Birthright Allows ‘Second-Timers’ To Join Israel Trips
Jewish young adults who previously visited Israel on a high school program will still be eligible for Birthright.
The Taglit-Birthright Israel steering committee approved the expansion of the free 10-day trip to Israel at a meeting on Tuesday, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry announced on Thursday.
The committee also voted to increase funding to attract more French young adults, who face escalating anti-Semitism at home, to the program. French aliyah has nearly doubled in recent years.
The decision to offer a Birthright trip for second-timers comes after operators of high school programs in Israel complained that the heavily subsidized Birthright trips for 18- to 26-year-olds have hurt enrollment in their programs, according to reports.
The trips of the second-timers will be funded solely by donors, as opposed to first-time visitors to Israel, whose trip is one-third funded by the Israeli government.
“Taglit has proven itself as a leader in strengthening Jewish identity among young people in the Diaspora and building ties with the State of Israel,” the Diaspora Affairs Ministry said in a statement. “Expanding the participation criteria will add to Taglit’s positive influence in the Jewish world.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
