Ten Days of Birthright Israel: A Journey in Young Adult Identity (review)

Group educational tours to Israel began with the founding of the modern state, and, since 1967, have been an important facet of diaspora Jewish education. These tours were generally organized through local Jewish communities and youth groups, in cooperation with the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and international Jewish agencies. Most lasted between several weeks and several months. In 2000, the Taglit-Birthright Israel initiative was launched, offering free ten-day tours to Israel for Jewish diaspora youth.

Saxe and Chazan's book, Ten Days of Birthright Israel: A Journey in Young Adult Identity, is a highly readable account of this new development in Jewish educational travel. It is an important work in that it offers a state-of-the-art review of the Taglit-Birthright Israel program, which has been intensively evaluated since its inception. The survey of the Birthright program, in which the authors were involved, included pre- and post-program questionnaires, observation of groups during their tours, follow-up of alumni at regular intervals, and comparison of tour participants with a control group of youth who registered for the program but did not join a tour. This wealth of information is summarized in a narrative form, with each of the book's ten chapters examining an aspect of the ten-day tour.

The book touches on many facets of the program and its implications, including the history of this particular program in the larger context of educational travel to Israel; the culture of American Jewish youth, the primary target population for the program, and its attitudes towards Israel; the political situation and terrorism; the importance of the group; and the role of the staff. The book raises some important observations, such as the importance of the holistic approach to education which involves and engages participants on the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural levels. The authors discuss the wider contexts in which the tour takes place, including American–Israel relations, the Israeli political situation, and American youth culture. Stories and personal narratives illustrate the authors' study, making the issues analyzed accessible to those not familiar with them.

Despite the large amount of quantitative data collected in the survey, the book is essentially qualitative. Only in the eighth chapter do we find some fifteen simple graphs and tables summarizing the data results. No more sophisticated data analysis techniques are applied. While this reflects the tone of the book aimed at a general, lay reader, additional in-depth analysis of the data would have added richness and weight to the narrative. For example, each of the chapters would have been enriched and had a stronger empirical footing if the stories and quotes presented were supplemented with graphs, tables, and typologies exploring the issues under discussion (for example, providing the questionnaire results relating to the importance of the group or evaluations of specific activities).

The book addresses a number of theoretical and pedagogical questions central to contemporary Jewish studies. What are the reasons for the success of the Taglit-Birthright program, which has brought hundreds of thousands of youth to Israel in less than a decade, the vast majority of whom say they were satisfied with the trip? How does this program impact Israel-Diaspora relations? Who are the leading players in the relationship—Diaspora philanthropists, the Israeli government, international youth movements, Jewish institutions? How do Diaspora youth integrate a relationship with Israel into their lives in their home countries?

Some of the insights offered by the authors are enlightening and reflect their intimate knowledge of the specific program and its larger context. However, in some cases the uniqueness of the Taglit-Birthright program in the world of Jewish education is exaggerated. The research conducted on previous educational tour programs to Israel found similar results: For example, research on other programs also observed the importance of the group, the role of the counselor...