Summer in Jerusalem is a six week program that is a partnership between Bnei Akiva and OU-JLIC run week summer program for college students looking for a balanced combination of learning, interning, and living in Israel embodying Bnei Akiva’s motto of Torah V’Avodah. 

Students are matched with internships in their field of choice across top firms, agencies, and workplaces across Jerusalem.  The internships provide top of the line learning and training experiences, as well as invaluable networking opportunities. With students from schools including Brandeis, Columbia, NYU, UMD, and YU, and a wide range of fields such as medicine, law, PR, design, and engineering – the program goes through great lengths to ensure there is something for everyone.

The program provides more than just an internship though, it provides a vibrant evening learning program offering a full array of shiurim, teachers, social events and learning opportunities. The Beit Midrash is led by Rabbi Don and Leora Cantor (OU-JLIC at Johns Hopkins University) and features outstanding educators from Bnei Akiva’s Yeshivat & Midreshet Torah V’Avodah (TVA), OU-JLIC, Mizrachi and other Jerusalem scholars. “This program is an incredible expression of an integrated lifestyle that can be modeled when these students return to college and beyond!” says Rabbi Yehuda Seif, Rosh Yeshiva & Executive Director of Bnei Akiva of the US & Canada’s Yeshiva and Midrasha, TVA.

TVA also provides the unique housing opportunity for students. Instead of living in a dorm, students are all provided with fully furnished apartments, where they have the opportunity to truly ‘live’ in Israel by integrating into the local community, shopping at local markets and getting around the city through the local transit system. As participant Aliza Mintz from Silver Spring puts it, “I feel like I am gaining so much confidence in myself to be able to live here eventually when I make Aliyah.” Additionally, “after work I come to Eretz Chemda where I have different tracks and I learn about Jewish philosophy, tanach and all these different halachic questions and interesting points of view that I’ve never learned before.”