Evaluating birthright

The authors' eloquent description of what happens during the 10-day trips deeply engages the reader.

By MORTON I. TEICHER
birthright book 88 224 (photo credit: Courtesy)
birthright book 88 224
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Ten Days of Birthright Israel By Leonard Saxe and Barry Chazan Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England 240 Pages; $24.95 Since 2000, birthright Israel has provided free 10-day trips to Israel to 150,000 young adults. The purpose is to foster the Jewish identity of the participants and to promote their attachment to Israel. The idea of providing educational experiences in Israel for Diaspora youth is not new. High-school students from Zionist families have often gone to Israel for short periods of study. These visits usually constitute an intensification opportunity rather than an attempt to counter the forces of assimilation. Study-abroad arrangements have brought some university students to Israel for a semester or an academic year. All these programs often entail considerable cost. By contrast, the two philanthropists Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt, who founded and supported birthright israel, asserted that it is an entitlement, the "birthright" of all young Jews to visit Israel. Accordingly, they put up millions of their own dollars and persuaded others, including the Israeli government, to finance free trips. Bronfman and Steinhardt, against considerable opposition, argued that these learning opportunities could stem the tide of assimilation and change the Jewish future. Their idea was a sophisticated refinement of the notion put forward by Yossi Beilin, who urged that all Diaspora 17-year-olds be given a voucher to come to Israel for a youth "jamboree." This book is an attempt to describe and evaluate Operation Birthright. The description is a rich account of the historic sites and the colorful personalities who serve as speakers and educational tour leaders. These vary considerably, since Operation Birthright does not run the trips; it has a network of experienced educational trip organizers who are funded to do so, guided by quality standards and monitoring procedures. One of these organizers promoted the idea of interaction between the visitors and their peers, chiefly soldiers who were released for a few days to participate in the program. This notion was widely adopted and contributed significantly to the popularity of the program. When the authors focus on describing what actually happens during the 10-day trips, their eloquence deeply engages the reader. When they try to give historical background or theoretical underpinnings, they are less successful. For example, there is a clumsy reference to Abraham who "went on the first 'birthright israel' trip from Ur to the land of Canaan." Similarly, the effort to tie educational, sociological and psychological theories to the program fails to be persuasive. Perhaps the least impressive part of the presentation is the chapter on evaluation. The authors acknowledge that they begin with a "decidedly positive" view of the program. Moreover, one of them (Chazan), unnamed in the text but identified in a footnote, was the education director of birthright israel from its inception. Although his chief task was to design the educational program to which the young adults were to be exposed, he was also responsible for establishing the evaluation process. This is hardly a qualification for objectivity. A control group design for part of the evaluation indicates that the responses of participants are enthusiastic as contrasted to non-participants. The participants learned about Israel and perceive it positively. They indicate an intent to raise their children as Jews, but this is hardly a convincing index of the program's success. A longitudinal study is required for this criterion to be meaningful. Similarly, long-range studies are necessary to determine whether or not participation in birthright leads to more involvement with the Jewish community. The authors acknowledge that "whether the impact of the program is sustained or ephemeral" is a question for the future. Readers will come away feeling that those parts of this book that are devoted to portraits of the participants in all aspects of birthright israel and what happens to them are enlightening and worthy of attention. Those who are unfamiliar with the program will be enriched by reading about this bold effort to insure Jewish continuity. The writer is the founding dean of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University and dean emeritus of the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.