The first residents encountered by guests at an afternoon celebration yesterday were zebras — only after a stroll past an apple orchard and a hillside overlooking a lake, did invitees find their host, investor turned philanthropist Michael Steinhardt.

“The maple grove is this way, the animals that way, the food is in the tent, and the apples you’ve already seen,” Mr. Steinhardt, an owner of The New York Sun, said to visitors at his sprawling estate in Bedford, N.Y., on a beautiful summer-like October afternoon.

His guests were more than 500 young people who had taken free trips to Israel through the Taglit Birthright Israel program of which he is a founder. The party offered many fun distractions in its goal of helping Birthright Israel alumni develop their relationships with Judaism, Israel, and one another.

“Are you a couple?” Mr. Steinhardt asked a man and woman who greeted him.

“Yes,” they each replied.

“Then here’s what you have to do. Find the tree shaped like a chuppa,” referring to the canopy under which Jewish couples are married. “Pick a berry from that tree; it should be soft to the touch. It’s an aphrodisiac,” he said mischievously.

There were some serious moments too. “My hope is that you will become proud Jews, proud of our values and of our links to the past. Proud can take many paths. Only you can know what the right path is for you,” Mr. Steinhardt said in formal remarks later.

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut urged the young people to “go forward with optimism, commitment, and confidence to make America a better country.”

The mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, who is African American, said that one lesson he had learned from Jewish students at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, was that before one can love life, he must love and know himself. “So I ask you, will you be Jewish?” he said.

Since the Birthright Israel trips began seven years ago, more than 145,000 people between the ages of 18 and 26 have spent nights in the Negev desert, visited the Western Wall, and met with Israeli soldiers. Many participants in the experience, regardless of their Jewish backgrounds, said the trip had increased their commitment to Israel and Judaism.

“The trip recharged my Jewish batteries,” Bianca Livi, 23, who works at Ogilvy, said of her trip. Last spring she took the bar/bat mitzvah course offered by the Birthright Israel alumni association. She had been a bat mitzvah in the Sephardic tradition, which does not require girls to read from the Torah as it expects of boys.

“I went to Barnard. I’m a feminist. I wanted more of an experience than my family’s synagogue gave me,” Ms. Livi said.

“Before my trip, Israel was a place I went to visit with my family. Now I think of it as my homeland, a place where I want to live,” Rabbi Daniel Coleman, 28, said.

Greg Kass, 24, an engineering major at City College, said he will going on his first Birthright Israel trip next summer, having heard rave reviews from two alumni, Benjamin Sherman and Chaz King, who brought him to the party yesterday.

What did they tell him about the trip? “It’sa24-hour-party,”Mr. Sherman, a 25-year-old student, said.

“Actually, it’s a 240-hour party,” Mr. King, a 26-year-old art director, added, taking into account the 10-day length of the trip.

Yet the trip changed their views about Judaism.

“I’ve been to Shabbat services,” Mr. King said.

“I’m going to marry a Jew because it’s the appropriate thing to do,” Mr. Sherman said.

Mr. King said he had met four different girls, had a hamburger, and tasted a He’brew, the brand of beer being served at the party. He hadn’t yet stopped by the tent where organizations such as the Jewish Enrichment Center, the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan, and Ben Gurion University passed out information about their programs.

Near perhaps the nicest port-o-potties ever made — housed in a trailer with tiled floors and wood cabinet sinks — Rachel Dor, 23, spotted a woman she had seen in synagogue during the holiday of Simchat Torah.

“Now that we’re not dancing with the Torah we can actually talk,” Ms. Dor said.

agordon@nysun.com