Most of you will have grown up with some connection to your local Jewish community, whether it’s through school, synagogue, youth groups or anything else. While this can lead to some great experiences in one area it is very limited. The vast majority of the people that you meet will have grown up in the same place and/or very similar environments to you.
If you choose to spend your gap year with Aardvark Israel then this will quite simply cease to be a problem. Young Jews from across the world choose to come and spend their time on the Aardvark Israel program so you can be sure of meeting people from a huge range of backgrounds and cultures.
Each year we have people join us from countries as diverse as Australia, Finland, Germany, the USA, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, Ethiopia and many more. Not only will you be meeting people from across the world, but you will also be living with them in your shared apartments.
Imagine living in an apartment with people from 2 or 3 continents. It is sure to result in some interesting issues, from what types of food you are used to eating to more fundamental issues such as the how you relate to your Judaism.
Aardvark Israel is one of the few study abroad programs which attracts such as diverse range of individuals. On many programs you will simply be spending time with the people you grew up around, or at least people from very similar backgrounds. Of course this isn’t a bad thing, but it does lack diversity. By coming on Aardvark Israel you are guaranteed to be exposed to a whole new range of cultures.
The benefits of this don’t stop when the program ends. You are more than likely to make friends for life while on our program and this of course means that you will have places to stay across the world whenever you get the opportunity to go travelling in the future.
In short, one of the biggest advantages of coming on Aardvark Israel is that you will be spending time in a richly diverse group where you will meet people from a range of backgrounds, gain and benefit from cultural insights and make friends from right across the globe.
