FAITHHACKER
| Blogging Birthright: Day 2, or Is This Really My Homeland? | |
| Freshly arrived in Israel, our heroine is skeptical. | |
 by Amy Odell, January 30, 2008
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Smoke and mirrors: The Mega Event stageIt’s day two and we’re at the “Mega Event,” which is a show and dance party held for every Birthright group currently in Israel. (They come from all over: Argentina, Brazil, Australia, the UK. Not every Birthright group attends a Mega Event, but we were one of the lucky ones to be in town for this one). It’s like the Jewish version of Jesus camp and it’s freaking the shit out of me.
The show itself is a mixture of propagandist speeches and wannabe Cirque du Soleil performers, like drum bangers and net crawlers. The singers are apparently famous Israelis. One looks like Fabio, and I can’t say I enjoy his Hebrew wailing. Emceed by an MTV Europe VJ, the entire show is an assault on the senses: Flashing, neon Stars of David illuminate the faces of Israeli stars as they lead the entire group in Hebrew songs. Innumerable Birthrighters follow along with the aid of transliterated captions projected onto huge screens, and everyone dances and cheers with a terrifying, ferocious passion for all things Jew.
Part of the crowd: What if you don't share the audience's enthusiasm?After a while, Israel’s Minister of the Interior speaks, and it feels like he’s trying to convince us all to move here. Afterwards, Lynne Schusterman takes the stage. She’s one of Birthright’s biggest donors, and she wants us to believe that Israel is our homeland. She tells us about bringing her kids here because she wanted them to feel connected to Israel in this very way. But the purpose of this can’t be that they want us to move here after the trip, right? I certainly don’t feel like this is my homeland. And I certainly don’t feel like I want to move here. In fact I feel no connection to this place at all. I feel more connected to London, simply because I so loved drinking Guinness at picnic tables at 11:30 a.m., and cheap shopping during July sale season. Israel doesn’t have beer or shopping like that, and it looks decrepit and third worldish.
The scary Hebrew variety show finally ends, and we’re invited to a dance party. Now, give me some flashing lights, good house music, a touch of video art, and a sea of hot foreign men and I’m a happy gal. We dance and mingle with aggressive, swarthy Jews for as long as we can bear, and the whole event lasts about two hours too long.
Finally: The speeches end and the party begins Truth be told, the dancing is a welcome distraction from how anxious and guilty the show made me feel. Two of my gal pals, Ashley and Lynn, tell me that the stage performance inspired them and that they were almost moved to tears by certain songs. The show reminded me that I’m supposed to be here to explore my Jewish identity, but that’s not why I came. I’m here simply because I love to travel and this is a free trip halfway around the world. Israeli tax dollars and money from rich people like Schusterman are being spent for me to do this, but their efforts and resources only make me feel more disconnected, because the whole religious element of this trip scares and turns me off so much. Maybe if they played hard to get I’d be more susceptible to their efforts.
I feel like a fraud.
Previously: Day 1, or Orthodox Hippies and Badass Babes
Next Up: The Wall Between Us
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Amy Odell is a writer living in New York City. She is New York magazine's fashion blogger. Her work has also appeared in the New York Observer, where she got her start in journalsm interviewing celebrities at parties and writing about More... |
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David A M Wilensky
I know how you feel
My first and only experience so far with Israel was considerably longer than a birthright trip. I spent a four month semester on what seemed at times to be a progaganda-heavy trip. Don't believe anything they tell you. Not that me telling you that will change anything. You're already not totally on board with them.
As you drive around in that tour bus and look out the window at the landspace and as you meet Israelis and chat with them and as you watch Israeli tv and listen Israeli music, you'll work out your own sense of where the hell you are and what in God's name you're doing there.
Adam Shprintzen
Isn't this a bit of a
Isn't this a bit of a mischaracterization of the term propaganda? Signing up for a Birthright trip, the organizers are explicitly upfront about precisely what the agenda of the organization is, and its stated goals; to encourage connections between American Jews and Israel/the Zionist movement. So while I certainly understand a certain discomfort generally speaking to feeling as if one is being inculcated, I also do think it is a bit of a false gripe when it comes to a Birthright trip just because one personally does not affiliate with the cause being espoused.
Otherwise, though, as someone who hasn't been on a Birthright trip, I appreciate/am enjoying the journal, keep 'em coming!
David Strauss
Kind of eerie
It's kind of eerie reading this less than two months before I go through the same thing. As a pretty secular person, I'll be glad to know I'm not alone in my anxiety over what I'm supposed to feel when I'm there.
Katie E
I think I'd agree...
Everyone keeps telling me I should go on Birthright, but I'm not a Zionist and don't feel any emotional connection to Israel. I'd rather go to Eastern Europe or Brooklyn for that matter. Yeah it's a free trip and all that, but the idea that they want to get you to move there just creeps me out a little bit.
stacey.
ok, it's really not that bad
it's not. i mean, my trip didnt have the whole "mega event" experience, so maybe i'd feel differently if we did. yes, they did try to turn all of us into mini-zionists and told us we would be contributing to the death of the jewish people by marrying a gentile, but i still did get a lot out of the trip. and i really did feel a connection to israel by the end, as corny as that sounds- and i was definitely very skeptical at first. i think what really did it for me was having the soldiers on the trip. it was a great experience getting to know people my age who were israeli and were in the army. it kind of made me realize how great we kids in the US have it. also, i have never been very religious, but i found being at the kotel on shabbat surprisingly moving. so, i recommend everyone going on birthright, even the most secular, non-zionist jews. it also depends on the tour organizer. i recently found out that jewlicious has a trip. it seems like it would be a more secular, "hip" experience.
Riley
How pathetic is it that you
How pathetic is it that you feel a connection to a place because of shopping? You'd really fit in here in Los Angeles.
Anonymous
I'm with Katie. Last year
I'm with Katie. Last year I was thinking of going on holiday to Istanbul. But, well, I'm not a Kemalist, so why bother? Seriously, though, the trip is free, so I don't see why you'd have to accept the existence of a Jewish people with a history to go on it. Jews are a fictional people, Zionism is based on the fallacy of their existence, and it's time for everyone to "return" to the ethnically homogeneous, no-minorities-anywhere Old Countries from whence they came. Fer sure. But why look a gift horse in the mouth?
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