Why would we holiday anywhere else?

The stories have accumulated over the past couple of years, as they will have reached you too. Jewish families feeling less comfortable abroad, parents wondering whether to leave the Magen David at home, holidaymakers encountering hostility where they expected only a break. Some incidents made the media and others travelled through communities and conversations.

Michael Ben Baruch, Director of IGTO[Missing Credit]

Most trips, of course, still pass without incident, and Jewish families will rightly continue to holiday all over the world. But there is one country where none of that follows you off the plane. Where no one lowers their voice, Shabbat arrives across a whole city with all its collective magic, and your children connect with something that is their birthright. You may say that, as director of the Israel Government Tourism Office in the UK and Ireland, I have a vested interest, and you would be right. But I arrived in Britain with my family in the summer of 2023, weeks before everything changed, and after three years of watching this community carry itself with remarkable dignity, what I want to say goes beyond my job description.

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I believe choosing Israel is not a sacrifice to be made in solidarity to Israel, but it is solidarity all the same. Judged purely as a destination, on exactly the criteria you would apply to anywhere else, Israel competes and often clearly wins out.

Consider our “product”. Tel Aviv now feeds you as well as any city on earth. The Carmel Market alone is worth the flight, and the city’s chefs have built reputations that travel far beyond it. The beaches are spectacular, full of life and sport in and out of the water. The history has no rival. In Jerusalem you can walk the Pilgrimage Road on stones last trodden 2,000 years ago. At the Israel Museum, the Great Isaiah Scroll is on display in its entirety for the first time. At ANU, the Museum of the Jewish People, a British Jewish family will quite literally find itself. Then there is everything from the unique stillness of the Dead Sea to the coral reefs of Eilat, from the trails of the epic Negev to a new generation of luxury hotels whose rooftop pools and spas rival any in the world.

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And Israel is not one holiday but a dozen. The same small country hosts the barmitzvah trip and the multigenerational fortnight, the couples’ food weekend and the serious hiking week, the history tour and the beach flop. The north means the wineries and cycling routes of the Galilee and Golan, klezmer filling the old city of Safed each summer, and Akko’s Crusader fortress newly brought to life after dark. The south means desert skies thick with stars, canyon hikes and winter warmth. North and south alike offer natural hot springs where people have soaked since Roman times. Few destinations of any size can serve so many different trips; almost none can do it within a two-hour drive of a single airport.

And if you are wondering when, the honest answer is that Israel has no off-season. Autumn brings Succot, when so many balconies and courtyards in Jerusalem seem to hold a succah and the city gives itself over to open-air celebration. In winter, Eilat and the Dead Sea are in the mid-twenties while Britain shivers, and Chanukah can be spent where the story actually happened, sufganiyot in every bakery window. Spring is the hiker’s season, the hills briefly green and the wildflowers out, with Pesach in Jerusalem sitting at the very top of the list of things every Jewish family should do once. Summer is the full Mediterranean experience with energetic beach mornings, market lunches and outdoor festival evenings. There is a time and moment for everyone.

Israel is a real country, not an idea, and Israelis argue about it as fiercely as anyone in the UK does. Loving it has never required agreeing with everything about it. But there is a difference between a place you must explain yourself to and a place where you belong, and after the past few years that difference really matters.

It matters to Israel too. Tourism is one of the country’s core industries, fuelling a quarter of a million livelihoods at its peak, and the past three years have been the hardest it has ever known. The guides, hoteliers and family restaurants that held on through the challenging seasons did so on a belief and a promise, that visitors from all over the world would return in their numbers. British Jews, to this community’s enormous credit, never stopped going but many are still yet to do a trip in the last three years. The recovery is nascent, but it is real, and the Ministry of Tourism in Israel is supporting dozens of new visitor projects across the country, from heritage sites and promenades to cycling trails and accessibility upgrades, from the Galilee to the Negev. This is a country preparing for a future with more guests than ever, of all ages, needs and tastes.

So the question in the headline is a genuine one. If one destination matches the others on sunshine, beats them on food and history, adds a welcome no other place on earth can give a Jewish family, and directs every shekel to people who held on through the crisis, then the rational choice and the right choice are one and the same.

Rosh Hashanah is the season of return. This year, let it mean a table on a warm evening with your family around it and nothing but warm welcomes. A place to breathe out fully and truly unwind. You are home, unjudged and unquestioned.

Book your next trip to Israel, and make it a highlight of your 5787. Wishing every reader of the JC a good and sweet new year.

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Why would we holiday anywhere else?

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