Red Tent Tours, Paula Perlmutar Oretsky’s women-only tour to Israel, fills two niches: it explores the country from what Oretsky calls a “woman’s point of view” and highlights both Israel’s Jewish and non-Jewish elements.

“On my last tour,” the 62-year-old retired teacher from Toronto said, “I had women asking if we were going to plant a tree. I said, we’re not going to be doing those typical things.”

Five years ago, Oretsky launched Red Tent Tours, named for Anita Diamant’s 1997 bestseller, and has co-ordinated and led a tour nearly every year since, with another planned for May.

The tour is secular, non-denominational and geared to women of all religions, ages and backgrounds; most range from 50 to 80 and come from Canada, but Oretsky has had participants from the United States and Australia.

While it typically draws women who have never before been to Israel – for some of the non-Jewish past participants, visiting Israel was something on their “bucket list” – the 10-day, cross-country trip has also attracted women who’ve been to the country multiple times.

The itinerary includes a mix of urban exploring like learning about the changing landscape of Tel Aviv and Jaffa, visiting historical sites like Beit She’an and Caesarea, where the group is given a private tour of a museum of Spanish surrealist art, and hiking at national parks.

“I base the trip on my interests and my interest are varied. I like the antiquities, the arts, the outdoor component and I like to eat,” Oretsky laughed.

Where Red Tent really diverges from other Israel tours is in its focus on meeting face to face with women both Jewish and Arab and getting a feeling for where they live and the experiences that have shaped their lives.

For example, a staple is a visit to an Arab town in the Galilee region called Deir al-Asad, where the group prepares and eats lunch with a woman who runs a catering business, and listen to her story of being a business owner and role model to young women in her community.

READ: WHY ORTHODOX JUDAISM NEEDS FEMALE RABBIS

Another stop is to the home of a Druze woman in the Golan Heights, where the group eats lunch in a living room overlooking Syria, and hears her story of how her children came to work as professionals in Israel.

The group also meets with Oretsky’s daughter, a member of the Labour Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror, who made aliyah and lives collectively with a group of others from the movement; she shares her perspective on making aliyah, Oretsky explained.

On the next tour, scheduled for May, the group will meet with a Bedouin woman and Oretsky is also hoping to arrange a meeting with women from the multi-denominational feminist organization Women of the Wall.

Oretsky said she tries to keep the tour as politically neutral as possible. “It tends to lean a little bit left because of who I am, and because we talk on the trip of co-existence [between Jews and Arabs]. There’s also a female tour guide who’s with us the whole trip and she and I are on the same page in terms of looking for peace through co-existence.”

Oretsky has strong personal ties to Israel. At 21, she met an Israeli while traveling in Europe and they moved to Kibbutz Kineret, on the Sea of Galilee, where she taught English for several years.

After they divorced and she moved back to Toronto with her young son, she chose to send him to Bialik Hebrew Day School due to its Labour Zionist roots, and later sent both her children to Camp Gesher.

For Oretsky, Red Tent Tours is about sharing her love of Israel with others and countering some of the misconceptions about the country.

READ: WE WON’T STOP UNTIL WE HAVE EQUAL RIGHTS AT THE KOTEL

“I’m bothered by the negative political and editorial opinions and I think it’s important to show people what life is like in Israel,” she said, noting, “I didn’t want to show only Jewish Israel. A lot of Jewish women have already been exposed to Jewish Israel and my tour is unaffiliated [with any organization], so why limit it? There were women on my trip in past who’d never met a Muslim woman. To meet a Muslim woman who embraced them – literally – it opened their eyes.” 

Red Tent Tours runs this year from May 12-26, and includes an excursion to Petra, Jordan.