Taglit-Birthright Israel has been a remarkable achievement for Jewish education. This year more than 50,000 college students will participate in Birthright trips, and for many of these young adults, this will be their pivotal Jewish education experience. Among the 300,000 graduates of Birthright, there are many whose Jewish identity has been strengthened substantially.
In analyzing the success of Birthright, there are four important lessons to be learned:
First, free educational experiences are extremely attractive. The two programs in the last decade which have achieved major market penetration in virgin markets are Birthright and PJ Library; both programs are offered almost gratis to the participants.
Second, the Facebook generation enjoys and appreciates face-to-face experiences. While the bait of Birthright is a free trip, today the secret is out — the trip to Israel has a strong educational agenda and students are continuing to vie for spots.
Third, it is possible to grow an organization and simultaneously strengthen the current players in the field. Birthright developed a unique “franchise-own” system, in which the mother organization controls the finances like a company-owned system, but the programs operate via affiliates like a franchise system. In this manner, Birthright has strengthened the organizers and tour agencies that operate the trips on their behalf.
And fourth, it is possible to raise major funds for short high-impact programs.
Birthright’s success begs the question: Could its success be replicated with another age group in a different setting?
In discussing this idea with my student and colleague, Rabbi Carnie Rose of St Louis, Mo., we came up with the following idea.
The overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox Jewish teens in North America have no significant Jewish educational experience from bar/bat mitzvah age until Birthright. While there are those who attend Jewish day schools, summer camps, supplementary high schools and youth movements, the majority of teens do not participate in any of these educational offerings.
It is well known among educators that long weekend retreats have a high-impact potential. They provide an opportunity for teens to enjoy an intensive Jewish educational experience with their peers in a fully Jewish setting. By creating islands of Jewish space and Jewish time as a platform for a fun-filled experience, we could contribute to the identity-formation that teens undergo at this crucial stage. If these teen retreats were offered gratis, it would be possible to re-engage tens of thousands of teens annually who are otherwise lost to the organized Jewish community. For the multitudes of Jewish youth who attend public schools and whose connections with fellow Jews and Judaism are scant, these could be life-changing experiences.
Similar to Birthright, we could operate the retreats along a set of defined guidelines, using existing vendors (i.e. Jewish camps, youth movements, synagogues and schools) without having to create new infrastructures. These organizations would be challenged to not only organize retreats but also devise follow-up programs to ensure that these educational experiences are not simply a “one off.”
By offering the retreats locally, travel costs would be minimal and thus the cost of the retreat per participant should not prove to be exorbitant.
Using Birthright as the paradigm, this is certainly doable.
Jonathan Mirvis is a senior lecturer in social entrepreneurship at Hebrew University’s Melton Center for Jewish Education and the outgoing international director of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School. He wrote this piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.com.