Rethinking Israel Programs: New Marketing Techniques Help Boost Teen Enrollment in Summer Programs

Enough about Jewish identity, Jewish continuity and fighting intermarriage.

Let’s talk about self-esteem.

Hoping to connect youth to their Jewish heritage and counter assimilation, the American Jewish community is increasingly looking to boost the enrollments of summer programs for teenagers in Israel.

But those at the center of an effort to send more students to Israel say that the first step may simply be selling parents and teens on all the other benefits an Israel trip offers.

That was one of the recommendations that resulted from a marketing survey conducted by Jay Levenberg for the CRB Foundation.

The foundation, funded by Montreal-based billionaire Charles Bronfman, has launched an effort, along with the United Jewish Appeal, other national organizations and a dozen local Jewish federations, to increase dramatically the number of students participating in what are called “Israel Experience” programs.

In conjunction with this, the foundation is continuing earlier activities aimed at improving both the quality and quantity of Israel trips.

As part of this ongoing effort, CRB is paying Levenberg to supply his marketing expertise to organizations sponsoring Israel programs.

Levenberg’s study of how Israel programs are presently being sold to parents has convinced him that the community needs “a new bag of tricks, a new set of ammunition” with which to market the Israel Experience.

Bronfman’s, and Levenberg’s, enthusiasm for the project flows from repeated findings that a well-run Israel Experience is the most effective way to strengthen a teen-ager’s Jewish identity.

But Levenberg suggested that “for all those thousands who are not now coming to Israel, we should find new benefits to promote.”

Among them: “A trip to Israel helps teens in a variety of areas, not just Jewish identity: self-confidence, awareness, decision-making, open-minded discussion,” said Levenberg.

RADIO ADS DOUBLED ENROLLMENT

For Peter Geffen, director of Israel Programs for CRB, what the findings of the marketing survey boil down to is that “Among the most sophisticated people in the world, there is a very unsophisticated level of marketing when it comes to their own institutions.”

But that’s starting to change.

The American Zionist Youth Foundation, which oversees the trips taken by most teens, has instituted a toll-free number for information on Israel trips: 1-800-27-ISRAEL.

In Palm Beach, Fla., last year, a CRB grant enabled the community to advertise its trips on the radio. It worked: Enrollment more than doubled, to 48 kids.

In New York, Levenberg’s expertise is helping design a “b’nai mitzvah marketing project.” Rabbis would encourage congregants to enclose a card with bar or bat mitzvah invitations, asking that in lieu of gifts, family and friends put money into an account to be used for an Israel program.

Such accounts, as well as savings-incentive plans where synagogues or federations add some money into the pot, are not totally new ideas.

But in another example of growing sophistication, CRB has negotiated with Bank Leumi to create a centralized banking system for the savings-incentive plan, bar and bat mitzvah registry programs, and other new ideas that may emerge for financing these trips.

CRB recently took 40 of the Reform movement’s regional youth directors and camp directors to Israel, under the assumption that those who have never been to the country could not help others get there.

Did it work?

“We’ll see this year,” said Rabbi Allan Smith, director of the youth division of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations.

Smith agreed with Levenberg that the potential market for Israel trips has by no means been tapped. Seven or eight years ago, he said, the Reform movement decided that the Israel Experience should be a basic experience for its youth, and doubled the number of 11th-graders going on its summer programs from 500 to 1,000.

Smith believes that with a lot of work throughout the community, the numbers could drastically increase over time, to include half of the high school juniors affiliated with Reform temples– about 7,500 kids.

‘FULL OF WONDERFUL POSSIBILITIES’

Beyond increasing the numbers going on the programs, the CRB Foundation is working to improve the quality of the programs.

It recently sponsored a program fair, in conjunction with the Joint Authority for Jewish-Zionist Education of the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization. The fair enabled people sponsoring Israel trips to meet people providing modules for the trip, ranging from hikes with the Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel to encounters with different Israeli ethnic groups.

“The country is just packed full of wonderful possibilities,” said Geffen of CRB.

He cited as an example the Nesiya Institute Summer Program, run out of Cleveland, which uses art and artists as means to explore Israel.

The institute last year featured an evening in a Tel Aviv night club with Shlomo Gronich, a popular Israeli singer who has recently been working with a chorus of Israeli children. Gronich and the chorus performed its music, while an Israeli disc jockey talked about it.

“It was a spectacular experience,” said Geffen. “In Israel, we’re trying to promote 50, 100 ideas in all different realms: in nature, art, museums, in the desert, in Arab-Jewish relations,” he said.

Increasing the quality and quantity of Israel programs is a joint effort, said Anne Lanski.

She is director and founder of Shorashim, an intensive Israel program in which “American teens will experience Israel through the eyes and hearts of Israelis their own age.” In each group, 25 Americans are joined by 15 Israelis.

This, as well as an initial visit to Poland, makes the program one of the most expensive. Nonetheless, it is growing rapidly, with 175 Americans expected this summer.

Eighty percent of those, estimates Lanski, would not have gone to Israel otherwise, but heard about the program and the friendships it formed from those who had gone before.

“When you provide excellence,” she said, “the word gets but and people want in.”