JTA — Len Saxe, a researcher at Brandeis University, has been studying the impact of Birthright trips to Israel since the initiative launched in 1999. Last year, he noticed something unusual in the data.

At a rate far outpacing anything he’d ever detected before, people who signed up for Birthright in summer 2025 but did not participate became less connected to Israel and less connected to their own Jewish identity in the months after.

Nonparticipants — whether their trips were canceled because of the June war with Iran, or they opted out on their own — reported a declining sense of connection to Jewish values, Jewish history, Jewish tradition and a “worldwide Jewish community.”

The study did not attempt to explain the change, but Saxe has a theory about what happened.

“Many of the applicants live in communities where they hear frequent criticism of Israel,” Saxe said. “Unlike the period on campuses pre-COVID, when Birthright was taking 35,000 North Americans a year to Israel, students don’t know many others who have experience in Israel and know Israelis. Their perspective on the conflict lacks context.”

The organization said 7,300 North Americans took a Birthright trip last summer, out of 10,000 total. (War with Iran disrupted some trips and canceled others.) Of the total, 65% were college-aged.

The survey detected other changes for Birthright since 2023, when Hamas’s bloody October 7 invasion of Israel triggered the Gaza war, leading to a sharp rise in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment around the world.

More than half of last year’s participants, 54%, had already participated in some variety of Israel........

© The Times of Israel