The North American Federation of (Reform) Temple Youth sponsors a summer youth program, NFTY in Israel, and the Eisendrath High School exchange program.

Hadassah, the Jewish Zionist women’s organization, sponsors Israel tours mixing education, politics and religion.

Ask Rabbi Mayer Waxman at the Orthodox Union in New York about travel trends, about trips and whether families around the country are planning bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs in Israel.

Jacques B. Doukhan is a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis and director of the Institute of Jewish-Christian Studies at Andrews University, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Berrien Springs, Mich. He is an expert in the area of the Sabbath.

Rochelle Millen is a religion professor at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and author of Women, Birth, and Death in Jewish Law and Practice (University Press of New England, 2004), which examines the role of women in Jewish funerals.

Oliver Leaman is a professor of philosophy and Zantker Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Kentucky and co-editor of Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, which describes a history of American funeral practices.

Regina Sandler-Phillips is a rabbi, chaplain and educator. She is the founder of the Hevra Kadisha (sacred Jewish burial fellowship) at Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. She has kept the vigil over Jewish dead in hospitals, private homes and funeral parlors, and is an acknowledged authority on Jewish funeral issues.

The Jewish Funeral Directors of America in Sterling, Va., is an international association of 100 Jewish funeral homes and 170 Jewish funeral directors.