Honeymoon Israel (HMI), a program to promote newlyweds making new connections to the Holy Land, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Since 2015, HMI has organized trips for 180 cohorts originating from major cities, including Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and Atlanta.
Avi Rubel, an Atlanta resident, is a co-founder and CEO of HMI. Rubel said HMI has sent more than 3,000 people to Israel, sparking deep connections to Jewish culture, traditions, and values. When they return, the cohort is encouraged to remain close, with Jewish activities like Shabbat dinners and holiday celebrations.
The trip is open to newly married or partnered couples of all cultures, races, religions, genders, and sexual identities. One member of each couple must identify as Jewish, and one person must have never been to Israel.
Every trip includes guided tours of the main cities including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, visits to the main Jewish and Christian sites in Jerusalem, an opportunity to meet Israeli couples, Jewish and Palestinian speakers, a visit to the Dead Sea and Masada, and a volunteer opportunity. Participants celebrate Shabbat in Jerusalem, and often add a second Shabbat in Tel Aviv.
“We’re going to give you answers about Israel. We’re not going to tell you how to think, or what to think, about Israel. This is much more of an adult trip, where you come home probably asking more questions than you had [before the trip],” Rubel said. “You’re going to be exposed to a lot of complexity and nuance and people with different narratives and different backgrounds. So this is a sophisticated trip that allows you to go beyond the headlines and away from the binaries about Israel that are so common, and really dig deep.”
Rubel said prior to the Oct. 7 war between Israel and Hamas, the average number in Atlanta was three couples applying for every one available spot. That number has dropped.
“Israel’s gone through a lot in the last few years, and our trips are completely safe and secure. We take safety seriously, and we can change our itinerary or make changes to it on the fly. We want people to know that it’s going to be safe for them,” Rubel said.
Rubel said that Oct. 7 changed Israel “in a significant way, so when we bring people to Israel, we want them to experience that.” While hostages were still being held in Gaza, HMI participants visited Hostage Square in Tel Aviv and met with the relatives of hostages.
“Oct. 7, obviously, was a huge moment in Israel, but there’s not just one story about Oct. 7. There’s the Jewish-Israeli story of what happened, but then there’s the Palestinian story that happened in Gaza after Oct. 7,” Rubel said. “It’s something that we want to encourage conversation about.”
Rubel likened visiting Israel with bringing a partner home to meet the family. “Only when you’re really comfortable with someone, do you bring them home and you introduce them to your family. So in that same way, Israel is the home of the Jewish people,” Rubel said.
“By visiting the family’s home, you really understand why they are the way they are,” Rubel said. “We look at Israel as a project of the entire Jewish people, and we want couples who are building their lives together to feel connected to it.”
Roswell residents Mike and Lexi Vialpando
Lexi Vialpando, 34, grew up in the Atlanta Jewish community. While at Davis Academy, she traveled to Israel for the first time. Lexi had a significant Jewish population in her high school and then joined a Jewish sorority in college. She and her husband, Mike Vialpando, 45, attended HMI in January after eloping in Glacier National Park in July 2025.
Mike said he went into the trip with few expectations beyond “eating up history and various spiritual sites.” Given the long-term Israel-Hamas conflict, Mike received advice to “be ready” for hostility in the area. To stay informed, the HMI group used several apps for safety information. They were told they’d have plenty of time to access a bomb shelter, if needed.
“We got kind of lucky because we [arrived] during a time where we just had zero alarms or sirens of any sort, where that had been the norm even just a few weeks prior to us coming,” Mike said.
Lexi said they landed in Israel as Iranians were protesting the government and faced economic collapse.
“No one was sure of the death toll of Iranian protestors, or whether Trump was going to [make a move on Iran], and Iran’s answer to that is always to bomb Israel. And so they kept us apprised of the situation, and basically told us, like we’re 99% sure nothing is going to happen, but if you hear a siren, you have way longer than you think to get into a shelter and you will be fine,” Lexi said.
Standout moments for Lexi included watching a scribe write Torah on top of Masada, a fortress in the desert that overlooks the Dead Sea.
Mike, who described himself as a non-practicing Catholic, said the Western Wall provided “a feeling of connection to a greater people, greater community. In Jerusalem, I felt a deeper connection to the land.”
Lexi said she often feels the Atlanta Jewish community is small, but “this trip kind of showed me that there’s a different way that you can be involved. It can be on my own terms, which I think is helpful. So now I feel more inspired to look into doing things my own way, rather than trying to follow a path that my parents had set me on.”
Mike said HMI was “one of the best things that happened” in his life. Upon his return from the trip, he is focusing on building connections and building community for himself and Lexi within the Jewish community.
Sandy Springs residents Chloe and Micah Engler
Married parents of two preschoolers, Chloe Engler, 33, and Micah Engler, 39, learned about HMI from friends who spoke highly of the trip. They’d been trying to attend HMI for five years but were delayed by COVID, moving from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, having two kids, and the Oct. 7 war.
Micah has been traveling to Israel since childhood. He has lived on a kibbutz, attended school in Israel, and staffed Birthright Israel trips. But HMI was Chloe’s first trip to Israel.
“From my perspective, my relationship to Israel before going on the trip was very different in that I didn’t grow up with an innate, baked-in love of Israel and Zionism. After meeting Micah, meeting his family, and being married to him … I could really feel the passion and love of this place through them,” Chloe said. “I grew up always being interested in the region and its complexities.”
Standing atop the Temple Mount, praying at the Western Wall, walking past the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Via Dolarosa “makes you really appreciate this special land with so many different cultures,” Chloe said. “There’s a very unique feeling to be in the center of humanity, in the center of all these histories all mixed together.”
Chloe is a Black American who grew up in the South. She is nearly complete with her conversion to Judaism, working with Rabbi Natan Trief from Temple Sinai.
Tashager Araro, an Ethiopian-Israeli woman who came to Israel as a baby during Operation Solomon, spoke to the group about religious and racial diversity in Israel. Chloe said Araro’s experience and comparison to that of the Black American experience was “eye-opening.”
“[Araro] was born as her mom was en route during Operation Solomon. She had this really wonderful, really moving story, and now she’s going on to do humanitarian work by bolstering the Ethiopian community in Tel Aviv.
“As a Black American, I went into [the trip] hearing from my in-laws that Israel is very diverse. From the Black American perspective, you have some skepticism toward it. How are they integrated? Are there still micro-aggressions or difficulties there?” Chloe said. “My major takeaway was that as an Ethiopian Jew, she really feels truly equal in Israeli society. And that was something that I was a little bit skeptical about coming in as a Black Southern American.”
Micah said the group met with Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and a Palestinian activist.
“It’s hard to appreciate the coexistence that’s actually happening when you see what’s going on in the news here. That’s not the perception you get in any way,” Micah said. “The program did a good job of showing us a lot of ways in which, especially Israeli Arabs, were integrated into society. But it also did a good job of showing ways where there’s room for growth.”
Both the Englers and Vialpandos said they’re looking forward to the day they can return to Israel with their children.
“Going to Israel really showed me that in order to really build this love of Israel and Zionism, you have to go to Israel. I would love for them to have that experience,” Chloe said.
More trips on the horizon
“Seventy percent of new couples were coming from word of mouth from prior participants, so the word was spreading in people’s neighborhoods, in their work, and among family members,” Rubel said. “Since [Oct. 7] we’ve resumed running trips. We’re still getting back on our feet. We’re not yet back at three couples applying for a spot, but we just finished a full cohort of 20 couples from Atlanta.”
Depending on demand, HMI is planning to run two trips from Atlanta in fall 2026 and either winter or spring 2027. “It depends on how much demand comes back post-war,” Rubel said.
HMI is lowering fees starting in November from $2,900 to $500 now that couples can book their own flights to and from Israel.
“This update reflects what couples have been telling us for years: they want flexibility. Whether that means using airline miles, extending their time abroad, or choosing their departure city, this new model removes barriers while preserving the heart of the HMI experience,” Rubel said.