Cleveland's Jewish Federation Buys Birthright Israel Bus
40 young adults moved from waitlist to seats on plane to Israel
Press Release
NEW YORK, NY - March 18, 2010 - The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland has given $60,000 to the Birthright Israel Foundation in an effort to slash the city’s waitlist for Birthright Israel trips. The one-time gift will leverage a Birthright Israel dollar-for-dollar match to send approximately 40 Jewish young adults from Cleveland together on a Birthright Israel bus this summer.
"The impact of this gift will be felt not only by the 40 young people who go on this trip of a lifetime, but by the community they come home to and enrich and lead for years to come, " said Birthright Israel Foundation President Robert Aronson. "This is a far-sighted investment by the Cleveland Jewish community in the city’s future. It’s just the sort of thing that Cleveland does."
Birthright Israel has taken over 2,100 Jewish young adults from greater Cleveland on trips in the ten years since the program’s inception, but some 58 percent of applicants have been left behind each year. This winter, Birthright Israel was able to accommodate 79 of the 261 Cleveland applicants - just over 30 percent.
Cleveland Federation President Steve Hoffman said he was purposefully reaching out to people in their early to mid twenties, for whom the bus is designated.
"We hope it demonstrates to them that the community they live in cares about them and is interested in their Jewish journeys - literally and figuratively," he said.
The gift from the Cleveland Federation takes advantage of Birthright Israel’s 2010 Adelson/New Founders Challenge Grant and comes on the heels of other similar local gifts to the Birthright Israel Foundation designed to cut waitlists and strengthen involvement in Jewish communities. Earlier this year, the Leon Levine Foundation gave $130,000 to fund trips for Jewish young adults from Charlotte, North Carolina, and in December 2009, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles allocated $700,000 for Los Angeles community trips.
Since its launch in 1999, the Birthright Israel program has provided free educational peer group trips to Israel to 230,000 Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26 from around the world. The first ever study of the long-term impact of the trips, published this year by Brandeis University, shows that Birthright Israel is achieving its original objectives of enhancing participants’ personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people, closing the gap between Israel and Jewish communities around the world, and strengthening the sense of solidarity among world Jewry.
Visit http://www.birthrightisrael.org/ for more information.
