This is the Forward’s coverage of Taglit-Birthright Israel, a free 10-day trip to Israel for young adults with Jewish heritage.
Birthright
The Latest
-
Community Birthright Has An Agenda — And That’s Perfectly Okay
This summer, for the first time, I staffed a Birthright trip — and it was incredible. Ten action-packed days without more than a minute to breathe. But it wasn’t the itinerary that made the trip so amazing; it was the people. My bus was filled with forty young professionals with very little prior knowledge of…
-
News Young Evangelicals Feel The Complexity Of Conflict After Traveling To Israel
One of Ryan Mills’ most powerful memories of his recent trip to Israel was the moment he gazed over a barrier wall at the Israel-Gaza border and saw what seemed like a Hamas lookout post. “It was kind of eerie,” Mills said about traveling so close to the heart of the long-simmering conflict less than…
-
Opinion I Teach At Birthright. IfNotNow Is Wrong.
The very public walkout of IfNotNow members on a Birthright tour last week has generated much angst in Israel and amongst American Jewry. As a Birthright lecturer who has met with thousands of Birthright participants to discuss Israel’s geopolitics, I can’t help but regard IfNotNow’s media stunt with bewilderment. Quite simply, the charges levelled against…
-
News Birthright Caught Between Anti-Occupation Activists And Hard Right-Wing Donors
Like many Jewish institutions, Birthright Israel is rapidly losing the struggle to remain detached from deep political differences in these divisive times. Over the past months, it has been targeted directly by young activist Jews, angry over what they believe is the program’s refusal to deliver a balanced message to its participants regarding the Israeli-Palestinian…
-
Israel News They Walked Out On Birthright To See Palestinians — And Created Their Own Conflict
Katie Fenster says that she wasn’t planning on walking out on her Birthright Israel tour when she arrived. But during the free 10-day trip, she grew increasingly frustrated that the answers to her questions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “all came from one perspective” and did not include Palestinian views. “We felt like we weren’t being…
-
Fast Forward Birthright Participants Publicly Walk Off Trip To Visit West Bank
Five participants on a Birthright Israel program left early Thursday in public protest of its education curriculum, which they say didn’t touch on the occupation of the West Bank. Danielle Raskin, one the participants who protested the trip, created a Twitter account to document her experience, which she had been skeptical about upon arriving, according…
-
Opinion Our Israel Education Is Failing
Have you ever seen cars from the 1960s? They’re built like tanks, with big, bold chrome fins and solid, unyielding steel frames that look like they could survive an artillery blast. The cars, of course, were death traps. In the event of a collision, all the impact would get transferred to the driver. Modern cars,…
-
Fast Forward Birthright Founder Flips Bird At Protesters Outside Gala
(JTA) — Michael Steinhardt, the co-founder and major funder of Birthright Israel, flashed his middle finger at protesters outside a gala dinner in honor of the 18th anniversary of the free trip to Israel for young Jewish men and women. More than 150 students from colleges in the New York and New England areas protested…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Inside the ancient Christian theology driving modern antisemitism
- 2
News Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right
- 3
Opinion The moral degradation of Israel’s far right is even worse than you think
- 4
Culture In 1989, Harold Pinter and Jerry Schatzberg made the perfect Holocaust movie for 2026
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Gene Shalit, a mensch with a personality as big as his mustache, turns 100
-
Looking Forward How a song about the food chain became a Seder mainstay
-
Fast Forward Connecticut Catholic school punishes students who targeted ‘Jew Canaan’ rivals on social media
-
Fast Forward Pro-Palestinian rally at Buchenwald memorial is shut down by German authorities
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
