Jewish Educational Interventions in an Era of Diversity

Birthright Israel’s Impact on Participants from Different Religious and Cultural Backgrounds

Bibliographic Data

ID6651499
AuthorsG Wright (0000-0002-9280-852X, Brandeis University, corresponding author), Sasha Volodarsky (0000-0003-0265-0018, George Washington University), Susanna Hecht (0000-0001-6722-1500, Brandeis University), Shahar Hecht, L Saxe (0000-0003-3381-8637, Brandeis University)
Year2025
Volume46
Issue1
Publication date2025-12-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueContemporary Jewry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0147-1694 • E-ISSN: 1876-5165
PublisherSpringer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1007/s12397-025-09693-8
OpenAlexW4417448920
LanguageEN
References cited25

Ensuring that Jewish educational initiatives address the growing diversity of the US Jewish community requires, in part, understanding the background characteristics of participants and how a given educational program affects the trajectory of Jewish engagement for those with little, moderate, or a substantial amount of prior Jewish education and experiences. The present paper undertakes this analysis using the example of Birthright Israel. First, using latent class analysis, we develop a data-informed typology for classifying different religious and cultural childhood experiences of American Jewish young adults. We then examine the extent to which each group in the typology is impacted by participation in Birthright Israel, using an analytic approach that compares pre- and post-trip responses for both individuals who participated in Birthright Israel and a comparison group of those who applied but did not participate. We find that for some measures, Birthright Israel has a significant impact on participants with a variety of background experiences, while for other outcomes, Birthright Israel’s impact is concentrated among those with the least exposure to Jewish life

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Open DOIOpen Access