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Jonathan Boyd

ByJonathan Boyd, Jonathan Boyd

Opinion

It’s getting harder to connect kids to Israel

'Perhaps young people just don’t attach to place in the ways older people do'.

July 31, 2019 08:56
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3 min read

It’s been a rite of passage for decades. Every summer, over a thousand British Jewish teenagers travel to Israel on youth movement tours, led by young madrichim (leaders) and supported and managed by UJIA and the Jewish Agency.

For those who remember going on ‘tour,’ or leading it, or watching our children return from it, we know how transformative it is. We see it and feel it — somehow its magic seems to kindle a Jewish spark in a way that little else can.

Yet academic debate about its impact persists, particularly in the US. Researchers at Brandeis University responsible for studying the Birthright Israel programme have long argued in favour of its transformative effects. Birthright has sent over 650,000 young Jews on free trips to Israel over the past two decades, and Brandeis research has found that Birthright participants are more likely than others to feel a strong connection to Israel, marry Jews, have Jewish friends and join synagogues.

Birthright’s success, they argue, “suggests that an even closer, more personal and meaningful relationship between Israel and the American Jewish Diaspora, may be on the horizon.”