Harvard College Israel Trek Will Not Take Place Amid War in Gaza, Campus Strife

Harvard College Israel Trek, an annual subsidized trip to Israel and the West Bank held over spring break, will not be taking place this year, according to Hillel President Nathan B. Gershengorn ’26.

The absence of Israel Trek — which has long drawn controversy and calls for a boycott from pro-Palestine student activists — comes as the Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing war in Gaza have sewn fear and uncertainty across Israel and the West Bank and widened political divisions on Harvard’s campus.

But Gershengorn wrote in a Monday statement that there was no specific reason Israel Trek is not being held this year, adding that it “just isn’t happening.”

This year marks the first time since the pandemic that the trip has not been launched.

In response to the war in Gaza, the Office of International Education suspended study-abroad programs in Israel and the Mignone Center for Career Success halted funding for Israel-based internships through fall 2024.

Though Israel Trek is not taking place, Hillel student organizers will be co-hosting the Harvard-Yale Jewish Heritage Program, a 10-day trip in May to Hungary and Poland for forty Jewish and non-Jewish students from Harvard and Yale University.

Attendees will explore Jewish history in Hungary before traveling to Poland along the same route that Hungarian Jews were taken to Auschwitz. Students will learn about European Jewish communities before and after World War II and study the “growth of perilous antisemitism in Hungarian and Polish societies” in the lead-up to the war.

Planning for the trip first began during the summer, according to co-organizer and former Hillel Holiday Chair Zebulon Erdos ’25.

Gerhengorn wrote that the two trips are not substitutes for each other and that he hopes both trips will continue to take place in the future.

“Both trips provide extremely valuable and unique experiences, and we want as many people as possible to be able to participate,” he wrote.

Erdos wrote in a Tuesday statement that the trip will allow students to investigate “the question of how hatred can galvanize some to violence and paralyze others into complicit by-standing.”

“Our hoped for goals are simple: to foster conversation across generations and backgrounds about Hungarian and Polish Jewish past and present, conversations that can continue beyond our trip and can serve as inspiration for Jews and non-Jews of all backgrounds in exploring their own place in the world,” Erdos wrote.

Hillel Campus Rabbi Getzel Davis wrote in a Tuesday email that he is “very excited” that Hillel is able to support the new trip this year, adding that he believes it is “a wonderful thing that Jews and non-Jews will attend this Trek together.”

“I hope that when students return, they together will be better equipped to help our campus heal,” Davis wrote.

—Staff writer Madeleine A. Hung can be reached at madeleine.hung@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Joyce E. Kim can be reached at joyce.kim@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @joycekim324.