by Dr. Jonathan Mirvis
Taglit (Birthright) has been a remarkable achievement for Jewish education. This year over 50,000 college students will be participating in Taglit trips and for many of these young adults, this will be their pivotal Jewish education experience. Among the 300,000 graduates of Taglit, there are many whose Jewish identity has been strengthened substantially.
In analyzing the success of Taglit there are four important lessons to be learned:
- Free educational experiences are extremely attractive. The two programs in the last decade which have achieved major market penetration in virgin markets are Taglit and PJ Library; both programs are offered almost gratis to the participants.
- The “facebook generation” en masse enjoys and appreciates face to face social educational experiences. While the bait of Taglit is a free trip, today the secret is out – the trip to Israel has a strong educational agenda and students are continuing to vie for spots.
- It is possible to grow an organization and simultaneously strengthen the current “players” in the field. Taglit developed a unique “franch-own” system, a system in which the mother organization controls the finances similar to a company owned system and operates programs via affiliates similar to a franchise system. In this manner, Taglit has strengthened the organizers and tour agencies that operate the trips on their behalf.
- It is possible to raise major funds for short high impact programs that aspire to attract major market share.
Taglit’s success begs the following question: is it possible to replicate this success with another age group in a different setting?
In discussing this idea with my student and colleague, Rabbi Carnie Rose of St Louis, we came up with the following “big idea”.
The overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox Jewish teens in North America have no significant Jewish educational experience from Bar/Bat mitzvah age through to Taglit. While there are those who attend Jewish Day Schools, summer camps, supplementary high schools and youth movements, the majority of teens do not participate in any of these important educational offerings.
It is a well known among educators that long weekend retreats have a high impact potential. They provide an opportunity for teens to enjoy an intensive Jewish educational experience with their peers in a fully Jewish setting. By creating islands of Jewish space and Jewish time as a platform for a fun-filled experience, we could contribute to the identity formation process that the teens are undergoing at this crucial stage in their lives. In offering these teen retreats gratis, it is possible to re-engage tens of thousands of teens annually who are otherwise “lost” to the organized Jewish Community. For the multitudes of Jewish youth who attend public schools and whose connections with fellow Jews and Judaism are scant, this could be a life changing experience.
Similar to Taglit we could operate the retreats along a set of defined guidelines, using existing vendors (i.e. Jewish camps, youth movements, synagogues and schools) without having to create a new infrastructure. These organizations would be challenged to not only organize the retreat but also devise follow up programs to ensure that this educational experience is not simply a “one off”.
In locating the retreats locally, travel costs should prove to be minimal and thus the cost of the retreat per participant should not prove to be exorbitant.
Using Taglit as the paradigm, this is certainly doable!
Dr. Jonathan Mirvis is a senior lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship at the Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University and the outgoing International Director of the Florence Melton Adult Mini School.
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Yonatan,
Thank you as always for your insight and a most meaningful perspective into strategic and successful efforts to extend our reach and expand the segments of the population which are being and can be significantly impacted when educational and culturally rich experiences are made available eliminating or minimizing the restrictive/prohibitive deterent cost presents for so many.
Brilliant! You can count me in as a supporter and willing collaborative partner.
Excellent idea, and one that emerges every other generation it seems – which in no way takes away from the kavod of creativity and thoughtful concern for the future of the Jewish People.
ARE and Denver years ago created major weekend programs to supplement if not replace many weeks of traditional 3 day a week religious school education. Others have long used Shabbatonim and Kinnusim, if not with national/regional youth programs, then exchange programs between synagogues to create a “larger” Jewish community and youth family experience sharing much but in the “island” away from home. There have been many variations on this theme, and they need to be pursued and encouraged.
The challenge is increasingly to find “away” locations for year-round experiences that are affordable, that meet so many new family dynamics and circumstances, that can match similar standards of education and shared Jewish religious practices.
Above all, the challenge is to find people of vision who can see “out of the box” for which so many settle too often for so little.
Kol Hakavod to our colleagues Carnie and Yonatan.
Rabbi Dov Lerner
http://www.jewishfreeware.org
Jonathan shalom,
Many who deal with the “younger than birthright” age group are wondering when the backers of programs like Birthright will understand the importance of incorporating or including younger teens.
The interesting part of the birthright age is two fold, as you mentioned above:
1.”Free educational experiences are extremely attractive. The two programs in the last decade which have achieved major market penetration in virgin markets are Taglit and PJ Library; both programs are offered almost gratis to the participants.” That also includes many individuals that come from families that could afford an Israel experience, and it is not limited to “virgin markets”.
2. Many, not all, Birthright participants have started their college studies, and for the first time are being identified as “Jewish” amongst their fellows students, even if they do not refer to themselves as part of the Jewish religion or community themselves, and some are also feeling for the first time in their lives the anit-Jewish/anti-Israel sentiment, and hence realize they may need to know more about where they come from or what they are trying to not be associated with .
Either way my question is about those you mention attracting, again I quote..”The overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox Jewish teens in North America have no significant Jewish educational experience from Bar/Bat mitzvah age through to Taglit.”
Do you really believe that holding camp type events in the U.S., even if they are free, can attract young people like a “travel with you friends across the world for 10 days of fun, meeting new people, and learning history, and lastly being exposed to Judaism/Israel/Zionism?
What is your hook?
If using what you wrote above, “… provide an opportunity for teens to enjoy an intensive Jewish educational experience with their peers in a fully Jewish setting.” , is your way to attract these youngsters, I think you may be wrong. I think if birthright would change its tagline to what you wrote, enrollment would go down as well!
Birthrights tagline is… “The experience lasts 10 days, the memories last a lifetime.” Simply brilliant! No mention of Jewish education or Jewish setting or intense. My daughter spent 5 days with a birthright group as she is a combat soldier in the IDF. Not once did one of the participants ask here what it was like to be Jewish…What they did ask is, What is it like to be you? This made her answer last all 5 days that she was with them, and without being asked, it covered topics like, being Jewish, being a Zionist, not being religious but caring about her heritage, culture and customs and caring about the safety, security and future of the Jewish people.
Jonathan I applaud your acknowledging out loud what so many are thinking. We need to touch the lives of our younger community earlier than the age of birthright. I would clearly be willing to help you from Israel as much of our youth here needs the same.
I will finish by saying thank goodness for birthright as they are the modern day innovators of truly reaching out and exposing young Jewish people to a very dynamic people and religion.
Yonaton, As always you have brought tremendous value and important conversation points to our community. Having dedicated my entire professional career to the world of retreats, I know for a fact the permanent impact a few days together in an immerisve environment can have on the lives of those attending and those touched by the particpants.
The challenge of affordability is very easily managed through the booking and planning systems put in place. Similar to the genius of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School model, there are economies of scale that kick in with a strong central organization.
We are currently placing hundreds of retreats for all types of organizations in retreat centers. These centers are gracious hosts and grateful for the added revenue. In working with groups of all faiths and a wide variety of purposes for their gatherings, we can feel the momentum for this concept is growing.
Your words may prove to be the “tipping point” and retreats could become the next big idea.
Please keep me in the loop, I will devote our company’s resources to help this happen.
This is a great idea and could have a tremendous impact on Jewish kids in smaller and more isolated Jewish communities. We in South Bend are outside the Ramah orbit. SOme kids go to OSRUI, some to Habonim Tavor or Young Judea where they mix with other Jews. But having a curriculum of several free weekend educational opportunities could truly transform Jewish lives.
Over twenty years ago, the bailei batim of the Cleveland Jewish community understood the high impact potential of retreats, and beyond the classroom experiences, and provided unparalleled support to this enterprise. Their funding enabled us to establish an entity called the Retreat Institute (RI) of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, (JECC), specifically dedicated to developing and implementing beyond the classroom experiences that engage body, mind and spirit, and promotes community and connection to the Jewish people. The RI offers significant financial subventions to participants and institutions, and, as educational consultants, engage a collaborative planning process that includes training of the institutions’ staff. We support 30-40 projects a year, of varying types, including overnight shabbatonim, day-long, or shorter programs. We develop retreat programs on a wide range of themes and topics, have over 1100 participants, from youth of all ages to families at our retreats, annually. Their feedback is extremely positive, in terms of both Jewish content learning and bonding as a community.
Numerous resources and skills go into developing meaningful retreats. They are expensive, take time to plan and produce, and require a particular type of staffing. Over the years, the RI has invested in professional development of their staff and of institutional partners, enabling them to collaborate in crafting meaningful experiences for youth and families.
However, the assumption that “if you offer it free they will come,” has not been our experience. Despite ample subventions in participant costs, recruitment is always an intensive effort, and at times a serious challenge. Retreats tend to be a self-selecting experience for most people. For youth below high school age, it is typically parents who influence the decision to participate. Teens’ choices are often influenced by their peers, and their passions. They will pursue something that is of deep interest and compelling to them, that builds their resume for college, or offers college credit. The Jewish world is competing with a host of other interests that claim their time. They are at a different stage in their lives with Jewish identity formation than Birthright participants.
As great as we know retreats can be, a weekend away on a Jewish retreat is not an automatic sell to teens. To quote one of the comments to the article- “What is the hook?”
A free trip to somewhere cool or exotic, or service oriented, could probably attract teens sooner.
We see many teens participate in kallot through youth movements, which follow more of a co-producer, pro-sumer model, as the teens do a lot of the planning (at least they think they do.) I’d like to see where we can enrich and boost the Judaic content, expand the skill repertoire of teens involved in these programs, and engage larger numbers of teens. For the youth groups, subventing costs might help attract more participation. However, when the synagogue offers a highly subsidized retreat, recruitment is often a struggle, and it is often not of the pro-sumer model. We’ve tried a variety of retreat-based programs in supplemental middle and high schools, and the model was not successful, as parents left if for them to choose and enough teens participated. As challenging as it is to attract affiliated teens, the teens who are off the grid are even harder to reach. There needs to be a lot of spadework and incentives to get them and their parents connected.
While the concept of offering Jewish retreats to teens for free has strong merits, consideration for context, marketing, product development, and personnel is crucial. I look forward to continuing this conversation, with the aim of developing a retreat model that could attract teens.