{"id":68,"date":"2010-04-14T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html"},"modified":"2010-04-14T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T07:00:00","slug":"birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html","title":{"rendered":"Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that sends Jewish young adults on free 10-day trips to Israel, has begun expanding efforts to keep participants involved in Judaism long-term, both religiously and culturally. The alumni program, called <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.jta.org\/philanthropy\/article\/2010\/04\/12\/1011535\/ex-hadassah-chief-to-become-head-of-birthright-next-amid-expansion\">Birthright NEXT, will expand from seven to 15 cities, and will now be headed by Morlie Levin (formerly of Hadassah) <\/a>and other new leaders.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve written several stories about Birthright, most <a href=\"http:\/\/www.religionnews.com\/index.php?\/rnstext\/comments\/for_free_jewish_trips_to_israel_love_is_in_the_air1\/\">recently a feature about couples who have met on these trips, <\/a>and several friends have participated in the program, with mixed results.&nbsp;The program hasn&#8217;t been around long enough to conclude if it&#8217;s going to produce the kinds of long-term results investors want to see,&nbsp;ranging from a&nbsp;strong generation of Jewish community leaders to a reduction of interfaith marriage rates, but it does <a href=\"http:\/\/www.upne.com\/1-58465-541-0.html\">seem to have made progress in the past 10 years<\/a>. It&#8217;ll be interesting to see how this alumni program expansion and new leadership will impact those efforts.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that sends Jewish young adults on free 10-day trips to Israel, has begun expanding efforts to keep participants involved in Judaism long-term, both religiously and culturally. The alumni program, called Birthright NEXT, will expand from seven to 15 cities, and will now be headed by Morlie Levin (formerly of Hadassah) and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that sends Jewish young adults on free 10-day trips to Israel, has begun expanding efforts to keep participants involved in Judaism long-term, both religiously and culturally. The alumni program, called Birthright NEXT, will expand from seven to 15 cities, and will now be headed by Morlie Levin (formerly of Hadassah) and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-14T07:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism - Belief Beat","og_description":"Taglit-Birthright Israel, a program that sends Jewish young adults on free 10-day trips to Israel, has begun expanding efforts to keep participants involved in Judaism long-term, both religiously and culturally. The alumni program, called Birthright NEXT, will expand from seven to 15 cities, and will now be headed by Morlie Levin (formerly of Hadassah) and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-04-14T07:00:00+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html","name":"Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-14T07:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-14T07:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/birthright-israel-expands-efforts-to-keep-alumni-connected-to-judaism.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Birthright Israel Expands Efforts to Keep Alumni Connected to Judaism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. 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She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}