A Jewish college student sits in a lecture hall while her professor describes Israel as a colonial project. She’s not sure he’s right, but she doesn’t have the knowledge or courage to push back. She stays quiet. After class, she scrolls through Instagram, where the algorithm serves her a steady diet of the same narrative. By winter break, she’s stopped going to Hillel. By spring, she tells her parents she doesn’t feel connected to Israel anymore.
She’s not angry. She’s just gone.
This is not a hypothetical. This is the pattern Brandeis University just documented in the most significant findings on Jewish identity in a generation.
Brandeis has studied Birthright Israel for 25 years. Their latest research tells us, for the first time, not just what happens when young Jews go to Israel, but what happens when they don’t. The comparison group isn’t random. They are young Jews who applied for a Birthright Israel trip but never went. Same motivation. Same starting point. The only difference is the trip itself.
Those who didn’t go drifted. Connection to Israel barely moved—a two-point gain over eight months. Jewish identity declined across the board. But the sharpest erosion was among self-identified liberals, the largest and hardest-to-reach segment of young American Jews. Their connection to Israel didn’t just stagnate. It dropped, from 31% to 23%. Their sense that being Jewish matters to who they are flatlined. Brandeis has never documented declines this sharp.
Those who went on a Birthright Israel trip last summer moved in the opposite direction. Connection to Israel jumped from 54% to 74%. Jewish identity surged. And liberal participants moved the most, a 32-point swing in Israel connection compared to their peers who stayed home. The group everyone assumes is a lost cause turned out to be the group that Birthright Israel reaches best. That finding alone should rewrite how the Jewish community thinks about investment.
A recent study conducted by Jewish Federations of North America reinforces the point from a completely different dataset. Among American Jews who have never visited Israel, 60% feel emotionally attached to the country. Among those who have been even once, that number jumps to 82%.
The only age group where a majority of American Jews are comfortable identifying as Zionist? Ages 35 to 44, the generation in which hundreds of thousands of young Jews participated in Birthright Israel. Call it the Birthright effect.
Two studies. Two methodologies. One conclusion: When young Jews go to Israel, they come back more connected. When they don’t, they drift. And the drift is accelerating.
Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, while many young people have stood against Israel, Birthright Israel has made sure that more than 50,000 young Jews stood in Israel, experiencing the country firsthand and returning home transformed.
Demand is surging. Before the war started, we turned away 20,000 applicants because we didn’t have the resources to send them. We cannot let it happen again. That is why we launched the Birthright Israel Generations Campaign to bring a minimum of 200,000 young Jews to Israel between 2025 and 2029. At roughly $5,000 per participant, there is no better investment in the Jewish future.
Is it expensive? Yes. But the cost of inaction is measurable—and far higher.
The Jewish community does not lack for challenges. But it rarely has this clarity about a solution. Birthright Israel is the most effective, most rigorously studied identity-building program in the Jewish world. The question is no longer whether it works. The question is whether we’ll fund it at the scale this moment demands.
That Jewish student in the lecture hall has every reason to be proud of who she is and where she comes from. She just needs the experience to know it. With the right investment, she can come back to that campus and lead. She can strengthen her Jewish community and the organizations that support it. She can join a generation of proud, resilient Jewish leaders who will carry the Jewish future forward.
Now it’s on us to make it happen.
