Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Letters

Yes, Birthright Israel Should Subsidize Free Teen Trips

Elan Ezrachi is correct in his assumption that teen trips to Israel must be subsidized if we want to see a significant increase in teen travel to Israel (“Why We Need to Subsidize Teen Travel to Israel”, August 24, 2015). However, based on our four-plus decades of running Youth to Israel Adventure (Y2I), our fully-subsidized community teen trip to Israel, Ezrachi’s assertions that teen trips need not be free will fall short of attracting teens en masse to Israel.

From 1971-1995, when Y2I was a partially, yet heavily subsidized teen trip, it attracted an average of 25 teens per year. In 1996, the full subsidy was implemented, participation eventually skyrocketed to an average of 100 teens per year.

Our participation rate, which is about 60% of the identified pool of teens as compared to less than 10% nationally (sans Orthodox), illustrate the success of the full subsidy. Our opinion is that the Israel experience should be free of charge, like Birthright Israel, as the only effective way to attract teens en masse to go to Israel.

Birthright Israel need not run teen trips. Birthright’s critical role should be to serve as fiscal agent for teen trips to Israel in two ways: funding fully subsidized, 10-day community-based teen trips, organized by local Jewish communities; and funding vouchers, equivalent to the cost of the fully subsidized, 10-day community teen trip, for longer teen trips organized by Jewish camps, youth groups, schools, and synagogues.

The teen Israel experience is the only realistic tool at our disposal to effectively fight BDS on college campuses. Whether it is a 10-day experience or months long, exposing our teens to Israel in Israel is the only way to build an army of pro-Israel activists on college campuses. Only Birthright Israel has the capacity and infrastructure to make this happen. Failure of Birthright Israel to lower the age of eligibility to 16 is failure to address the most serious anti-semitic problem confronting the American Jewish community.

Robert I. Lappin
President
Lappin Foundation
Salem, MA

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.