Israel Project Weeks 6-10: 04/21 - 05/25

I do sincerely apologize for the extended hiatus. I have been dealing with some personal and mental health issues for the past month. I won’t go into detail here. Also, not much has happened for much of May that is actually relevant to my project. I’ve been working an internship at the Kaufman Music Center for a few weeks now, but it is difficult to make any connection between the internship and the project.

My last few days in Israel were spent with family and friends all over the country. I met my 3rd cousin Orly, who I hadn’t seen since I was very young, and she took me to the Kikar Hatufim (Hostage Square) in Tel Aviv. It was another crushing experience, much like visiting the site of the Nova Music Festival, but I found it very meaningful. I also hung out with my childhood friend Carmel for a day. Passover Seder at my uncle Steve’s was an adventure – I ended up playing magnetiles with his 2yo step-granddaughter and I definitely didn’t drink 5 glasses of wine.

Recently, I set up and published an online survey designed to gain insight into the correlation between political views, connection to Judaism/Israel before/after Oct 7, and level of religious observance. However, I had to take it down after 20 minutes, because I intended to obtain a Jewish sample, and there was no way to guarantee that without paying over $3000, so I put ‘JEWISH PARTICIPANTS ONLY’ in the title, and as it turns out, people can’t read so they were just complaining about how the survey assumed they were Jewish. Since that method didn’t work, my backup plan is to distribute that same survey to various Jewish institutions around the country, while aiming to sample a variety of political, geographical, and observational (religious observance) Jewish populations.