ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
After a year away, Birthright participants return to Israel at critical time
by Deborah Fineblum
June 11, 2021

After more than a year of pandemic silence, Taglit-Birthright Israel participants have returned with all the gusto of young adults who have waited out the year of coronavirus restrictions with visions of Israel dancing in their heads. Take Conor Mullaney, who applied for a Birthright Israel trip months ago with little hope of going at the time. “I’d been looking forward to being in Israel for a very long time,” said Mullaney, a third-year finance student at the University of Maryland’s Global Campus who arrived on May 24 with the very first Birthright Israel group to set foot on Israeli soil since the pandemic shut the program down more than a year ago. READ MORE