By By Natalie Schack, News Correspondent

‘ ‘ Dave Garaffa said it all started with a speaker in his Jewish religion and culture class.
‘ ‘ At first, it seemed like a great deal to him:’ a free trip to Israel. But this adventure ended up being more than an ordinary vacation. Aside from the sights, activities, and nightlife, it meant hanging out with Israeli soldiers, forming close bonds with fellow Jewish Northeastern students, and connecting firsthand with his people and his culture in a way he had never before experienced.
‘ ‘ The experience for Garaffa , a junior music industry major, was a powerful one. He said he’ remembers hanging out with Israeli soldiers in one night he calls ‘definitely eye-opening.’
‘ ‘ ‘We were with them for one day’hellip;and the next morning, when we saw on TV that they were bombing (Gaza),’ he said. ‘A bunch of the soldiers had to leave and some went to Gaza. So people we were just hanging out with ‘- the next day they went to Gaza.’
Taglit-Birthright Israel is seeking to create similar experiences for young Jews from all over the world by sending them to Israel in order to foster and strengthen the worldwide Jewish community, according to’ the organization’s website.
‘ ‘ Birthright reaches colleges across the nation, and in the past few of years Northeastern’s Hillel, the Jewish religion and culture organization, has been organizing its very own trip for its students,’ allowing the participants to go as a group and to establish bonds that can follow them into the rest of their college careers and life.
‘ ‘ Birthright isn’t the only program striving to reconnect individuals with their countries and cultures. The community of Korean adoptees, for example, has created multiple opportunities to return to Korea. Some are organized through the adoption agencies, and some are independent or sponsored through the Korean government. Many of these individuals, eager to connect with the country of their birth, are recent college graduates still in the process of formulating their personal perception of self, said Nate Bae Kupel, president of Boston Korean Adoptees.
‘ ‘ Behavioral Psychologist Dr. Robert Klein said these trips can have a great effect on the formation of a participant’s sense of identity and understanding of his or her place in his current social environment.
‘ ‘It can be an enriching, growing, and motivating experience for someone,’ he said. ‘It can stir political motivations, it can stir religious callings, it can stir all types of consciousness-raising thoughts. These trips can have a very profound effect over who they are in world and can have favorable consequences over how they pursue their life in the world.’
‘ ‘ Klein added, however, that a large part of how adoptees are’ affected by such a trip depends’ on their expectations and the purpose of the trip. He suggested before departing, participants sit down and discuss their goals for the trips so they can examine their chances of achieving them.
‘ ‘ Nathan Ciccolo, Northeastern Hillel’s Israel trip coordinator, said he has worked to provide Northeastern’s Jewish student population with a forum within which they can form bonds with other Jewish students at the school.
‘It’s a huge community builder,’ Ciccolo said. ‘The objective is to allow Jewish students to connect with their Jewish cultural roots by immersing them in Israeli society and Jewish country.’
‘ ‘ Birthright was started in 1999 as an experimental pilot program and has grown to a point where it is ‘widely considered to be one of the most, if not the most, successful program in the Jewish world” Ciccolo said.
‘ ‘ Since its founding the program has given 200,000 young Jews a chance to visit Israel. The trip covers a broad spectrum of activities, ranging from nightclubs to a religious site, to the beach, according to Birthright’s website.
‘ ‘ ‘Students don’t expect how modern and how like America it is,’ Ciccolo said. ‘They expected it to be a desert with nothing going on and a lot of red clay and stone. And they go and see how vibrant it is, how vibrant the society is, how vibrant the democracy is.’
‘ ‘ The level of religion incorporated into the trip varies between colleges and groups, but Ciccolo said the Northeastern Birthright tends toward the more secular, focusing on helping students explore their sense of identity and by providing a social context. While there is an unavoidably religious taste incorporated into aspects of the trip, Ciccolo stressed Birthright is much more about ‘connecting to Judaism and Israel as a people and not just a religion. Students say that it was amazing to connect to a people like that instead of just saying ‘This is God’s land’.’
‘ ‘ Before his Birthright trip, Garaffa had never been out of the country, so a free, all-expenses-paid trip to Israel was especially alluring ‘- but with Birthright there is an element that hits a lot closer to home than your average spring break trip.
‘ ‘ ‘It was just crazy seeing how old everything is, and this stuff goes back to Biblical periods,’ he said. ‘You feel so connected to your ancestors, not necessarily in a religious way because I identify it more like Jewish heritage and culture more than religion. But I definitely remember telling my mom, ‘You really have to come here, you need to plan a trip now, you need to experience this; it’s so amazing.”
‘ Graphic design junior Manny Sasanian will be participating with Birthright for the upcoming Summer II 10-day trip. Sasanian hasn’t been involved with Northeastern’s Hillel so far, but said, he found the prospect of a trip to Israel alluring.
‘I was always planning to go on it,’ he said. ‘It’s important to honor the culture.’
For some, a trip halfway around the world can be for a reason more specific than a desire to reconnect with one’s culture. For many Korean adoptees, it stems from a desire to reconnect with one’s birth home.
Nate Bae Kupel, of Boston Korean Adoptees, a non-profit organization striving to create a community of adoptees and a connection to Korea, went on his first trip to Korea in 2006. He said it had become important for him, in the course of his self-discovery, to see the country, culture and people into which he had been born.
‘ ‘ ‘It’s like a personal quest for identity for adoptees,’ Kupel said. ‘It was connecting with Korea for the first time for me. It was really important, validating it for myself, going and feeling some sense of ‘I fit in’. A number of adoptees do a lot more critical analysis of identity questions. Studies say that a lot of that personal journey stuff starts in college. We have a lot of members who have just graduated college that want to join.’
‘ ‘ The experiences vary from person to person, trip to trip, and purpose to purpose. But whether it’s returning to a country of one’s biological parents, or connecting generally with the one’s people and culture, there’s something to be said for physically traveling to that sacred or significant ground.
‘ ‘ ‘It changed the way I thought about who I was,’ Kupel said about his trip back to Korea.
‘These students are looking for somewhere to fit in, and this is where they found it,’ Ciccolo said about Birthright.
‘ ‘ It’s also just a great experience ‘- a chance to see the world.
‘ ‘ ‘Everyone says that it is the greatest trip of their life,’ Ciccolo said.