Taglit-Birthright Israel cuts trips: Connecticut campuses get creative By Cindy Mindell Katie Roy and Lisa Kassow received an unexpected surprise last fall. The Hillel directors, of University of Hartford and Trinity College, respectively, were each informed by Hillel International that their Hillels would be allotted fewer seats on Taglit-Birthright Israel trips during the coming academic year. Taglit-Birthright Israel provides young Jewish adults, ages 18 to 26, with a free first-time, educational 10-day trip to Israel with a group of peers. The program was founded in 1999 by the former Israeli Justice Minister Dr. Yossi Beilin, in cooperation with Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt, the Israeli government, private philanthropists, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and Jewish communities around the world. Birthright Israel has raised more than $400 million to send more than 230,000 young Jews from 52 countries to Israel. There are approximately 125 trip organizers throughout the world that work with Taglit-Birthright Israel. Hillel International and Mayanot - a program of the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies, a Chabad-Lubavitch yeshiva in Jerusalem - are two of the top five. Every year, based on available funds and number of applicants, Birthright determines an overall number of trips and seats, and then allots a certain number of seats to each trip organizer. In the case of Hillel International and Mayanot, each organization then allocates a block of seats to their respective campus-based branches. When the economy was robust, up to 40,000 North American applicants were granted spots on trips every year. Last September, however, the picture was different: Applications were up 12 percent; funding was down. Birthright cut the number of available seats to North American trip organizers from 40,000 to 20,000. Every organizer has a wait-list, says Andrea Hoffman, director of Immersion Experience at Hillel International. "When seats were more bountiful, there was still more demand than capacity," she says. "This year we decided, so that each of the 150 campuses we serve could take as many participants as possible, that we would offer each campus one trip a year rather than two. Nobody gets an unlimited supply of seats." So, for example, Yale University Hillel participated in the winter 2010 trip; UConn Hillel will send students on the May trip. There's a formula for determining seat allocations, Hoffman says. Hillel International looks at how many students each campus has recruited for past Birthright trips and offers a similar number of seats. The campus Hillel is then responsible for recruiting and collecting (refundable) deposits from 30 percent more applicants than available seats. Wait-lists are necessary, Hoffman says, because there are students who drop out at every point in the application process, even after receiving their plane tickets. Seat reductions have affected Connecticut campuses in various ways. Yale was granted 20 spots, up from 15 last year, says Eric Samuels of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life. Katie Roy of University of Hartford received half as many seats this year as last year. Lisa Kassow of Trinity College, who recruited 17 students last year, was allotted no seats at all this year. "Hillel International told me that they had 25 percent of the allocations they'd had in the past," Kassow says. "At the time, I was just hiring Mijael Lacher, a cantor from Argentina who, at 23, was already an experienced Hillel professional and has an Israeli passport and is fluent in Hebrew. One of the reasons I hired him was that he was so perfect for the Birthright trip. We were making great efforts to do Israel programming and advocacy and I hoped that we'd get special consideration, and Hillel International said they'd try to get us a few seats." When no spots were offered on a winter trip - the more popular Birthright season for college students - Kassow decided not to try and recruit for a summer trip, as many of her potential applicants had already made alternative plans. Gary Wolff, executive director of Hillel at UConn, took the opposite tack. "Hillel asked its campus directors to figure out which trip they want to go on, either summer or winter," he says. "If you choose summer, they would ensure some seats, versus asking for both, when they can't promise spots on either." Wolff says that he chose the summer trip because participants would have more time to prepare and seats are easier to come by. Katie Roy of Hartford Hillel Foundation was offered half the seats she had last year. "We were told, 'Your numbers were good in 2008, but not in 2009,'" she says. Hillel International recommended that Roy send her students on Birthright through trip organizers Shorashim or Young Judaea. "It's difficult when you don't have a relationship with another trip provider," she says, "because it's harder to get your students into the best situation possible: knowing exactly when they're going, being able to go with friends." After exploring options, however, Roy and her staff decided to partner with Young Judaea, working directly with the organization to help place "priority" University of Hartford students - for example, students who had not been waitlisted on past Birthright trips - and arrange for groups of friends to go on trips together. Andrea Hoffman of Hillel International explains that priority is given to campuses that can recruit 10 or more students because of the follow-through component of its Birthright trips - the activities designed to keep Birthright participants engaged in Jewish life on campus and in their communities. In most cases, one Hillel staffperson is designated for campus follow-through programming. Smaller Hillels often don't have enough staff for both trip preparation and follow-through, Hoffman says. In the case of Mayanot, Rabbi Shlomo Hecht, director of Chabad at UConn, saw an increase in allocated seats from last year, but not all of the 30 applicants met the eligibility requirements, and others were wait-listed. Twelve UConn students went with Mayanot Birthright in January; Hecht is hoping to recruit a larger group for a summer trip. As follow-through, Chabad holds reunions and Shabbat dinners for participants, and invites students from other campuses who participated on trips with UConn. The Wesleyan University Jewish Community, led by Rabbi David Leipziger Teva, provides an annual winter Birthright trip for 30 to 40 students through IsraelExperts. Because of cuts to the number of available seats, Leipziger Teva finds it most difficult to have to "prioritize" applicants. "We have to decide who is more deserving," he says. "Is it a graduating senior who, if he doesn't go now, may never get another opportunity, but who leaves campus three months after his return? Or is it the first-year student who, when she returns, will have another three-and-a-half years to grow Jewishly? It's a Faustian compromise: I want them all to go." In addition to the campuses with larger Jewish populations and more extensive Hillel resources, Hillel International also supports campuses with smaller Jewish populations - those institutions the organization refers to as "Small and Mighty" - through its Soref Initiative for Emerging Campuses. In Connecticut, Soref works with Central Connecticut State University, Connecticut College, Eastern Connecticut State University, Quinnipiac University, and Southern Connecticut State University. Birthright applicants from smaller campuses apply directly through the Taglit-Birthright Israel and, if accepted, are given spots with other groups from other campuses. "My students are going to Israel much more than ever before," says Rabbi Reena Judd of Quinnipiac Hillel. "The Jewish student body is becoming more and more traditionally aligned, and I'm seeing more and more kids who want that in their lives." Judd, who has led the Hillel for five years, says that two years ago, three students applied to Birthright; this year, three went on a winter trip and four will go in the summer. "I haven't had one kid who hasn't gotten a spot," she says. "They apply until they get on the trip." If it's true that necessity is the mother of invention, funding cuts bring out resourcefulness, says Katie Roy of Hartford Hillel Foundation. "We have to be more creative in figuring out how to get students on trips," she says. "It would be ideal to send as many students as often as we were able, but most of them who want to go on Birthright end up going. They might wait a year or go in the summer instead of the winter, but it works out in the end." Getting the students to Israel is one challenge. Keeping the flame lit in the trip's aftermath is another. "No one has really been able to do follow-through well," says Gary Wolff of UConn Hillel, "so the Birthright Israel Foundation developed Birthright Israel NEXT," a forum that encourages trip alumni to stay engaged in Israel-related and Jewish opportunities, both on campus and following graduation. Wolff says that Hillel has improved its follow-through program over the last few years. "There's been an increase in Israel programming on campus, as well as in student attendance and involvement to enhance Jewish life in the community - on our lay leadership boards and elsewhere on campus. Students are getting involved with Hillel and other Jewish organizations to make a difference because they've learned something about themselves on Birthright. That said, I have very high standards for engaging students and I don't feel that I'm reaching them yet."