By 1993, the Jewish world needed to reinvent itself, as truths that had been in place for decades, generations and even centuries were suddenly rendered irrelevant.

Following the exodus of Soviet Jewry and the aliyah of Ethiopian Jews, oppressed Jewish communities hardly existed. Henceforth, all Jews living in the Diaspora would do so out of choice, and an entire generation of leaders, activists, philanthropists and institutions that came out of and thrived on the Let-My-People-Go campaign were now looking for a new cause to pursue. In addition, the Madrid Conference and the Oslo Process seemed to lead to a possible end to the Israeli-Arab conflict and to a secured existence for Israel. Against that backdrop, which compounded the concerns about growing assimilation and intermarriage, many sensed a dire need for a radical new idea that would serve the continued significant existence of World Jewry.

In that spirit, in 1994, an Israeli politician by the name of Dr. Yossi Beilin came up with a bold vision: Let’s bring every young Jew to Israel for a “free” visit that will be fully funded by the Jewish world. Beilin’s vision was game-changing on many levels. Management-wise, it meant multiplying the number of visitors to Israel 10-fold. Development-wise, it meant raising as much as two hundred million dollars per year. Ideologically, it challenged the prevailing Zionist outlook of the time, which saw aliyah as the sole purpose of coming to Israel, as well as the prevailing dogmas of market economy that frowned on freebies. Beilin’s idea, which would become Taglit Birthright Israel, was destined to be an uphill battle and was likely to never see the light of day.  

Beilin’s vision was game-changing on many levels. Management-wise, it meant multiplying the number of visitors to Israel 10-fold. Development-wise, it meant raising as much as two hundred million dollars per year.

Indeed, the first five years were seemingly stagnant. A tremendous brainstorming and planning effort raised near-zero dollars, and sixty months into the effort not even a single bus had arrived in Israel. At that point, the journey could have been summarized as a frustrating muddle through.

But in 1998, Birthright saw a change of fortunes, when Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt took interest in the idea and eventually each pledged eight million dollars to kick off the program in 1999-2000. For the following five years, twelve additional donors, including Edgar Bronfman z”l and Lynn Schusterman, pledged five million dollars each, which were matched by the Government of Israel to total an investment of roughly 140 million dollars. Thus, within a few months, Beilin’s idea was transformed from a vision into an emerging reality, which, over time, became a game-changing project for the entire Jewish people on a generational scale. That transition was made possible by that surgically calibrated venture-philanthropy intervention of Steinhardt and Bronfman.  

In 1998, Birthright saw a change of fortunes, when Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt took interest in the idea and eventually each pledged eight million dollars to kick off the program in 1999-2000.

Next week, twenty-four years later, the Gala dinner of Taglit Birthright Israel will celebrate Bronfman’s ninetieth birthday and honor his contribution, made possible by the professional leadership of Jeff Solomon, Yitz Greenberg and Barry Chazan. This article explores the secret sauce of Bronfman and Steinhardt’s singular philanthropic intervention.

The praises of Birthright are well-known. Birthright has directly affected close to eight hundred thousand participants, nearly 5% of the Jewish people, who are demonstrably more involved in Jewish life than those who did not go on the program. Birthright graduates are now assuming leadership positions in Jewish organizations, hailing their Israel-visit as a formative personal experience. Furthermore, Birthright inspired specialized trips that focus on specific populations such as students (Itrek), mothers (Momentum), and newlyweds (Honeymoon Israel), which bring thousands of participants per year, as well as multiple programs for longer stays, such as Masa. Also, an entire ecosystem of service providers emerged, including tour-operators, guides, hotels, caterers and bus companies whose contribution to Israel’s economy is estimated at billions of dollars.

Drawing a direct line between Bronfman’s financial contribution to Birthright — which continued for many years and amounted to tens of millions of dollars —and the effects of Birthright would be simplistic, because the success of Birthright required “a village” of visionary, philanthropic, managerial and political contributions over more than a quarter of a century. Furthermore, the initial investment of Bronfman and Steinhardt and their fellow mega-funders in Birthright in 1999-2005 should be seen as a classic venture-philanthropy, while their later contributions, after establishing a proof-of-concept of the rationale of Birthright, should be viewed as a growth-capital philanthropy. The qualities of these two philanthropic investments are radically different. The latter makes Bronfman and Steinhardt two of many generous billionaire philanthropists, who leave a legacy of giving. The former inducts them into the “‘hall of fame”’ of Jewish philanthropy, crediting them with the vision to seed the Jewish world’s most consequential project of our time.

With these distinctions in mind, this essay focuses on Bronfman and Steinhardt’s venture philanthropy and seeks to explore the secret sauce of their success. This is not just a backward-facing analysis but also a forward-facing effort to highlight lessons that are relevant for contending with current challenges that face American and world Jewry today.  

Birthright graduates are now assuming leadership positions in Jewish organizations, hailing their Israel-visit as a formative personal experience.

In September 1995, I was tapped by Beilin to build and lead the Israeli team that would eventually co-design Birthright. In late 1996, Avraham Infeld became the leader of our group, and in early 1997 we were teamed up with a McKinsey-based team, led by Laurie Blitzer. Together, we worked as volunteers until May 1999, which was roughly when Bronfman and Steinhardt’s venture-philanthropy pledge was matched by the Government of Israel and a full-time professional team, led by Dr. Shimshon Shoshani and Gidi Mark — who was Birthright’s first employee and rose to become its most remarkable professional leader — took over the project. It is from that particular vantage point that I humbly offer a few observations about the legacy of Bronfman and Steinhardt’s investment in Birthright, which can be summarized in three ideas: scalability, boldness and humility. 

First, on Birthright’s scalability: Birthright was designed for scale since inception. Back in 1994, the number of visits of young adults to Israel was estimated at 10,000 per cohort. Beilin targeted 100,000 people per year — in other words, he envisioned ten-fold growth. Author and business expert Peter Diamandis explains this logic in simple terms: If you aim for 10 times and land at two times, you still did a great thing. Beilin wanted 10 times, and eventually got 5 times. 

To actualize his vision, Beilin commissioned a team of veteran professionals to prepare a plan. Their report envisioned Birthright as a large tour company of sorts that would double the number of visits within a few years. Indeed, 100% growth can be very ambitious, but in this case it also implied that Beilin’s vision was unrealistic.

So, Beilin introduced a second team, which I led. While the “superpower” of Beilin’s first team was their knowledge of Jewish world, the superpower of our team was planning. We were blissfully ignorant about the organized Jewish world, and worked our way back from his vision, quickly setting the aspirational number of participants at 70,000 per year.

At that point, we immediately abandoned the structure of a “tour operator” and suggested that Birthright should be a “regulator” that facilitates the interaction among multiple program operators, on the one hand, and tens of thousands of participants, on the other. The basic unit of this project was to be a bus of participants, and its growth would be achieved by multiplying the number of buses. This meant that Bronfman co-made a “big bet” on a “big idea,” and also on an unprecedented organizational approach. Years later, Bill Gates would famously say: “Inspiration is retail. If you want to make a dent, you have to think wholesale.”

Yet, achieving scale requires time, and the founding mega-donors of Birthright gave it a five-year window to prove itself. In 1999, Birthright brought five buses, and by 2003 the annual number of participants of Birthright barely surpassed the average number of visitors to Israel in prior years. But these were misleading snapshots, because by 2003 Birthright was already growing in leaps and bounds, showing clear signs of exponentiality. As Diamandis teaches, in those years, Birthright was “deceptively small.”

Achieving scale also requires resources, and giant scale requires giant resources. We should all be grateful for the fact that Birthright’s founding funders were not deterred by that reality. Intuitively, they operated on the principle that “resources reveal themselves.” The logic is simple: A person who goes on a two-day walk should probably carry their own sustenance, but a one-month journey will require replenishing food and water along the way. Similarly, the ambitious social entrepreneur must believe that the value of their venture will then generate the resources that will allow its growth. Eventually, it was the incredible generosity of Dr. Miriam and Sheldon z”l Adelson that allowed Birthright to reach its full potential.  

The ambitious social entrepreneur must believe that the value of their venture will then generate the resources that will allow its growth. Eventually, it was the incredible generosity of Dr. Miriam and Sheldon z”l Adelson that allowed Birthright to reach its full potential. 

Furthermore, the concept of “Resources” should be understood to mean not just money but also new technologies that radically decrease costs and increase efficiency and effectiveness. In the late 1990s, Birthright was envisioned to rely on postal services; in the early 2000s it leveraged the rise of the internet; and as of 2008 it tapped into the smartphone and then the big data revolution. The rise of virtual reality and the expansion of the Metaverse are probably the new frontiers of this project.  

The final point regarding Birthright scalability has to do with the fact that Bronfman and Steinhardt wisely re-launched the venture above the “line of super credibility.” Diamandis explains that all people intuitively react to every new idea. An idea that falls “under” the “line of credibility” is immediately dismissed, and if it falls above that line, it will be examined. Diamandis argues that an idea that is launched above the “line of super-credibility” triggers an immediate reaction of wanting to get involved.

Yes, by 1998-1999, Birthright had transcended the phase of a fantastic, unrealistic vision by having a plan that was developed by professionals and received feedback from hundreds of people over nearly five years. Furthermore, other programs of Israel-visits, such as the Israel Experience, which Bronfman had supported, indicated that Birthright could succeed.

But achieving the “super credibility” that enabled Birthright’s explosive growth required additional factors. They included the personal involvement of Bronfman and Steinhardt’s highly respected staff; the endorsement by a team of McKinsey consultants; Shoshani’s stature as a highly respected senior civil servant in Israel; validation of Birthright’s theory of impact by credible academic research; and the matching by the Government of Israel. With such a unique combination of attributes, Birthright was finally launched into orbit.

A second aspect of Birthright’s transformative impact was its multi-faceted boldness. Let’s begin with the ideological boldness of taking on century-old conventions of modern Zionism, which aspired to deplete world Jewry and bring all Jews to Israel. Hence, until Birthright, the goal of bringing Jews to Israel was Aliyah. In contrast, Birthright’s goal was to strengthen Diaspora communities and Jewish life outside of Israel through the visit to Israel. In the late 1990s this was a revolutionary and even subversive idea, which was met with harsh opposition and was sometimes referred to as “post-Zionist.” Indeed, the founding partnership of Birthright consisted of three iconoclasts: Bronfman, Steinhardt and Beilin—who were willing to take on established institutions, particularly the Jewish Agency.

Birthright founders were also bold in insisting on no-cost trips. Other philanthropists and experts relentlessly rejected that notion of “freemium,” which would degrade Birthright’s stature, subsidize well-to-do participants and simply save expenses for those who were willing to pay for their trips. Beilin’s counterpoint, endorsed by Bronfman and Steinhardt, was ideological: Visiting Israel was a right-by-birth for every Jew, granted by the Jewish people to its young adults. Furthermore, they argued that the gift of a Birthright trip represented a non-monetary exchange for a ten-day window of time spent in a program whose demanding terms were set by the organizers. The legend goes that at some point, Bronfman’s team said to the naysayers: “You can do your trips for money. We are doing Birthright for free.” The pathbreaking counter-intuitive notion of freemium — which later became commonplace — won. 

The praises of Birthright are well-known. Birthright has directly affected close to eight hundred thousand participants, nearly 5% of the Jewish people, who are demonstrably more involved in Jewish life than those who did not go on the program.

In retrospect, it is not only the yesses that were crucial, but many of the nos were invaluable for crystallizing Birthright’s model. For example, while Beilin insisted on focusing on high school students, many rejected that idea and advocated for focusing on colleges. That debate and its resolution were crucial for Birthright’s success.

Eventually, by 1999-2000, a delicate balance was achieved. Birthright was still rejected by much of the existing established Jewish community that was vested in the status quo, but received a critical mass of endorsement and support from those who were seeking to create a new and better reality. In other words, at that point, Bronfman and Steinhardt had enough validation to make a big bet on Birthright, even if powerful objections persisted.

Furthermore, some issues simply could not be resolved. For example, what should be the duration of a formative trip? Longer trips were potentially more impactful, but also more expensive and meant that fewer people would go. Our team debated whether the trip should include one Shabbat, 10 days, two Shabbats, around 14 days, or five Shabbats, nearly six weeks. This debate could only be resolved through an experiment. Indeed, the format of 10 days proved to do the work. At the same time, as far back as 1998, our discussions highlighted the lack of pre-Birthright and post-Birthright programs and of a sustainable funding model. None of these issues was resolved when Birthright was launched in 1999. While the extreme success of Birthright is undeniable, it is also true that some of these “fires” continue to “burn” until today.

For the Israeli planning team, we also had our learning curve. For example, the original outline of the program included a four-hour interaction between the participants and Israelis. In our mind, that was sufficient for the Israeli side to “project” their inspiration unto the foreign participants. Years later, every Birthright bus includes 20 percent of Israelis who are part-and-parcel of Birthright, and are as affected by the experience as their world-Jewry friends.

Against this backdrop, what was the exact role of Bronfman and Steinhardt and their teams in the early phases of Birthright? Clearly, it went well beyond funding. Reid Hoffman, in his podcast, Masters of Scale, suggests a concept of Re-Founder, whose contribution to the success of the venture is as crucial as that of the founders. Under Beilin, Birthright was an incubating entrepreneurial, subversive and non-governmental initiative, which was led by a politician and volunteers in an intimate manner as if among family members. Bronfman and Steinhardt allowed the re-founding of Birthright as a professional government-backed venture that had direct access to power and global diplomatic reach.  

The Gala dinner of Taglit Birthright Israel will celebrate Bronfman’s ninetieth birthday and honor his contribution, made possible by the professional leadership of Jeff Solomon, Yitz Greenberg and Barry Chazan.

Perhaps the ultimate moment of humility in the history of Birthright came from Beilin himself. It was early 1999, and Beilin had carried the mantle of Birthright for five years. At this point, Bronfman and Steinhardt had already pledged their support and Shoshani was now the director, ready and eager to engage the Government of Israel to receive the matching funds. Alas, there was one political problem: Netanyahu was the Prime Minister of a Likud-led government, and Beilin was a leader of the left and the ‘father’ of the Oslo Accords. So Beilin was faced with a touch choice: cling to Birthright and ensure his credit but also doom the project to remain small, or let go of Birthright and allow it to grow. Beilin’s advisors passionately argued both sides, with one faction begging him to hold on to what was rightfully his. He listened carefully and then concluded: “I have no immediate claim to fame” and took a step back, allowing Birthright to break through, free of any political friction.

In retrospect, Birthright’s story has an aura of inevitability, but that is a fallacy. A number of critical turning points made the project possible such as when the original idea of Birthright as a ‘tour-operator’ was replaced with the current idea of Birthright as ‘regulator’ of ‘a platform’; when Infeld turned Birthright into a partnership between Israel and American Jewry; when the McKinsey team came into the picture; when Birthright shifted its focus from high school to colleges; and, most importantly, when the Government of Israel became a co-funder and partner of the project. Of course, surviving and transcending the Second Palestinian Uprising of 2000-2003 was no small feat. In hindsight, the entire path seems to be self-evident, with one step leading to another. The reality could not be further from the truth.

The legacy of Bronfman and his co-megadonors to Birthright isn’t just about “giving more” or “giving to Birthright.” Their legacy is about the art of big and smart bets on transformational projects. Bronfman’s generosity is evident to the naked eye, yet the secret sauce of his history-changing intervention requires nuanced observation of long-standing dynamics.  

Birthright’s story should give us the confidence that the next big ideas of our communities are incubating among us, ready to be re-founded by their own Steinhardts and Bronfmans.