Moving to create opportunities for young adults who have been shut out of birthright israel trips and those who have not yet applied, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ is offering fully subsidized 10-day trips there, under the auspices of Taglit-birthright israel.

The federation is expected to make the trips available to busloads of 40 young people twice each year — once in the summer and again over the winter holiday season.

To qualify for the all-expenses-paid excursions, applicants have to be Jewish and between the ages of 18 and 26; they also can’t have traveled with a peer group to Israel before.

The trips are being coordinated through the Israel Program Center, with seed money from $25,000 gifts made by Josh Weston of Montclair and James Schwarz of South Orange.

Another grant, from the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, will help pay for a new federation staff member to work as a fund-raiser for the UJA campaign and assist the local birthright israel program.

“Every half year, winter and summer, we have 105 to 110 young adults from MetroWest who go on the birthright trips,” said UJC MetroWest executive shliha Orli Dudaie, “and the same number are denied because of lack of space. They are eligible but they can’t go.”

The next birthright Metro-West-sponsored trip will take place in May.

Forty young people took part in the first of the subsidized Israel trips, which took place Dec. 28-Jan. 9.
Alona Nir, youth shliha at the IPC, and Adam Oded, teen educator at the Partnership for Jewish learning and Life, served as trip co-leaders; they hailed the venture as a “great success.”

“They were a very intelligent group who were interested in Israel,” said Nir, a native of Haifa. “For me it was a very different experience — to show them my home and see Israel through their eyes.”

“We tried to show them as much of the country as we can in 10 days,” said Oded. “We started in the North around the Sea of Galilee. We went up to the Golan Heights. We went to Tiberias. And what was unique was we saw two of the partner communities of MetroWest — Ofakim and Rishon Letzion.”

In Ofakim, some of the young travelers volunteered to clean the yards at institutions for senior citizens and special-needs children. Others spent a day bolting together furniture donated by the Ikea Company to a youth center.

“Everywhere we went, we saw the logo of MetroWest,” said Nir. “It gave them a special feeling that ‘OK, we are not just a group. We are a community that is involved so much in Israel.’”

In Rishon Letzion, the travelers visited a community center for Ethiopian immigrants — a project sponsored jointly by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and UJC MetroWest. There they saw the tangible benefits of a federation-funded teen tzedaka program called Yedid, which provided computer training for an early childhood center modeled on the American Head Start program.

“It’s a nondenominational trip and it’s not a religious trip per se, but everything is shomer Shabbat and everything on the trip is kosher,” Oded said.

“But people are free to make their own choices, and if you are not religious you can feel very comfortable,” added Nir.

“It was more than I expected,” said Andrew Lowy, a theater major at Westchester College in Pennsylvania who lives in Livingston. “It was very important to go there. The only downside was we didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked, and we didn’t get enough sleep — but I guess that comes with the territory.”

Although she has been working as an administrative assistant at the IPC for three years, it was Justine Reuben’s first trip to Israel. “The best part for me was that we went to some of the places that MetroWest is involved in, so it put a different perspective on the job I do every day.”

One thing did take her by surprise: “Snow. It was snowing in the Golan Heights.”

Like applicants to all of the other Taglit-birthright israel programs across the United States, those in MetroWest can start registering at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15, by logging onto www.israelexperience.org.il. Applicants are required to post a $250 deposit, which will be refunded after the trip. Places will be awarded on a first come, first served basis.

Contact UJC MetroWest for on the upcoming trip.

---