way all a part of. It softens our ears and hearts even while dogmatically resisting specific political solutions or pat answers. Rabbi Steven Exler Senior Rabbi, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale