Growing Birthright ups enrollment

The Boston University Hillel House is boosting support for its Birthright program to give more students a free trip to Israel by creating a new position to boost recruitment and plan the program.

Birthright, which provides a free 10-day trip to Israel for Jews ages 18 to 26, has had a sharp increase in applicants over the past few years, which prompted the Florence & Chafetz Hillel House to form the Birthright Israel Engagement program.

2006 University of Rochester graduate Lauren Kaskey joined the Hillel staff this summer as the new associate and will help accommodate the influx.

Kaskey said she hopes to improve Hillel's trips to Israel and create more opportunities for students to attend the Birthright program. Prior to Kaskey's newly created position, Hillel could only manage to send between 20 and 60 students per trip.

"Since the program started, there are always more students that want to go than we can take with BU Hillel," said Hillel House program associate Seth Kroll.

With the new support staff this year, Kroll said they hope to take at least 80 students for the winter trip.

"The Combined Jewish Philanthropies had a grant that would pay for this position, so we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of," Kroll said.

Kaskey will also serve as a trip leader, which will allow Hillel to accept more students for the trip.

"A focus of ours is to get students to do the BU Hillel Birthright trip as opposed to other groups' Birthright trips," Kaskey said. "When students come back, we hope they will then promote the BU Hillel trip and stay connected with each other."

Kaskey has already started spreading the word about Birthright this semester.

"I'm working a lot with BU student groups like BU Students for Israel and Hillel to basically try and get as much face time as possible with students to get the word out," she said. "After that, it almost seems like a no-brainer for students to want to go on a 10-day free trip to Israel."

College of Arts and Sciences senior Larry Tobin, who attended Birthright through Hillel in January 2006, said the trip was the "most fun, most meaningful and most life-altering 10 days" of his life.

Tobin is majoring in religion with a focus on Jewish Studies and is considering rabbinical school -- all as a result of his Birthright.

"I'm a Jewish educator full-time," he said. "I now put a huge emphasis on Israel and Israeli culture and encourage all my students to go on Birthright."

Kaskey said she hopes to maintain and increase enthusiasm through her new position.

"When people get to Israel, so much momentum is created and they want to be involved with Israel upon their return, but life gets in the way," she said. "So I want to help the group as a whole to carry on this momentum and create concrete plans to stay involved in Israeli programming."