‘I Wish They Had Birthright for Adults!’: The Effect of Birthright Israel on Jewish Parents’ Interest in Visiting Israel

Abstract

This study assesses the impact of the Taglit-Birthright Israel travel program on parents of participants-in particular, on the ways in which parents' indirect exposure to their adult children's experiences in the program affect those parents' connections to Israel. Birthright Israel is a large-scale, successful, educational travel program that provides a gift of 10-day trips to Israel to Jewish young adults. A substantial body of research has demonstrated the effectiveness of Birthright Israel in strengthening the Jewish identity of young diaspora Jews. Anecdotal evidence suggests that participants whose interest in Israel is enhanced by their Birthright Israel experience share what they have learned with their parents, and that this results in an increase in Israel interest for the parents. This study is the first to systematically analyze the program's impact on such parents. Based on semistructured interviews of Birthright Israel parents and on pre-trip and post-trip surveys of more than 1,500 parents, this paper shows that, for Jewish parents, the primary impact of Birthright Israel is an increased interest in visiting Israel and a reduced concern about the safety of Israel travel. The effect of the program was most pronounced for parents who had never been to Israel. Parental interest in trips like Birthright Israel presents an opportunity to reach the generation of American Jews during midlife in ways not previously considered.

The Reach and Impact of Birthright Israel: What We Can Learn from Pew’s “Jewish Americans in 2020”

“…The analyses also provide evidence for the growing impact of the program on the American Jewish community via the "spillover" effect on Jewish parents identified by Aronson (2017). Among Jewish parents with a grown child, nearly 30% have an adult child who participated in Birthright.…”

“…Given the program's scope and increasing concerns that young Jews' relationships with Israel and the Jewish community are weakening (Bard 2019;Barnett 2018Barnett , 2016Gordis 2019), understanding the extent to which Birthright has achieved its goals, and assessing its broader role in the US Jewish community, is especially important. To this end, Birthright has been the most intensively studied educational program in the Jewish world, including ethnographic studies and a broad range of surveys of applicants, participants, and even parents (e.g., Aronson 2017;Hagai et al 2018;Kelner 2010;Sasson et al 2014;Saxe and Chazan 2008;Wright et al 2022).…”

“…Pew can therefore be used to estimate Birthright's "reach": The level of participation in the program among different age groups, gender identities, and various levels of Jewish backgrounds (measured by denomination, religion raised, Jewish parentage, and history of formal Jewish education). Past research has also found that Birthright has a profound impact on the parents of those who participate, leading these parents to become more interested in Israel, especially if they have not been to Israel themselves (Aronson 2017). We therefore also estimate the proportion of parents who have a grown child who participated in Birthright, and the extent to which being a parent of a child who participated in Birthright, varies by the parent's involvement in Jewish life, including whether or not the parent has traveled to Israel.…”

The 2019 Sklare Address: How Gender and Family Still Matter for Contemporary Jewry

“…We have some research on how Jewish peers influence the outcomes in terms of individuals (e.g., Sinclair and Milner 2005 ) and even have the beginnings of some mesosystem effects on Jewish families, such as Pomson and Schnoor’s earlier study ( 2008 ) of Canadian Jews, or the studies of Birthright parents inspired to visit Israel by their teenagers who went on Birthright (Aronson 2017 ). But we have little information on how much Jewish capital matters in occupations, or whether certain occupations present pressures that challenge the Jewishness of families (we know they used to in the past—Korman 1988 ; Mael 1991 ), or whether certain high school activities undermine the Jewishness of teenagers’ families (though some of the narratives in Pomson and Schnoor’s recent book [ 2018 ] are suggestive that they do).…”