Taglit Birthright
<youtube size="small" align="right" caption="Co-founders Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt reflect on 13 years of Birthright">g6Hi8V-Mz78</youtube>
Taglit-Birthright Israel provides first time, peer group, educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26[1]. It was founded by Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman in 1999.[2]
Contents
Pre-History
Organised tours of Israel for young American Jews date back to the 1950s, shortly after the establishment of the state. In the 1950s they were organised by American Zionist groups (Young Judaea) and religiously-affiliated societies (the conservative United Synagogue Youth [USY]; the reform National Federation of Temple Youth [NFTY]) in co-operation with the Jewish Agency, which provided subsidies. Israel tended to see the tours as a means of encouraging diaspora Jews to make aliyah, but North American groups have used them primarily 'to strengthen Jewish identities in America'.[3]
Prior to 1967 worldwide enrolment in short-term youth and young adult summer programs in Israel ranged from 1,000-2,000 a year. From the end of the Six Day War to 2000, participation oscillated between 4,000-10,000 a year, with annual fluctuation growing sharper since the 1980s and tending to move inversely with the level of violence on the ground.[4]
From a handful, there are now over 100 organisations sponsoring trips to Israel for North American Jews. By the late 1990s USY was offering five Israel trips in additional to its classic 'Israel Pilgrimage' tour: London and Israel; Eastern Europe and Israel; Poland and Israel (emphasising Holocaust education); Italy and Israel (with a three day sea voyage to Palestine simulating 'illegal' immigration to Palestine in the 1940s) and Etgar! The Ultimate Israel Challenge. Young Judaea now offered three summer programs; B'nai Brith Youth Organisation offered 10 (including an 'Israel and Safari in Kenya') and the Orthodox Union's National Council of Synagogue Youth offered six.[5]
Many organisations also run Holocaust-site pilgrimages, whose 'ultimate purpose', one anthropologist reports, 'is to root the sanctity of the State [of Israel] in the experience of the Shoah'.[6]
History
Taglit was initiated by Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman and Sheldon Adelson has been a major donor to the project. Connie Bruck reports:
- Michael Steinhardt is a former hedge-fund manager and the co-founding chairman of Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program, established in 1999, that pays for Jewish youths to go to Israel each year. He is friendly with Adelson, who is a fellow-contributor to Birthright. “These things are not done to make money,” Steinhardt said of Adelson’s new media initiatives. "They’re done because Sheldon’s an ideologue—he really cares about things that are of the spirit and not of the pocketbook."
...
Sheldon and Miriam Adelson have also donated thirty million dollars a year, for the last two years, to Taglit-Birthright Israel. Before Adelson decided to make his Birthright gift, Shimshon Shoshani, the organization’s C.E.O., recalled, “He looked at every detail of the program—flight schedules, contracts, everything.” Like many prospective donors, Adelson was asked to make his gift over a number of years, but he chose instead to go year by year. He became Birthright’s single largest donor. In 2008, he provided about a third of its eighty-six-million-dollar annual budget. Birthright executives are hoping that he will donate thirty million dollars or more for 2009—but they are still waiting to hear his decision. There are hotel reservations to be made and plane tickets to be purchased for Birthright participants. “With Sheldon’s approach—and with his being the biggest donor—you literally know you have the money just in time to start spending it,” someone closely involved with Birthright said.[7]
Activities
According to the IDC Herzliya website groups including Birthright, Hillel, AIPAC, March of the Living, AJC, UJC among others have planned visits the Asper Institute Institute for New Media Diplomacy, at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications over the course of 2008 and 2009.[8]
Funding
The organization has an annual budget of $86 million, of which $30 million has been provided by Adelson alone in each of the past two years.
Principals
- Michael Steinhardt - co-founder
- Charles Bronfman - co-founder
- Sheldon Adelson - major donor
- Shimshon Shoshani - CEO
Contact, References and Resources
Contact
Resources
References
- ↑ www.birthrighisrael.com,About Us, Accessed 13-March-2009
- ↑ Taglit-birthright celebrates 10 year anniversary, Jerusalem Post, accessed 8 August 2012
- ↑ Shaul Kelner, Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism (New York University Press, 2010), 33.
- ↑ Jewish Agency figures, cited in Kelner 2010, 35
- ↑ Kelner 2010, 35
- ↑ Jackie Feldman, cited in Kelner 2010, 36
- ↑ Connie Bruck, The Brass Ring: A multibillionaire’s relentless quest for global influence, New Yorker, 30 June 2008.
- ↑ Groups and Missions, Asper Institute for New Media Diplomacy, Sammy Ofer School of Communications, IDC Herzliya, accessed 22 June 2009.
