The requirements for participants are few: They must be Jewish, be 18 to 26 and must never have been on an educational tour of Israel before.
Because growing demand is outpacing funding, Mark said, about 20,000 applicants a year are put on waiting lists, and half never make the trip. For those who do, however, the no-charge, 10-day excursions include airfare, food, hotels, lectures and visits to some of the country's most significant historical, religious and contemporary sites.
"We have very high educational standards," Goldberg said.
Each Birthright bus holds 40 participants, two staffers from their home country, an Israeli educational guide and an armed security guard trained as a medic.
One of the most important aspects of the tour, Goldberg said, is the involvement of Israeli peers -- usually soldiers -- who join "not as security, but as participants. It creates a personal connection. Many of them stay friends" long after the trip.
To avoid problems in a country sometimes marked by terrorism and armed conflict, Goldberg said, Israeli security forces track each Birthright bus. A few buses had to be rerouted during last year's conflict with Lebanon. Aside from that, she said, "the worst thing that's happened is kids catching the flu from each other [and occasional] broken arms, maybe from falling off camels."
None of which seemed to daunt the participants gathered with Narynski for a pre-departure orientation last month at the Jewish Federation Orange County's office in Irvine.
"There will be no free time, only structured free time," Birthright staffer Jay Feldman told the soon-to-be passengers of bus 909, which, he said, would be making stops at Jerusalem's Western Wall and Ben Yehuda Street ("like the Santa Monica promenade"), as well as museums, monuments and the port city of Eilat, to name just a few.
"My job is to make your trip as amazing at it can be," he said.
"Israel is not just for Israelis; it's a country for Jews all over the world."
That was one of the lessons gleaned by Rachel Blatt, 26, of Los Angeles, who went on an early Birthright trip in 2000. Now she works as assistant director of a temple religious school and hopes to be a rabbi someday.
"It made Israel real," Blatt said of the trip. "It felt so special to be in the same place that so many of my ancestors have been, to know that this is where most of your history takes place, to feel the connection to the place we pray about every day. Once you go to Israel, there's no turning back; you fall in love with it and everything is changed."
The experience was so profound, Blatt said, that last year, when Birthright announced an alumni contest called "Let My Parents Go," she submitted a video that won spots for her mother and father on a parents-only trip that leaves this month.
"I'm so excited for them," Blatt said.
All of which encourages Steinhardt, who said he's deeply gratified by having helped birth a program well on its way to becoming a "rite of passage."
"It's begun to change a generation," he said.
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david.haldane@latimes.com
