Taglit-Birthright Israel BEYOND: An Origin Story

By: Renat Wegrzyn

When we connect with another person, we bond over shared experiences, values, or cultures. We engage in meaningful conversations and build friendships that can last a lifetime. This is especially true of the Jewish community, and it’s why Taglit-Birthright Israel came to be: to give Jewish adults the opportunity to foster stronger connections to their roots by joining an immersive 10-day educational trip to Israel. 

Since 1999, 800,000 participants from 68 countries have gone on Taglit-Birthright Israel trips, and with each trip, our past participants made connections to Israel, their ancestors, like-minded travelers, and more. But this all stopped when the coronavirus pandemic hit. 

Working for an educational travel-focused organization during a travel ban

I know it seems miles away, but 2 years ago, schools, offices, and businesses shut their doors. International travel declined by 74%, and Israel’s borders closed to non-citizens. In March 2020,  we sent our Taglit-Birthright Israel participants back home. We could not plan trips for young Jewish adults for the foreseeable future, stripping our organization of its overarching mission: to enable our target audience to connect with Israel and the Jewish community through this transformative journey. 

This unexpected “new normal” required imagination and resilience. It was clear that we had to challenge our comfort zones and come up with the most creative, non-constrained ideas. I know this might sound like a quote from a textbook about innovative thinking, but it was far from being a quote: it was a devastating reality. 

We couldn’t just sit and wait for the virus to slow down and for travel bans to be lifted. Inactivity was not an option. 

Instead, we  spent  time in quarantine thinking of new initiatives we could implement to bring our past participants together during this time of isolation. That’s when a new concept started to evolve.

The organization’s focus was (and still is) to bring young Jewish adults on a 10-day educational trip to Israel, but we had to expand that focus through the understanding that we have a priceless asset—hundreds of thousands of alums. 

Who says connection-building must be only in the physical world? Why can’t it be digital too?

The truth is that the recent generations of Taglit-Birthright Israel travelers are already well-poised to transition their relationships from in-person to digital. It’s already their daily habit.  And as we continued pondering how to support our community and make connections in a new way, it dawned on me. While the travelers experiencing delayed trips needed support and community—they weren’t the only ones dealing with community withdrawal. While we focused on supporting and comforting our delayed travelers, we had failed to reach out to our alumni—those 800,000 previous trip attendees.

Building momentum during a standstill 

Yes, the focus of Taglit-Birthright Israel is that trip—that singular Taglit-Birthright Israel trip that helps establish the vital connection between us and our roots—Israel, our community, our tradition. 

But what about after the trip? What about beyond the trip? 

How can we transform a life-changing experience in Israel into a long-lasting journey? 

In the time of COVID-19, quarantines, and global shutdowns, we couldn’t pull back on our mission. On the contrary, we needed to expand it. 

If we wanted to keep our legacy alive, we needed to think beyond the trip and expand our focus from that initial connection with Israel and the Jewish community to an ongoing one. The life-changing experience on the trip is a shared bond between all participants across years and ages.  

The idea was to create a digital space offering alums to connect around shared interests, unique content, and initiatives. The idea was new and not wholly aligned with the current mission. Should we expand our mission beyond the trip? 

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I shared the idea with management and colleagues. It was an innovative concept based on the changes unique to that specific time, the unique characteristics of Gen Z, young millennials, and the growing need for connection in the Jewish community. It was irrefutably clear in my mind: we needed to expand the mission, to target an old-new audience, and create a new offering. 

Some of the conversations were challenging. 

It’s hard to shift a successfully established organization with a unique product based on outstanding marketing, operations, and education and suggest a new endeavor. But, as a woman who is comfortable being uncomfortable, I continuously reminded myself that innovation only occurs when we step out of our comfort zones.                                              

The birth of Birthright Israel Labs

After months of discussions and strategy alignment, the idea for a digital alumni community was eventually greenlighted. At first, we called it Birthright Israel Labs because we were experimenting. We were in a social laboratory, trying to determine what works and what doesn’t. It was a time of immense learning and growth. It still is.

As part of the alumni network, we spearheaded Facebook groups like:

• Worldwide Connect: a Jewish travel community for like-minded travelers to share tips, favorite places to vacation, and (eventually) to begin traveling again. Now, through Worldwide Connect, we help Taglit-Birthright Israel alums—locals and travelers—meet up, so locals can share their cities with out-of-towners, and travelers can experience new places from the lens of a local. 
• Around The Table: A group that allows Jewish adults to bond over two essential aspects of Jewish culture: food and traditions. 

We launched opportunities like Brightcode, a free full-stack development bootcamp for Jewish adults wanting to change careers or build on their existing ones. We produced webseries to share aspects of Jewish culture in a different and engaging way, such as “Baking with Bubby” and “Badass Jews”. 

It was a time of bonding and reconnection that we all needed, and I saw this as our numbers slowly, slowly grew worldwide. Our alumni were starting to join our groups to become a part of something bigger than themselves. 

Do we still need a digital alumni community?

And then the trips resumed. We became a multi-product organization, offering young Jewish adults the opportunity to take a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip, to stay for an internship with Onward, and to join offerings by Birthright Israel Labs when they returned home. 

Occasionally a question was asked about the change we implemented—did we still need to grow an alumni network now that the trip was back on the table? It was so clear that we were doing the right thing, building a community, or rather, a network of communities around shared interests for our alumni. Just as our Taglit-Birthright Israel trip participants need an opportunity to connect with their Jewish identity, our alumni need a safe and supportive space to stay connected to the Jewish community. They need communities specific to their interests, opportunities for growth and advancement, and a respite from the antisemitism that resurges due to intolerant celebrities and political manipulation. 

As we continued to track the data from our groups and adjust our focus to provide better content, more opportunities, and more targeted information, Birthright Israel Labs transformed into Birthright Israel BEYOND—a community that takes our alumni beyond the trip. 

Birthright Israel BEYOND’s mission

The Taglit-Birthright Israel trip is the first step in a lifelong journey. 

It became clearer that we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel; instead, we needed to take what we already had and let it grow. The genesis of Birthright Israel Labs—now called Birthright Israel BEYOND—is  a process of partnering and collaborating with one another. While we continue to experience ups and downs, we are proud of the lessons we are learning as we go along. We are still at the beginning of this new journey. So much faith and resilience are needed in this process—and we have boatloads of it. 

In the short period since BEYOND was established, we have aligned our strategy twice. We analyze campaign results, fine-tune the best way to measure engagement, and review the opportunities in front of us. We conduct design sprints, focus groups, and user feedback sessions—and we are still moving on the learning curve.

As I continue learning and growing alongside Birthright Israel BEYOND, I remember that imagination is an extraordinary human ability—to dream what does not exist yet. It is the core element of innovation and the engine for creating new opportunities and experiences.