Post-Young Judaea Traumatic Stress Syndrome: Diagnosis and Cure

Interview with Gil Troy

Vatikim, The Young Judaea Alumni Newsletter, Issue 3 Spring 2000

Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University. A member of Queens Region (Azor Leviyah) from 1975 to 1978, he was merakez machon, then educational director, at Camp Tel Yehudah in the 1980s. Vatikim spoke with Gil in December 1999.  Gil Troy’s latest book, Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons, is due out soon. His article “Zionism: What’s Left”? appeared in the April 1999 issue of Moment. He lives in Montreal with his wife, Linda Adams, his four-year-old daughter Lia, and his three-year-old son Yoni. His e-mail address is troy@leacock.lan.mcgill.ca.

Vatikim: What is post-Young Judaea traumatic stress syndrome?

GT: Lately, I’ve been suffering from USY envy. I see all these USY graduates at shul davening, their multi-colored talesim matching their multi-colored kippot and I think, ‘These men and women are living their dream! They have a place in American Jewry.’ Unfortunately, I’m lost. I don’t have an institutional Jewish home in America. The Conservative synagogue is too stuffy; the Reconstructionist, too hippy-dippy. Repeatedly, American Jewry’s emptiness appalls me. I suffer—like so many movement alums—from post-Young Judaea traumatic stress syndrome.

Vatikim: How can you tell if you’ve got it?

GT: This ailment has various manifestations. You feel your friendships are inadequate—not like they were in “the movement.” My best friends remain Young Judaeans, even though all live at least 300 miles away. Or you may feel your work is inadequate, that it is not as meaningful as movement work was. While I love being a professor (and I am not afraid to steal Mel Reisfield’s shtick to entertain my students), it is a step down from being machon merakez. In that role, I could ham it up, exchange ideas, and forge a personal and ideological connection with my chanichim. I can’t do that as a university professor because it would be inappropriate.

Vatikim: Why do you suppose you—and so many others—feel this way?

GT: First, the movement for many of us was a “peak experience,” high times when we were living in overdrive. Normal life necessarily pales by comparison.

Second, amid all the positive feelings our movement experience generated, many of us also experience some static. I am considered successful. I have a fancy job, a nice house, and the requisite minivan. I am married to a Jew (admittedly it’s a mixed marriage since she’s from Hashomer Hatzair), and have two young children who know that when I sing “Hashmee’ini,” they sing “Ho, ho, ho.” In other words, in movement terms, I’m a failure. I didn’t make aliyah and am unprepared, on a certain level, for life in the galut.

Vatikim: How are Young Judaeans unprepared?

GT: It is hard to join the world you had so much fun rebelling against as a kid. It is depressing to see yourself as the philanthropic checkbook Jew, the once-a-year High Holiday Jew, the lox-eating gastronomic Jew, the jacket-and-tie-wearing establishment Jew—all the one-dimensional American Jewish stereotypes we loved to bash.

Vatikim: And what is the overall result?

GT: The result is serious both for individuals and for the American Jewish community. Unfortunately, too many of us allow our odd combination of self-loathing and superiority, our Zionist guilt and Zionist critique to immobilize us. Too many of us withdraw from organized Jewish life, from synagogue life (which still remains the name of the game in America) and create our own little movement experiences at home. This can make child-rearing or Shabbat dinners more fun and more meaningful—but we owe it to ourselves and to the American Jewish community to do more.

Our role as insiders and outsiders gives us a unique perspective at this crossroads in American Jewish history. On one level, we “won.” We have assimilated, and succeeded in this society beyond our wildest dreams. Yet, our community is blighted by spiritual emptiness, materialism, aimlessness. Even worse, Zionism today has not only lost its luster. It—and Israel—are often seen as problems to be solved, not solutions to our Jewish problems.

Vatikim: So, what can we do?

GT: We need to be Trojan horses—at home and in Israel. We need to take our Zionist sensibility, our passion for social criticism, our well honed (and often well-justified) disdain for American Jewish pieties and impose it on the community. We need to take the Jewish vitality so many of us have transferred from our camp and Israel experiences and placed in our homes and transmit it once again to the American Jewish establishment.

At the same time we need to build an Israel that is an or lagoyim, a light unto the nations, and an or layehudim, a light, an inspiration, to us. We can help save ourselves by helping build a modern dynamic and unique democracy. We should not just reinvigorate Zionism, we can rebuild it. With a renewed Zionism—both in Israel and in the Diaspora—we can rebuild our Jewish community, and we can rebuild ourselves.