For the past few weeks I have heard many of my friends talk about wanting to go on Birthright-Taglit and their plan to sign up as soon as possible to ensure a spot on the trip. As the first day that applications were being accepted, I watched the frenzy of people waking up early, signing online to get their information in right away. The extremely competitive feel of this entire process made me want to investigate it further. As I started too look on the web, I came across an article on jpost.com about a the new high demand for Birthright in North America. I have discussed before the "trendy" and social aspect of the trip so I found this information to be very interesting. It is now the way that many young adults want to spent part of their summer. The organization stated that they had 40,108 applicants this year over a seven day registration period, which is 1,334 more then last year when people were able to register for two more weeks. They had 1,000 people sign up in the first minute!
The huge number of young Jewish adults that want too take this summer trip to Israel shows how it has become somewhat a right of passage and an effective way to connect Israel and Diaspora. In addition, people who go on Birthright have been found to stay more connected with Judaism and their heritage with those who do not. With an increase in applicants I wondered how they were able to keep up with their funding. I researched more about who provides the money for the trip because the cost of each participant if $3000, clearly not enough to fund the entire project. I searched on the Birthright website (www.birthrightisrael.com) which had a section titled "Donate." Here it went into more depth about the economic situation of the foundation and they listed The Jewish Federation, JAFI and the Government of Israel as their strongest partners. In addition, they have more then 12,000 new donors in North America stemming from alumni, parent's and the diverse communities that these people live in. I looked deeper into the finances of the trip and went to www.sdjewishworld.com where it said that in order to achieve their 2013 goal of they will need to match the Israeli governments increased commitment to raise corresponding funds from individual donors. This challenges donors who are part of the Birthright Israel Foundation, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Agency for Israel. There was not much information about how they plan to market the trip and raise more money and I am interested to see how they evolve and change as more and more people become interested in the trip.
The article on jpost.com took the data from registration to come up with the percentages of the amount of Reform, "Just Jewish", Conservative, Orthodox and "Other" applicants. 41% said Reform, 26% said "Just Jewish", 21% Conservative, 4% Orthodox and 8% "Other." The applications came predominately from Reform Jews which was so interesting and wondered why so many more Reform Jew's wanted to apply to the trip considering that is typically known as being the the "least" religious movement. Going to Israel and experiencing all of the history would seem to be like something all Jewish people would want to do, regardless of what movement they belong too but there was such a low number of conservative and orthodox Jews who applied.
With so many trips that send young adults to Israel, Birthright-Taglit seems to be the first choice of many people. I think that over time they have built a reputation and everyone I know has at least heard about the trip. Their website is very easy to navigate and covers many things like, "About us" "The trip" "Next" "After the trip" and "Donate." They give people opportunities to connect locally and internationally, have events, programs and other opportunities within your community and even have an application where you can see what is going on in your city. In addition, they allow people to connect to alumni in your community and Israel, so even if you are not attending the 10 day trip to Israel, you are able to participate and stay connected to their organization. I believe that doing this is extremely important for Birthright Israel and marketing their name in more then one way allows them they expand their organization to include more people and build their reputation. Doing this ultimately encourages people to continue to connect to Israel and their Jewish heritage as well as explore their Jewish identity on a deeper level, through their trip to Israel.
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