NEW YORK — Birthright Israel will kick off free trips to Israel in December, despite problems cropping up at the last minute including disagreements with the Jewish Agency for Israel and incomplete financing.
Birthright Israel — brought to life last fall by two major Jewish philanthropists, Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman — will offer free, first-time educational trips to every Jew in the diaspora aged 15 to 26.
A dozen Jewish groups will provide trips to 6,000 college-aged Jew from North America, Europe and South America who are expected to take up Birthright’s invitation to visit Israel during the winter break. Recruiting throughout the Bay Area is just beginning.
Trips for high school students are slated to begin in 2001.
It’s not unexpected that the Jewish Agency — for decades the premier organization running educational trips in Israel — is running into disagreements with Birthright Israel. The Jewish Agency wants to play a major role in the new initiative, which aims to quadruple in the next five years the number of Jewish youth visiting the holy land.
Estimates vary, but according to research by Birthright Israel International’s Jerusalem office, about 20,000 young Jews from all over the world went to Israel last year.
The people behind the initiative are wary of giving the Jewish Agency too large a role in an endeavor they hope will break new ground in the field of Israel experiences.
The discussions come as the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental agency responsible primarily for aliyah and resettlement, is attempting to revamp itself as an agent for enhancing Jewish unity and strengthening Jewish identity.
In the past decade, youth trips — organized mainly by the Jewish Agency, youth movements and local Jewish communities — have failed to fuel a burst in the number of young people visiting Israel both for summer stints and longer stays.
To generate fresh excitement about visiting Israel, Birthright’s creators “wanted to start something with a new image, with a new spirit, with a new vision,” said Shimshon Shoshani, the head of the Jerusalem-based international operation.
They want to open it to the participation of different trip providers “without anyone holding a monopoly in his hand.”
Birthright Israel wants to mobilize equal support from Jewish philanthropists, the government of Israel and diaspora Jewish communities in a three-way partnership to provide $300 million for the project over five years.
That funding would cover the cost of round-trip airfare plus 10 days of a first visit to Israel for Jewish high school, college and post-college youth.
Last month, the initiative gained the enthusiastic support of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who agreed “in principle” to fulfill Israel’s financial role in the partnership.
Barak said he would announce later this month, after hammering out budget issues with his administration, how much money Israel will offer.
Of the 20 philanthropists and private foundations sought to contribute $1 million to the project each year for five years, eight have signed on so far, with three other potential funders lined up.
Jewish federations, envisioned as the third partner in the Birthright triumvirate, will be approached individually over the next year. Meanwhile, 20 communities have reportedly applied to be pilot cities for marketing Birthright Israel and recruiting participants.
Negotiations now under way among the agency, Birthright Israel and the Israeli government will decide over the next few weeks what role the Jewish Agency will play.
Amos Hermon, a co-chairman of the education department of the Jewish Agency, said he wants his agency to “contribute at the maximum from the educational and the context point of view.”
Initially, the Jewish Agency was offered mostly an administrative role — to determine the requirements and policies that all trip providers would have to meet.
But insiders at Birthright Israel say that the Jewish Agency wants to not only create those standards, but also to continue to serve as the leading provider of Israel trips.
Birthright’s organizers believe in an “open market approach.” If the Jewish Agency wants to run trips, it must compete with for-profit trip providers.
Birthright Israel’s thinking is this: Competition is essential to the initiative’s success because it brings down costs and increases consumer choice, thereby leading to more trips and greater interest in Israel.