More Than a Trip—It Was A Beginning
Trent Engbers
A four-month family sabbatical to Israel in 2023.
I guess I have always been interested in traveling internationally. My first job out of college was working in public housing in urban Alabama with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. It might as well have been a different country for a middle-class, Catholic boy from Indiana. That experience opened my eyes to the many ways people live and thrive in circumstances far different from my own. It also sparked a curiosity that would follow me throughout my life. My wife and I even chose to spend our honeymoon on a two-year stint with the Peace Corps in China. Years later, we continued that spirit of exploration by taking our children on a four-month sabbatical to Israel.
You see the world in a different way when you see it through the eyes of your children. Their first moments in Israel were deboarding a train into a crowd of hundreds of young soldiers—some not much older than my teenage daughter—carrying automatic weapons on their way to weekend training. Compounded with jet lag and language differences, it was clear that “we weren’t in Kansas anymore.” Yet instead of fear, the moment provoked curiosity and questions. That is the way I want to see the world—and the way I hope my children will too.
My nine-year-old son devoured Hebrew and learned more than I could have in a master class. My daughters, always the foodies, longed for our Friday walks to the bakery for Challah. And my youngest, always eager for attention, appreciated the doting hospitality of the grandparent-like family from whom we rented an apartment. They loved his red hair and he loved their cookies. They even got him to eat chicken-heart kabobs—though I doubt he knew what they were.
It was these and other relationships that made our time in Israel special and led to lasting change in each of us. Israel is an amazing country with a rich cultural, religious, and historic heritage. If you want to see a fraction of what it has to offer, you can do so from a tour bus with brief stops to explore 4,000 years of history. But that kind of travel robs history of the human experience—the real transmission of culture that happens person to person, story to story.
Not everything was easy. There was lice and handwashing laundry for a family of six. There were small conflicts while shopping and even a Ramadan riot that still gives me nightmares. But even in those hard times, there was joy and learning. It’s not easy to get a six-year-old to walk eight miles, but that is exactly what we did—every Friday. The buses stopped for Shabbat, so we would walk four miles to visit our friends in the city and four miles back, much later than we should have. Along the way we would see Orthodox Jews returning home from synagogue and far-from-observant youth racing on motorbikes. We would tell stories, sing songs, and take in the life around us. On the way home, we would look at the stars and reflect on the good and the bad that Israel has become.
Before going to Israel, I assumed religion would be the great dividing line of society. What I learned was far more complex. Ethnicity and orthodoxy often shaped identity and belonging more deeply than religion itself. The experience challenged my assumptions about the role of faith in politics and community.
My children learned those lessons in their own ways. They came to see that the world is a lot more varied than what they often see or read. They saw families who celebrated Shabbat and Arab families who worshiped Christ and families that waited to break the Ramadan fast, and that all of these families were part of our community. They became more aware of people who live differently from them—more patient when encountering difference, more curious about why things are the way they are. Back home, I saw the change in small but powerful ways. They now ask deeper questions about world events and talk about places they want to visit. One daughter has set her sights on joining the foreign service. Two of my kids have continued or begun learning languages —Spanish and German—because they see communication as a way to connect rather than a school requirement.
We don’t talk about Israel every day, but when we do, I know we gave our kids a gift they will never forget. Periodically, I hear them start a story with, “At our synagogue, we used to…” which is still surreal for a Catholic family. Yet it reminds me that they didn’t just see Israel—they knew it. They lived it, in all its beauty and complexity. The trip gave them not only memories but also a framework for seeing the world: one grounded in empathy, curiosity, and a respect for difference.
That, ultimately, was what I had hoped for when we boarded that plane. I wanted my children to see that the world is full of interesting experiences and that there is adventure in everyday life. And I wanted them to carry that understanding into their lives, to meet the unfamiliar not with fear but with curiosity. In that way, our time in Israel was more than a trip—it was a beginning.
