Birthright Israel--why I was wrong

By Gil Troy

Moment, Aug 2000. Vol. 25, Iss. 4; pg. 54

Today, just months after the first 6,000 young Jews returned from their free trips to Israel, the Birthright Israel conversion has already become a cliche. Heartwarming stories describing unaffiliated young Jews' life-transforming experiences have filled the Jewish press. Like so many Jewish tourists before them, participants prayed at the Western Wall, meditated at Masada, and cried at Yad Vashem. We knew this would happen. And we knew that it wouldn't be enough. As I wrote in these pages last year, "Israel must be more than old rocks, dead Jews, and shok-eling rabbis"--or Birthright wouldn't work. "The mass-marketed Zionism of the ... Israel tour is inadequate," I wrote. "The Zionism too many young Jews will bring to Israel and will encounter there will not adequately address the realities of their lives-in fact, most tired Zionist canards well often contradict reality in both countries." one year later, after accompanying a group of Montrealers on their Israel tour, I have a confession to make: I was wrong about Birthright.

In its first year, Birthright Israel-the bold $200 million initiative to send young Jews on all-expenses-paid organized Israel tours-has blossomed. Over 15,000 people applied (all north American Jews between the ages of 18 and 27 are eligible, as long as they have never been on an organized Israel tour); the 6,000 who went were chosen by lottery. Almost all of them claim to have been "blown away;" "overwhelmed," "amazed"-the superlatives flow. "I've never felt so proud of my Judaism," said Nancy King, 22, a parasitology master's student. Many spoke of having felt incomplete, of having been Jewish in name only and now feeling Jewish at heart. "The very thing that I needed was the very thing that I was avoiding--some kind of connection with Judaism," said Stagy Rubin, 25, an educational psychology student "Everything moved me," said Lee Poulin, a religion major and record store employee. Poulin, 21, could be a poster child for the type of Jew Birthright Israel is angling for, with his tattoos, streaked blond hair, and body piercings.

[Speaking with a business student about why there's more to life than money has a different impact on a rocky ridge in the Negev.]

The next group of students heads to the Holy Land during winter break 2000-2001. The deadline for applications is early fall.

Already, Charles Bronfman, Michael Steinhardt, and the others behind the program have gotten their moneys' worth. Birthright Israel challenges the status quo and suggests a new relevance for Zionism as an answer to our problems in North America. But is a free exotic magic-carpet ride to the Middle East the only way to capture a young American Jewish heart? What, if anything, exists in the Diaspora to excite the millions who have not had the Birthright Israel conversion-end to guarantee that the conversion is not just a passing fancy, like so many other slick sensations?

I speak as someone who was an early skeptic, although it wasn't because of the cost of the tours. Critics assume that the program detracts from Jewish day schools or from feeding the poor; no one ever calculates how much money Jews fritter away each year on synagogue decor, building funds, or catering. My concern, as I wrote in these pages in April 1999 ("Zionism-What's Left?'), was that unless Jews developed "a new understanding of Zionism and a more relevant vocabulary" about Israel and Jewish identity, Birthright Israel would be yet another expensive magic bullet that missed its mark. "Messrs. Bronfman, Steinhardt, and company are offering young Jews the equivalent of free hardware," I wrote. "Jewish educators in Israel and the Diaspora must now develop the right software to make the Israel experience compatible with the realities of Jewish life, to allow Jews to process their Israel experience in a vital and meaningful way."

In classic Jewish community style, the organizers co-opted me. They invited me to help chair the Montreal launch, implicitly saying, "Okay, big shot, put your money where your mouth is and help make the program succeed." I accompanied 200 Montrealers and 20 Haligonians (that's Canadian for Halifaxers) on their ten-day trip in mid-February, as a voluntary educational adviser.

I signed on because I wanted the Birthright Israel pioneers to be right, and to prove us skeptics wrong. I wanted this maniacal, unconventional gambit to work. I wanted Zionism to be a solution to our North American Jewish problems. I wanted modern Israel to speak to today's Jewish youth. I wanted to see if it was possible to escape our community's instinctive defensiveness: Rather than fighting assimilation, I wanted to see young Jews embracing Judaism; rather than linking Israel with the Arab conflict, I wanted to see young Jews linking Israel with the joys of Judaism.

Some Canadian participants who are put off by religious Jews at home felt warmly embraced by the Orthodox at the Western Wall.

We spend too much time worrying about Israel-and far too little time enjoying it and learning from it. We in the Diaspora have ossified our approaches to Judaism which, in general, emphasize the individual rather than the community, the synagogue over society, special holidays instead of daily commitments, beliefs and feelings more than practices and actions, a private Judaism rather than a public Judaism.

Somewhere between the external wars and the internal tensions, Diaspora Zionism lost its way It became "Federationed"-more concerned with supporting Israeli positions, raising money, and enforcing community unity, and less focused on building a new kind of Jew and a new kind of Judaism. Diaspora Jews were so busy defending the Jewish state, we lost our ability to dream, to criticize what is and envision what could be. Birthright Israel is not about hasbarah the wonderfully Orwellian Israeli term for "propaganda"; rather it is about chinuch (education).

Simply by turning to Israel to solve our modern identity problem, Birthright Israel returned Zionism to first principles, addressing the problem of modern Jewish identity by criticizing the Jewish and the secular status quo. Let's face it. On a certain level, North American Judaism is failing. Thousands of young Jews are voting with their feet, and rejecting Judaism. Birthright Israel is a white flag, an admission of community failure. But it is also a battle standard, a call to arms. By offering alternatives, by exposing participants to a different style of Judaism, I believe Birthright Israel cap trigger a much-needed critique and a burst of creative Jewish energy.

Still, had I not seen and felt it myself, I would not believe it: The reactions were simply too uniform and too fervent to be believed. Had I scripted a Birthright Israel propaganda movie, I would not have had the nerve to write the heartfelt, pro Jewish, and deeply Zionist sentiments articulated by the participants. Even a skeptical professor like myself, who missed his family, could not stand by as the participants danced wildly at the Western Wall on Erev Shabbat, barely eight hours after they had arrived, or partied exuberantly until 3 a.m. in the basement of a hotel in Arad. True, not everyone was swept up. There were some who went to the Wall, who climbed Masada, and afterwards felt bad because they "felt nothing." There were occasional gripes and stresses. But the tone from start to finish was exhilarating, from the first activity (riding Jeeps in the Judean desert) to the finale, when, after I spoke briefly in an ancient alleyway in Jerusalem's Cardo, a hundred of us moshed together in a furious whirl singing "Am Yirsrael Chat" (The People of Israel are Alive). Truth be told, my words rarely have that effect on people.

Shortly after I returned, I received an e-mail from a student of mine who is a campus Zionist. He had not gone on the trip, but friends of his had. He reported that friends who were previously uninterested in Judaism were now praying; friends who two weeks before did not care a whit about Israel were now self proclaimed Zionists. He asked if Birthright had sacrificed objectivity, perhaps presenting a onesided view of Judaism and Israel. I told him the trip had much less to do with the educators and much more to do with three key ingredients: the nature of the gift, the Israel the participants saw, and the Judaism they experienced. On top of this, one of the key assumptions of the trip-that Israel works best when it is shared as a group-proved correct. "The truth is that before coming on this trip, I felt somewhat alienated from the Jewish community," wrote 18-year-old Erika Magder, a commerce student. "I was in fact quite apprehensive about spending ten days with a bus full of Jews. (No offense.) But I never had any idea that I would meet the kind of people that I met ... 43 incredible people [who] gave me hope that maybe there was a place for me somewhere in the Jewish community."

[One key assumption is that Israel works best when shared as a group. Here, Birthrighters prove the point, enjoying the Dead Sea mud at the Ein Gedi Spa. ]

Responses like this were common. The challenge now is to determine if Birthright Israel holds any lessons for Diaspora organizations struggling to keep Judaism relevant.

The Gift Factor

It's sad but true: The luxurious, spare-no-- expense, no-strings-attached gift was central to the trip's success. I wish I could say that a dramatically downgraded, more down-toearth trip of youth hostels and rubbery Israeli tiyul (roadtrip) sandwiches would have been equally successful. But I do not believe that. The first-class nature of the accommodations spoke to many of the participants in their own language-an idiom of creature comforts and leisure. These cushy amenities were essential to the program's success.

The lavishness fostered a sense of community and adventure. It gave the program a Charlie-in-the-Chocolate-Factory feel, a pinch-me-I-can't-believe-this-is-happening-- to-us wonder. I didn't expect this. I disliked the notion that no payment was involved. I feared it might attract slackers who viewed the trip as a lark. I was wrong. The open nature of the call, the fact that it was free for every Jew regardless of financial status, made for a wonderfully diverse group. In a community that is all too often segregated by class, geography, denominational affiliation, country of origin, and (in Montreal) language, the Birthright Israel trip offered a rare moment of unity. Anglophones (Canadian for English speakers) and francophones (French speakers), Russian immigrants and Moroccans, rich and poor, religious (a handful) and secular (most), students and stockbrokers, all came along.

The camaraderie amid such beneficence softened the participants. They were not coming as consumers demanding service or as typical tourists with a list of must-sees. As a result, they were more open, less cynical, and more accommodating.

In fact, the Birthright Israelers were extraordinarily humbled by the magnitude of the gift. Every day, again and again, we heard: "Thanks, Mr Bronfinan, thanks, Mr. Steinhardt" Neil Grunberg, 23, a business student, vowed to name his first child Charles and the second one Michael, after our benefactors.

At first, the fact that the participants viewed the trip so literally as a gift from Bronfinan and Steinhardt made me uncomfortable. After all, the federations and the Israeli government were also lacking in. By day three, however, I had changed my mind. In this age of selfishness and anomie, such beneficence set a powerful dogma eeshit (personal example) of tzedakah and of a commitment to klal yisrael (the unity of the Jewish people). Also, for wary unaffiliated Jews, a gift from two rich guys is easier to take than a gift from some institution.

Following David's Footsteps

When they first arrived, many Birthright Israelers fell in love with the romantic Israel of yesteryear-Israel as a Jewish Disneyland, as one student put it, a fun and meaningful Jewish theme park. It was a superficial first impression, and first love easily fades. But it was heartening to see that at the start of the new millennium, Israel, the complicated, frustrating, polarized, schizophrenic, hi-tech behemoth that it is, could still dazzle a bunch of North American pagans. In less than 24 hours, the participants went from the blinding white snow of the Canadian winter to the dazzling yellow of the desert sun; from the hurly-burly of the modern city to the rich, rocky, Biblical emptiness of the Judean wasteland; from secular time to Jewish time-we rushed to make Shabbat at the Kotel rather than rushing to classes or work. The participants had come from the New World, but many talked about feeling at home, connected.

Israel, the image and the reality, remains a compelling alternate universe to any westerner. It is true that some of the participants complained that they saw the conventional blue-and-white, prepackaged version of Israel. But even that model is like the Wild West compared to life in North America. Few can resist the exotic beauty of the land, the lure of an incredibly young country located in a place where history is counted in millennia rather than decades, the bizarre juxtaposition of the sacred and the mundane. Consider rappelling the same cliffs that Abraham once contemplated, entering trendy clubs via cobblestone courtyards, folk-dancing on Shabbat to Biblical songs with Zionist melodies in front of the electric lights of a Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop.

Being transported to such a universe in mid-semester inspired many to examine their core assumptions, to think critically about their identities and ambitions: To put it simply, place matters. Speaking with a business student about why there is more to life than making money has a different impact on a rocky ridge in the Negev than it would during office hours. In the desert, the whole world just seems a lot more open. That, too, is the genius of the program: helping individuals free themselves from their own private ruts by traveling somewhere so foreign yet so familiar.

And by seeing Judaism on its home turf, our odd, complicated, religious-ethical-- national hybrid begins to make sense. Only by standing in the desert, by seeing what Abraham saw, can we begin to understand the essential triangular relationship between Jews, God, and land that has sustained our people for thousands of years. By walking the ancient alleys of Jerusalem, by following David's footsteps, by seeing the remnants of Solomon's Temple, young Jews, many of whom do not believe in God, can begin to understand how history consecrates our tradition, whether or not a supernatural deity does.

Gee Whiz, They're Jewish

Paradoxically, the overwhelmingly secular participants--who admitted to feeling put off by "the religious" back home-felt warmly embraced by "the religious" at the Wall. The Kotel's chaotic but skilled threering Jewish circus demonstrated an edgier but deeper Judaism than their orderly, square homegrown variety.

While most participants felt the connection immediately, and responded to the Jewishness of the Jewish state, it took them longer to accept Israel's secular character. Even as they enjoyed hanging out at the Cannabis Club in Jerusalem's Russian Compound late Friday night, some were disappointed to see stores open and cars flowing in Israel on Shabbat. Like so many North American Jews, they had implicitly, unthinkingly, rejected the Zionist aspiration to be normal. They wanted Israel to be a 24-houra-day Jewish museum, to be unlike regular life. However, as we left the cocoon of Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter on Shabbat and traversed the country, the participants began to appreciate the richness of the Israeli secular identity-and realize that Judaism combines both national and religious expressions. There was a kind of "Gee whiz, they disco and they're Jewish" quality to the reaction, even a "Gee whiz, they push and shove and they're Jewish" quality-after all, these traits rapidly lose their charm when exhibited by Israelis on Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive.

Of course, it's easy to cross these wires, to integrate the Jewish and the human under the artificial conditions of a ten-day tour. In the Diaspora, Jewish moments are too often special moments: departures from regular society, from normal life. Understandably, most of us prefer to live our regular lives like everyone else, and we find it exhausting and often disappointing to work so hard seeking Jewish moments. In Israel there were no gears to shift. Going to clubs, rappelling, and tending to one's skin at the Dead Sea Spa did not entail having to choose between being normal or being Jewish. That full-time, roundthe-clock normalcy was exhilarating for many.

As they hopped on and off buses, bought souvenirs by day and boozed and caroused by night, many participants experienced the re Jew-venation the sponsors hoped they would. But the Judaism they experienced in Israel was unlike the Judaism they had experienced at home. It was a Judaism of joy, of spirit, of song, and of dance.

Most of these participants perceived North American Judaism as pallid, Presbyterian, stiff, and square. They don't want to dress up to pray in a mournful, incomprehensible, and inaccessible Eastern European liturgy. They don't want to walk into a synagogue feeling underdressed, undereducated, and unwelcome. They loved the niggunim, the little wordless soulful ditties their tour guides taught them. They relished the informed and informal chaos they watched at the Wall, the warm, family-centered Shabbat meals some shared with their guides' families. They wanted to be welcomed, to participate, to feel at home-which, alas, many rarely had before.

And they even felt at home in places where they might not have expected to feel welcome. The first Shabbat; 20 participants joined a Seudah Shlishit (a final evening meal) at a "hippie" shul located behind Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehudah market. The synagogue was in a small cramped space. Its mechitzah (partition) split the room horizontally-the front, with the Aron Kodesh (the Holy Ark), for the men; the back for the women. I was sure this was going to trigger a feminist revolt, but I was wrong. The women walked away as jazzed as the men because they, too, had been able to dance with the Torah-and dance and sing deliriously. Rather than feeling excluded, the women felt included by the dynamic service-in a way they rarely felt in their more egalitarian congregations back home.

Tying It Together

These positive Jewish experiences, on Israeli soil, enhanced by the atmospherics of Israel, help explain why it is necessary to send people 6,000 miles away to improve their Jewish identity at home. Too often, while acknowledging Israel's centrality to Judaism, Diaspora Jews experience Israel as the biggest Jewish headache-thanks to the endless headlines about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the pleas for money, the guilt for not giving more. Going there, and seeing the country in all its ancient and modern contradictions, in all its shabby and glistening glory, puts it all in context. By experiencing the panoply of Jewish identities in our homeland, young Jews can find new role models who break the typical American Jewish molds.

I have faith in Israel as a product-as a rich, complex, inspiring, multifaceted phenomenon that speaks to Jews on many levels. I have less faith in North American style Judaism. American Judaism is rarely sexy, exciting, intense, or normal. The community remains too wedded to its institutionalized and fossilized forms of expression and identification. It is not ready to change.

In the meantime, even if the Birthright conversion proves to be a passing fancy, Birthright Israel has still succeeded. Already ulpanim Hebrew lessons have begun, Jewish studies classes have started, and return trips to Israel have been booked. Montrealers have already hired a follow-up coordinator to help returning (mostly unaffiliated) Birthright Israel participants hook into the existing Jewish student network The coordinators name is Justin Korda, a charismatic 21-year-old, who in his brief tenure has helped organize an all-night, all-you-can-drink Purim party, a thank you cocktail party with Charles Bronfman, Shabbat dinners, and perhaps most incredibly, a weekly late night Torah study society. This from Jews who had not given the Torah much thought since age 13, if then.

Birthright Israel has given the Jewish community a wake-up call. It has shown that we need to think out of the box. We need a Judaism that is not synthetic; we need to forge a new traditional Judaism for the 21st century. We need a new Zionism that speaks to today's concerns in modern idioms-that addresses questions of who we are and where we are at instead of focusing on our enemies and whether we shall be saved.

Of course, life is not a plush, free Israel trip, and Judaism is no picnic. Much of the Birthright experience cannot be replicated or transported.

The romantic view of Israel suggests we need to start rebuilding our myths, to fall in love with Israel anew, even from afar. Birthright Israel reminds us what Israel should beg beacon of modernity and of tradition, humanity and vitality, the best of Judaism and the best of Western values. Birthright Israel suggests that a revitalized relationship with Israel can rejuvenate Diaspora Judaism. Encounters with Israel can help us reorient our study of the past, from a chronicle of holocausts to a history of heroes, thinkers, prophets, teachers, rabbis, moralists, statesmen, soldiers, citizens, and most important, everyday Davids and Davidas. Encounters with Israel can help us change our definition of what it means to be a good Jew Typically, our "good Jew" is either an Orthodox rabbi who rejects modernity or a Conservative rabbi who desperately tries to prove that he or she is "with it" Israel offers a different model: a nonprofessional but full-time Jew who lives a normal life filled with Jewish details.

For four millennia now, Jewish identity has been about covenants, commitments, and compulsion. Most Jews were Jewish not because they wanted to be but because they had to be. In the 21st century, Jewish identity is voluntary. Most Jews are free to be whoever they want to be. North American society in particular is a souk hawking a thousand and one different identities. Too often the Jewish community has responded to the threat by trying to find a new set of compulsions, internal if not external. As a result, our community, and especially our community leadership, has become addicted to a theology of guilt and a politics of fear. Birthright Israel recognizes that Judaism will thrive in the 21st century only if it is affirmative, if it is relevant, if it works in the here and now and for me, rather than in the once-upon-a-time and for someone else-even if that someone else is a bubbe, a zayde, or a parent The challenge for Birthright Israel is not to stop with the sweeteners, but to push its converts to recognize that, at the end of the day, Judaism does require intellectual and spiritual heavy lifting, that it is not all plush buses and four-star hotels. The challenge for the rest of the community is to follow the best of the Birthright Israel example, to begin to craft a Judaism of meaning and goodness that elevates and roots, that excites and fulfills.