TEL AVIV — Under the haze of neon lights and techno beats, Roni Tessler waited for legendary DJ Offra to begin his set in a Tel Aviv club. Minutes later, the music cut and the party was shut down. Israel had launched a wave of airstrikes on Iran, pummeling nuclear sites and triggering a 12-day war that would trap Tessler and nearly a hundred other North American LGBTQ Jews in the country.

Organized by the Jewish Federations of North America, the trip included 15 first-time visitors to Israel and came amid a broader sense of alienation many had been feeling in their LGBTQ communities back home. Tessler, originally from Potomac, Maryland but living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for the past 15 years, compared being in Israel to Fire Island “as a place where gay people can breathe.”

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