Your tax shekels and charitable donations at work: Birthright bringing non-Jews to Israel
According to this report on Israel Radio's website, if you're a non-Jew living in any country in the world that was not a part of the former Soviet Union, you can fill out a form that says you're Jewish and get a free 10-day trip to Israel, at the expense of the Israeli government and charitable donors in the United States and other countries (link in Hebrew).While Birthright officials deny the report, and claim that they check very carefully whether prospective Birthright participants are Jewish, Birthright employees here in Israel describe the phenomenon of non-Jewish participants in Birthright as not being rare.
I wonder how many of those Occupy Birthright people were non-Jews.
On the other hand, given some of the other causes to which American Jewish Federations donate, I suppose that we could be doing a lot worse than funding trips to Israel for non-Jews.
Labels: Birthright, Jewish Federations of North America
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:29 PM
1 Comments:
On my trip there were many people who were not halachically Jewish, but they at least were Jewish enough to make aliyah to Israel (they had one Jewish parent - often a dad).
Honestly, if the purpose is to create pro-Israel people, then at least something is accomplished.
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