Haas Koshland Award offers life-changing Israel experience

Are you a college student? Want to spend a year in Israel?

Adam Strater

Applications are now being accepted for the Haas Koshland Memorial Award, a grant of up to $20,000 to support a year of study and personal development in Israel. The annual award is open to college students from sophomore year through graduate school, who are from - or attend school in - the San Francisco Bay Area and wish to broaden their personal life, academic life, or both.

Just ask Adam Strater, the most recent recipient to visit Israel.  “I can honestly say my life has been changed because of the Haas/Koshland Award,” he writes in a recent thank you letter to Federation staff. “I’m writing to tell you how thankful I am for the amazing opportunity you gave me.” Adam used his award to study in Israel, working on his master’s thesis for Graduate Theological Union.  “If I had researched and written [it] while in the US, I know that it would have been a completely different work,” he writes. “The resources I had at my disposal while in Israel were vital to the success of my project.” 

And Adam is not alone in his praise for the opportunities he had as a result of the award.  During Nili Yosha’s trip she reported to staff, “I have spent the past months traveling around Israel . . . from Metula to Eilat with my camera and notebook, meeting people and discussing their thoughts and hopes for the future of Israel.”  Nili used her trip to continue studying Arabic with the intention of being able, someday soon, to communicate with Palestinians in their native language.  “It is now up to my generation,” she wrote, “to realize the much-anticipated peace in Israel.”

See a complete list of past award recipients and their stories, and if you want to follow your dream, apply online for the 2012 Award! Application deadline is February 1, 2012.