Birthright: everybody's doing it, and your first time is free...Two recent articles join the chorus of Jewish publications wondering if Birthright Israel is a good thing. Birthright, in case you’ve been living under a rock for a decade, is a program that brings Jewish 18-26 year olds to Israel for free for a 10-day trip in the hopes of countering assimilation and alienation among young Jews, especially North Americans. Follow-up surveys have found that Birthright alumni are demonstrably more likely to feel connected to Israel, and Judaism than unaffiliated young adults who haven’t gone on a birthright trip. But Birthright hasn’t been around that long, and the jury’s still out on the serious long term effects of a birthright tour of Israel.

Understandably, many of the major Birthright haters are those with vested interests in bringing teenagers to Israel for longer trips when they’re younger (mainly those who run summer trips through BBYO, USY, NFTY, Young Judea, HaBonim, Camp Ramah, etc). An article from PresenTense magazine that weighs the Birthright pros and cons quotes Yossi Katz, a teacher at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, an eight week program for high school students.

Katz’s school specifically targets the same unaffiliated Jews as birthright does, since it is one of a number of long-term (anywhere from six- to twelve-week) Israel programs dedicated to providing a comprehensive Jewish education to high school students. Such schools have suffered a dropoff in applications in recent years because, according to Katz, parents of Jewish teenagers at public schools are opting to forgo a high school Israel experience for their kids in lieu of birthright. “Six years ago, everyone would be asking about security when I would come the US to recruit. Now, frankly, I haven’t had one person address security with me.” Instead, Katz said, “parents are asking why they should spend $7,000 to send their kids on my program when their kids can go for free on birthright instead.” In the minds of both parents and students, Katz contended, birthright seems a free and fast fix to an Israel connection without the need for longer engagement.

Yossi Katz: birthright hater Now, I went on AMHSI, and I know Yossi Katz. I agree absolutely that 8 weeks when I was 16 were infinitely more powerful than 10 days would be for me this year. That said, I think he may be skirting the issue. Look at his quote again:

“Parents are asking why they should spend $7,000 to send their kids on my program when their kids can go for free on birthright instead.”

Seven thousand dollars is a huge amount of money. And when you pit something that costs $7000 against something that's free, it’s no wonder that people are forgoing a high school trip for a free college experience. Everything is expensive these days. College tuition is astronomical. Parents who are looking at upwards of $50,000 per year of college understandably want to cut a few corners in the years leading up to university, and when there is a promise of a free Israel trip in the future, it’s reasonable for them to want to skip out on Israel expenses when their kids are in high school.

Birthright Participants: empty smiles? Birthright can’t be as effective as the other major players in the Israel trip market, but those players are losing out anyway, as they’re forced to raise costs higher and higher, effectively locking out big portions of the middle class (scholarships notwithstanding). The money is no small thing.

Additionally, Birthright’s diversity could work against it. As an article in the Columbia Current points out, Birthright may have a GLBT trip, and a trip for people who like hiking, but ultimately so many trips with so many tangential missions means a slim or non-existent sense of what birthright is really all about:

Traveling to Israel with a peer group may be inspirational, and having Shabbat dinner with friends might be fun, but these experiences are incomplete. They make people enjoy participating in Jewish activities and having Jewish friends, and they might influence people to feel that marrying a Jew is important, but somewhere along the line Birthright missed a step: Why is any of this important? Why is it important to be involved in a Jewish community? Why is it important to raise Jewish children? Why care about Israel? Most important of all-in a society largely devoid of anti-Semitism-why be Jewish in America today?

All of the programmatic successes are pointless without a raison d’etre. In this sense, Birthright is not a big idea. It is a big, successful program, but it does not offer a compelling reason for people to be Jewish.

I’m not sure that’s exactly right. Birthright may provide personal experiences that give individuals a compelling reason to be Jewish. You may have, for instance, a gay college student going on the GLBT trip just because it’s free, bonding with other Jewish GLBT young adults, and for the first time feeling that he has a place in the Jewish community, a sense of what it means to be a Jew and why he wants to stay that way, all because of Birthright. We can hardly expect every Jewish young adult to be compelled by one specific reason to be Jewish, but we should expect birthright to at least make serious attempts to cover that ground in a way they aren’t so far.

Recently, Birthright launched a program aimed at keeping alum more involved in their communities after they return from Israel. With $25 million to launch this new initiative, birthright NEXT, one can be assume of a moderate level of success. But if it’s going to ensure long term viability and success I think Birthright should take two steps.

First, it should fund high school students who are going on organized Israel trips of their own. Katz suggests this in the PresenTense article:

“Originally, birthright weighed offering every young Jew from the age of sixteen a free round-trip airplane ticket and ten paid days in Israel which could be used on any quality recognized Israel program,” Katz said. “We could use that money to send the student to Alexander Muss or other programs, and it cuts the cost in half.”

If this money could be directed at any organized program (Ramah, NFTY, BBYO etc) then Israel programs are no longer in such direct competition with birthright, and parents considering the longer trips for their kids get a substantial break for the probably-better-quality trip.

Second, Birthright needs to sharpen its goal. It needs to ask participants directly what they need to feel that Judaism and Israel are relevant, and it needs to provide that. It needs to ask itself what can make a Birthright trip more effective (hint: it’s not a Birthright Mega-event) and it needs to consider whether alumni programming has any hope of attracting anyone who wouldn’t stay involved anyway.

Birthright isn’t a magic pill to cure assimilation and alienation, but it has the capability to do way more than it’s doing now.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, American Jewry has been privy to many (perhaps too many) sociological surveys taking its collective pulse. Surveys have covered everything from attitudes toward intermarriage, Jewish education, politics, literacy, beliefs, and practice. Recently another survey has appeared written by the pre-eminent Jewish sociologist Steven M. Cohen in conjunction with his younger colleague, Ari Y. Kelman, entitled Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and their Alienation from Israel. The study offers a provocative quantitative analysis regarding young American Jews' attitudes toward Israel.

Cohen and Kelman's study shows the first signs of erosion in unflinching American Jewish support of Israel. It's a trend that may have started in the aftermath of the first Lebanon War in the mid-1980s and is, in many ways, predictable, perhaps inevitable.

The generation of Jews who experienced the establishment of the Jewish State is now over the age of sixty-five. Those with memories of the war in 1967 are approaching fifty. Jews under the age of forty only know Israel as a much more complicated, and compromised, country: an occupying power engaged in a bloody struggle with a largely disempowered and stateless population. Such a battle, while intense and dangerous, is quite different from the more straight-forward struggle of fending off invading Arab armies. Whatever one may think of the present dilemma, or even whether "occupation" is an accurate description of what Israelis call "the situation" (ha-mazav), the experience of Israel for American Jews under the age of forty is, and should be, categorically different from their parents.

The reality of this change can be illustrated in various ways. When I show my students Otto Preminger's 1960 film version of Leon Uris' Exodus I am made conscious of how different Israel is for them than it is, and was, for me. Not only do they find the film horribly propagandistic (it surely is), overly sentimental (no doubt), boring (a matter of opinion), and unrealistic (uh...yes); it does not seem to evoke in them any feelings of sympathy toward the 1948 generation. Few, if any, are drawn to tears, as are many in my generation, by the music or the beautiful panorama of the Israeli landscape. Few get choked up by the scenes of young orphans dancing the hora on a kibbutz.

Exodus is not really a film about Zionism and surely not about Israeli Zionism. It is about the construction of the Jewish State in the American Jewish imagination, propaganda for a Jewish community comfortable but not yet secure in its new-found freedom. For my students, present day Israel is simply too complex (and too middle class) for them to make a connection between the romantic vision they see on the wide-screen and what they read daily on their computer screens.

Which Birthright?

This change in how Israel is viewed by the under-forty set has sparked programs such as Taglit: Birthright Israel and Israel advocacy movements on American campuses such as The David Project in an attempt to bandage depleting American Jewish support for Israel.

Birthright Israel is an innovative initiative to enable young American Jews to take a free trip to Israel. On the face of it, Birthright appears clearly to have a Zionist agenda. Yet, the Birthright mission explicitly aims "to strengthen participants' personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people," and for many of the young people who experience these trips, those connections are decidedly Diasporic.

While Cohen and Kelman's study indeed shows that young Jewish men and women who visit Israel (either on Birthright or some other way) are less alienated from Israel than those in a similar age-group who have never been to Israel, they are still more alienated than those over sixty-five who have never visited Israel. In other words, visiting Israel is productive toward curbing alienation from Israel but cannot close the generational gap.

What the study does not document, but what in fact may be more significant (we have no hard evidence yet as to the long-term impact of Birthright on American Jews) is the extent to which Birthright may be succeeding in its Diasporic agenda, that is, creating conditions for Jewish identity in America where attachment to, alienation from, or ambivalence about Israel may be a marginal part of a much larger and complex formulation of American Jewish identity.

What are the implications if, in fact, this Diasporic agenda proves to be more successful than its Zionist agenda where Birthright contributes to a more robust Diaspora not necessarily built on the foundations of Zionism? Does this tell us that Israel serves American Jews largely as their spiritual theme-park where they go to get a large does of "Jewishness" that makes them more Jewishly identified at home? That is, where homeland serves as simply a vehicle for home? Is Israel a means to a Diasporic end? And if so, is this good or bad for the Jews?

A Different Diaspora

For American Jews living in a free society, the age-old Judenfrage has internalized into a kind of Israelfrage--what do, and should, American Jews think about Israel? I summon the spector of the "Jewish Question" not as it was used against Jews from Augustine to Hitler, but as it was used by Theodore Herzl and the early Zionists to present Zionism as a solution to the European Judenfrage. Just as nineteenth-century American Jews debated Zionism or the Zionismusfrage, contemporary American Jews are confronted with "the question of Israel."

Israel as a Jewish State exists; this is, at present, undeniable. However, what role that state should play in American Jewish identity has been an issue since the first idea of a Jewish state sprang into being in the mid-nineteenth-century, and has only become a more complex matter.

In the mid-1800s, many American Reform rabbis sermonized vociferously against Zionism. By the 1920s, the American Zionism we know today emerged through the work of such charismatic figures as cultural theorist Horace Kallen, Rabbi Judah Magnus, and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. While that Zionism took some twists and turns over the next half-century (particularly a hard-right turn in the 1960s under the influence of Rabbi Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League), the actual birth of the State of Israel and its valiant David vs. Goliath battle during the Six-Day War in 1967 erased any remaining ambivalence that may have remained among American Jews towards Israel. By the 1970s, Norman Podhoretz was probably correct when he wrote of American Jews "we are all Zionists."

That American Zionism is now weakening, as demonstrated by Cohen and Kelman's study, may not necessarily be due to a growing ideology against Zionism (although there is a developing Diasporism in certain academic circles and on the far left). The situation on the ground has changed dramatically. Whatever one may think about the Palestinians or even Hamas, they are surely no Goliath to Israel's David. Younger American Jews may see less need to protect Israel and less willing to unequivocally defend it.

Just as significant, however, if not more so, is the possibility that young American Jews may not need Zionism or Israel the way their parents did. Throughout the history of Zionism, the dichotomous poles of Jerusalem and Babylonia often have served to frame the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora. This is perhaps best encapsulated in the title of the little known but significant work by Simon Rawidowicz (written in Hebrew in America) entitled Bavel ve Yerushalayim (1958) or the contemporary educational project Bavli ve Yerushalmi that has two adult learning communities, one in Israel and one in the United States, studying the same Talmudic texts and gathering a few times a year in Israel or America. While the comparison is easy, since it mirrors the two different versions of the Talmud, I suggest it is not apt.

Instead, the contemporary American Diaspora is closer to the situation of Jews in Alexandria than Babylonia. During the Second Commonwealth there was a thriving and creative Jewish Diaspora in Alexandria that was not a product of forced exile, like Babylonia, but rather a community that chose the Diaspora over Erez Israel. American Jewry, like Alexandrian Jewry of old, is a volitional Diaspora; there are few impediments preventing Jews in the United States from immigrating to Israel; the law of return (whatever one may think of it) makes all Diaspora Jews "virtual citizens" of the Jewish State. This volitional rather than forced Diasporic framework, coupled with the fact that Jews in America are free to practice (or not practice) Judaism in whatever form they choose, creates a different dynamic between home and homeland than the one that existed between Babylonia and Jerusalem. In the twenty-first century Diaspora Jews, whatever their stance on Zionism, choose home over homeland.

Reframing Jewish Identity

For the over-fifty generation, Israel and Zionism were both viewed as pillars of Jewish identity after 1948 and thus the highest levels of attachment to Israel in Cohen and Kelman's study are those in the over sixty-five age group, even those who have never been to Israel. This may have had less to do with Israel per se and more to do with the resonance of Jewish feelings of marginality in the wake of identity politics and the continued perception that, as Jews, they were not fully a part of the American mainstream. For some, it is driven by memories of the Holocaust (and America's less than firm commitment to prevent it), for others love of Israel may derive from the distant yet perceptible echoes of being immigrants or children of immigrants.

Russian Jew at Ellis Island: Photographed by Lewis W. Hine,1905. As a young child living in New York (and almost part of the fifty and older age-group), having my immigrant grandmother take me to Ellis Island where she arrived in the United States from Russia around 1920 was one of my most formative childhood memories of Jewish identity. That is, to a previous generation, Zionism was to some extent an expression of, or a response to, a protracted sense of insecurity in America. Moreover, for my generation, Zionism was always "statist" Zionism; it was always about the Jewish State and not about a renaissance of Jewish culture.

As a result, support of the "state" of Israel became the civil religion of many secular American Jews and a fourteenth article of faith (in addition to Maimonides' previous thirteen) for religious Jews. The state alone became the end, and not the means, of Jewish identity [see note below*]. This was surely not the case in pre-state Zionism but a combination of the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel swallowed up the more interesting, and robust, debates about Jewish collectivity of which statist Zionism was only one voice among many.

Most Jews in America under the age of thirty-five are third and fourth generation Americans. They live in a society where alienation from the mainstream is less than in previous generations. They live in a world where the intermarriage rate for Jews has hovered around 50 percent for a few decades. Among other things, this has increasingly changed the very way in which many American Jews view intermarriage and their host culture more generally. In 2000, the American Jewish Committee's Survey of Jewish Opinion cited about half of its respondents saying that "it is racist to oppose Jewish -gentile marriages." Most young American Jews today have non-Jewish relatives and most have close friends who are not Jewish. Exogamy and Amercian pluralism have all but erased the age-old ethnic myth of Jewish separateness.

Cross-Over Judaism

Moreover, Judaism has become fashionable in America, from Kabbalah to Klezmer to John Zorn and Tzadik records (Zorn won the prestigious MacArthur Genius Fellowship last year), to Andy Statman, the Moshav Band, and Mattisyahu (who, as one of the first real cross-over musicians who play "Jewish" music, last year signed with a major record label). This is quite different from the Jewish musicians (Gershwin, Irving Berlin Leonard Bernstein et al) and comedians (from Al Jolson to Milton Berle, Alan King, and Buddy Hacket) who made it into the American mainstream in a previous generation. The older generation of Jewish entertainers did not carry with them an overt Jewishness (after all, Berlin wrote "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas"). Even Woody Allen, Phillip Roth, and Jerry Seinfeld, all geniuses in their craft, offered nothing particularly Jewish other than Jewish male neurosis.

Similarly, in the political sphere, Jews as Jews are actively involved in movements such as Darfur, world hunger and poverty relief in third-world countries, the anti-Iraq war movement and AIDS outreach. In Los Angeles, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, soon to become a national organization, is working with the LA district courts in an initiative called The Jewish Community Justice Project founded on the principles of Jewish restorative justice devoted to criminal/victim mediation according to talmudic sources and values. While one could argue Jews were also deeply involved in the 1960s Civil Rights movement, they often were not organized around Jewish initiatives but functioned heroically as individuals within the more diffuse American counter-culture.

Even Judaism as a religion has gained a new following from outside the fold. Many non-Jewish college students are aware of Chabad Houses on campus, some attend services with friends, and Artscroll books are read by both Jews and non-Jews alike. Christians are converting to Judaism in increasing numbers and the maverick Rabbi Harold Shulweis in Southern California has advocated actively proselytizing to unchurched Christians--with much success. In short, American Jewry, broadly defined, (and not simply American Jews) is solidly part of mainstream American culture, popular, political, and intellectual.

Given the way young Jewish Americans in increasing numbers have chosen to express their Jewish/American identity around national and global concerns, it is no surprise that Israel is becoming more marginal in the lives of many young American Jews. The "negation of the Diaspora" ideology of Zionism, even in its new form espoused by the Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua, has no real teeth for many in this generation. Their regional, national, and global activism lived as an expression of their Jewishness illustrates the empirical vacuity of Yehoshua's claim.

A Mixed Blessing

While in the old paradigm, attachment to Israel was viewed as an anchor of Jewish identity in a less-than-fully-stable and confident Jewish community in America, this new paradigm sketched above suggests that the "distancing" Cohen and Kelman's study documents may be a mixed blessing. That is, if it is true that this distancing from Israel is coupled with a new sense of identity not wed to the ethnic attachment to a Jewish State, Jewish identity in American may be healthier than imagined. On the one hand, it may be showing us that the doctrine claiming Zionism is the glue that can hold non-Orthodox American Jewry together is becoming obsolete and that, in fact, what we may be witnessing is the beginning of a new Jewish secularism in America that hasn't existed since the demise of the socialist and Yiddishist movements in the early twentieth century.

One sign of this may be seen in the changing nature of the intermarried Jew. While in a previous generation the assumption was that the Jew who "married out" was basically lost to the Jewish community, at present many intermarried Jews are bringing their non-Jewish spouse to the synagogue and other Jewish communal activities. That is, today an increasing numbers of intermarried Jews (admittedly still the minority) do not view their choice to marry a gentile as severing them from the Jewish collective. In some cases, it is even the gentile spouse who encourages his or her Jewish partner to become more "Jewish."

One recent product of this new tendency can be seen in a pamphlet published by a group of Conservative rabbis entitled, A Place in the Tent: Intermarriage and Conservative Judaism. (2005). This booklet serves as a guide for rabbis, in halakhic and non-halakhic matters, of how to integrate the non-Jewish spouse into synagogue life. There is also a support group in Atlanta connected with the Jewish Outreach Institute run by Rabbi Kerrey Olitsky that serves gentile women married to Jewish men who want to bring their children up Jewish (according to Reform Judaism one Jewish parent is sufficient to consider a child Jewish) . The literature of this group contains interviews with some of these non-Jewish women about why they choose not to convert to Judaism yet want their children to be raised as Jews. Viewed in the context of Jewish history, the fact that a non-Jewish woman would choose not to convert to Judaism (many of these women feel deeply connected to their familial roots) yet choose to raise her children Jewish is quite remarkable.

In short, in conjunction with American Jews re-envisioning their markers of identity, there may be paradigm shift in America's attitudes toward Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism. I think the Cohen and Kelman study, viewed as part of a much larger shift in American Jewry, yields a complex picture that is not, by definition, "bad for the Jews."

In 1966 Gerson Cohen, then a professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary who later became its chancellor, gave a commencement address at Hebrew Teachers College in Boston that was later published as an essay entitled "The Blessing of Assimilation." (collected in Cohen, Jewish History and Jewish Destiny New York: JTS, 1997, 145-156). In this essay Cohen argued that it is both inaccurate and historically short-sighted to view assimilation as, by definition, "bad for the Jews." He writes, "A frank appraisal of the periods in which Judaism flourished will indicate that not only has a certain amount of assimilation and acculturation not impeded Jewish continuity and creativity, but that in a profound sense, this assimilation and acculturation was a stimulus to original thinking and expression, a source of renewed vitality. To a considerable degree, the Jews survived as a vital group and as a pulsating culture because they changed their names, their language, their clothing, and their patterns of thought and expression."

Twenty-first century America has thus far offered Jews many new avenues of expressing their identity as ethnic or post-ethnic Jews. Statist Zionism remains one avenue among them. To conclude that since this road is now less traveled we are witnessing a diminishing identification with the complex and transitional thing we call "Jewishness" in America is, in my opinion, a myopic view of the changing world around us.

This essay is dedicated to GZG, in friendship.

*I want to thank Professor David Myers of UCLA for a series of lectures he gave at Indiana University in April 2008 where he developed his ideas about “statist” Zionism in relation to a broader collectivist notion of Jewish identity. His comments greatly enriched my thinking on this point.

Art Credits: Lead image is a t-shirt design from www.jewtee.com.

Young adults today aren't satisfied with a status quo existence. We want to find our true calling, and hopefully wealth and stability along the way. Unfortunately, real life isn't always conducive to finding the answers we seek.

Immersed in this post-college struggle to find a meaningful and productive life, I found myself with a diverse group of other twenty-somethings on an Israel Experts Birthright trip. Some of us came simply for the free vacation; others hoped to trace their roots and culture to help them find what is "true" and "real." What we didn't expect was to find ourselves in a charged atmosphere of questioning minds, as fertile-and at times illuminating-as the desert that was made to bloom.

As it turned out, all of us were "seekers," which is a nice way of saying that we were a little bit lost. I called myself a writer, although writing barely supported my coffee addiction. Before we even checked baggage, I met a girl who had just lost her fashion job along with her boyfriend (who also happened to be her boss), an insurance adjuster who hated his work, and a medical student who was taking a year off to work on a farm in Florida.

Most of us had danced around the idea of a Birthright trip before, but avoided it for various reasons. Some thought it would be too much like propaganda. Others had never felt entirely comfortable in Jewish groups. Still others (or their parents) were afraid of ending up on the evening news. The fact that we were finally able to sign on to Birthright (and actually board the plane) was a testament to our development as individuals; we felt sure we could walk away with our authentic selves intact no matter what the trip threw at us.

Luckily, the trip didn't require us to exude a happy-go-lucky attitude. "All we want is for you to ask questions," Joe Perlov, our tour organizer said, the morning we arrived in Israel, exhausted. "I don't care if someone is miserable the whole time. In fact I hope someone is miserable the whole time."

Jumping Off Haystacks

Our trip began with a visit to Kinneret Cemetery, the final resting place of the settlers of the first aliyah. Many found this the most inspiring part of the trip, largely due to our docent, Joel Goldman, who told us that his one wish for our group was not to give our kids bar mitzvahs or to marry another Jew. "I want each one of you to find that thing in life that makes you jump off your haystack in the morning," he said.

At a visit to Kibbutz Degania, I finally felt I understood what had made the settlers jump off their haystack. Having grown up in a Philadelphia suburb that was only two percent Jewish, I was deeply impressed by a place where Judaism united people, instead of being an indicator of difference. This was the Jewish community I had heard about, but never actually seen, and perhaps didn't even believe was actually possible until that moment. Not only did I see it actualized at Kibbutz Degania--and perhaps from the idealized perspective of an outsider--I watched our bus turn into its own close-knit Jewish community.

One girl who was half Jewish on her father's side, and who had hardly ever stepped foot in a synagogue, wrote to me last summer: "I tend to go through life feeling constantly judged by others and feeling that I need approval from them. On the trip, I always felt accepted. I got to escape into a surreal life that was the most memorable trip of my life."

Believing the Dream

In our liberal circles, we are often deprived of the opportunity to believe in anything whole-heartedly. My liberal arts education taught me that any distinct concept or idea will crumble under the scrutiny of too many questions. Birthright set an example where it was okay and even honorable to believe in the state of Israel, to adopt, so to speak, the settler's original dream.

When I returned home, I gave myself permission to act on my new love for Israel and other dreams I had lacked the bravery to carry through. I signed up for the WUJS Institute in Arad arts program, and soon was spending five more months in Israel, learning Hebrew and focusing on my passion, writing.

Of course, not everyone joined me on the plane back to Israel. One participant, Elizabeth, found that "being in Israel just makes me more certain that I want to live in New York." Birthright heightened our self-awareness and focus--but not according to an outside agenda. We each listened foremost to our own inner voice, whether we were being introduced to a holy site or discovering the person sitting next to us on the bus.

Perhaps, on a basic psychological level, my attraction to Israel is not so different from that of the original settlers. I recently found a quote by Chana Senesh, words she wrote shortly after her aliyah at age seventeen, describing how Zionism functioned in her life: "One needs something to believe in, something for which one has whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world. Zionism fulfills that for me."

In Israel I found a source of pride that I can carry for the rest of my life--no matter what I end up doing.

***

Art Credits: Jerusalem by Johnny Hornig. Girl on Haystack by Renee Blodgett, whose blog, Down the Avenue, chronicles her extensive travels.

Our Tour Guide Shows Us What Masada Used to Look LikeWe wake at 4:45 to climb Masada for sunrise. It’s a bit cloudy so the sun isn’t as spectacular as I'd hoped, but it's spectacular enough to inspire me to snap about 7,000 pictures of it. I’m supremely irked by the fact that our counselors choose the exact 30 minutes during which the sun slowly emerges into blazing glory as the perfect time to lead songs and prayers. I routinely tune them out and am one of two or three people who completely ignore their request to put cameras away at the start of the service. I just can’t help myself: Here I am, standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, and the Judean desert—the likes of which I’ve only seen in nature documentaries. The sunlight is coloring the cliff faces rich shades of red and orange, and I’m supposed to turn my back and listen to singing I don’t understand or give a shit about? I don’t think so.

We spend about three hours on top of Masada. Though I can’t adjust to the beauty of these surreal surroundings, it’s our tour guide Offer’s lecture that really makes my visit memorable. He tells us the story of Masada in cliff-hanging detail (no pun intended) as he leads us through the ruins. I'm surrounded by remnants of a fabulous palace inhabited by a group of Jews called the Zealots 2,000 years ago. Descending Into the Zealots Ancient Water SystemPositioned at the edge of a cliff in the middle of the desert, the palace offered views of approaching enemies, a sophisticated water system, glorious balconies, and even a sauna. Life was dandy here until the Romans came and set up twelve camps at the bottom of the cliff, surrounding the Zealots, ready to conquer. The Zealots could either fight or surrender. They talked it over and reasoned if they fought, they’d lose and die. If they surrendered, they’d watch their wives get raped, be enslaved, and die. Since death was inevitable, they decided to die with dignity by committing mass suicide. They killed the women first, since the worst thing for a woman is to watch her child die. Then they killed the children, and then the men killed each other.

The account is probably an inflated, idealized version of history, but I’m not really thinking about that, because it was a good-ass story and I’m in awe of it. I recognize that I will never forget Offer’s final point, partly because he asked us to remember, and partly because of the natural phenomenon he demonstrates at the last stop on the mountain. We’re overlooking the valley where many Zealots supposedly plunged to their death. We face a smooth cliffside that looks like a paintbrush has freshly streaked it with burnt oranges and grayish browns.

Echoing Cliffs Around Masada“I’m going to tell you a phrase in Hebrew I never want you to forget,” Offer says. He teaches us the phrase. “Now, we’re going to shout these words as loudly as we can over this valley.” We face out and shout with all our might. Even I join in. A few seconds later our words echo back per-fect-ly. It’s like a Bizarro Birthright group is shouting back at us. We do it again. And again. “It means: Masada shall never fall again,” Offer says. “I want you to remember it because it means let us never have to choose between death and death. Let Israel never have to choose between death and death.”

At the end of the day, I want this place to be my “homeland” because I’m so amazed by what I've seen. Though I can’t say I feel a connection yet, I can say I’m finally thrilled and delighted to be here.

Previously: Day 3, or Judaism Vs. Feminism At The Western Wall 

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

I find a BFF at the airport, which is somewhat of a relief. Her name is Ashley, she’s from Louisiana, and she has an enviable southern lilt that makes all of her words sound like they end in “L.” She’s blond, perfectly made-up, and pretty like Britney Spears from her “Oops!... I did it Again” days. We have a lot in common: We’ve both dated Spaniards, come from cities with no discernible Jewish population, and are single but seeing guys we could take or leave. I zonk out on the plane thanks to the Ambien, and we arrive in Tel Aviv in what feels like no time. Home On The Road: way too much singing happened hereAfter boarding our bus (our second home for the next ten days), our Israeli tour guide introduces himself as Offer. He seems cool as fuck: A modern Orthodox guy in a knitted kipah, with a funky, spiritual thing going on. I've never encountered an Orthodox hippie like him, and I like it.
“Welcome home,” he says over the mic.
“Yeah right,” I think.
“This is not just something we say,” he explains, as though sensing my skepticism. “This is your home. By that I mean: I could not go live in the U.S. if I wanted to. You can come live here if you want to. I have to get a green card and it takes some months. Thank God I do not want to live in the U.S.”

Our first stop is Independence Hall. Before entering, we stand in a circle and play name games. I generally can’t stand this shit, but it's a good chance to get a better look at everyone in the group, which includes a married couple, three brother-sister pairs, one pair of cousins, a couple of friends, and a number of loners. There are also people—like Ashley—who had planned to come with friends who, in fear of bombs, ultimately backed out.

In Independence Hall—where Israel’s declaration of Independence was signed—we listen to a lecture about how Israel was born. The Zionist undercurrents of the trip are already proving to be intense as the Israeli lecturer takes his place before a painting of Theodore Herzl and an Israeli flag. He holds up a map of Israel. The Jewish areas are orange; the Arab areas are yellow.
“In some places, your country is seven miles wide,” he says. “It is not bad. You can come home and put on your jogging clothes and run across your whole country after work.”
He asks the audience—composed of two Birthright groups—how many Jews live in Israel. One guy offers an answer of 7 million. Nope! That’s how many total people live in Israel. Only 5.5 million Jews live here. The other 1.5 million are Arabs. The lecturer aims his pointer at the vast Negev.
“You see,” he says. “They gave us the desert. Great.”

View From Above: Tel Aviv from the roof of my hostel Having previously dated and fought Israelis off at nightclubs, I’ve found them to be aggressive and pompous. Offer and our Independence Hall lecturer have already helped me to understand why they’re like that. I mean, they all have to serve in the army, which is the ultimate anti-Candy Land existence of American youth. On top of that, they always have to be on bomb alert. Speaking of which: Birthright takes safety very seriously. We are not allowed to take public transportation, and we have an armed medic with us at all times. Her name is Tzipi and she always sports a rifle. I love that our armed guard is a woman. She makes the “tough Israeli” thing seem pretty badass.

I’m writing this from the top bunk in a hostel in Jaffa. In a way, I don’t feel like I’m here, although I’m happy to be. I like these people and I’m honestly looking forward to knowing them better.

Previously: The Best Things in Life are Free?

Next up: Day 2, or Is This Really My Homeland?

My Adventure, My Birthright: and did i mention it's free? Tomorrow I’m embarking on my first trip to Israel, with 39 people I’ve never met. The only part of the trip I planned was my bus ride from Manhattan to Newark airport, which is about as exciting as watching two episodes of Columbo in a row. I will be unable to escape these people for ten days, and I must spend one night in a tent in the desert. But I’m okay with all of this because I'm not paying for any of it. They say the best things in life are free, right? So thank you, Birthright Israel.

I’ve always wanted to be religious but never have been. I just never felt connected to religion. I don't believe in God, I don’t believe in the Bible, and I live happily this way. Judaism is my ethnic identity, culture, and heritage—not my religion. As for Zionism: It doesn’t top my list of vital issues. Case in point: I will pick up the Times and turn straight to the Election '08 page, but I have never turned straight to the “Israel [Got] Bombed Again” page. I just don’t think about it much.

I signed up for this trip because I love to travel. I guess I also hope to figure out if I want religion to play a role in my life, but ultimately, I’m in this for a free trip to what I’ve heard is one of the coolest countries on Earth.

Headed For the Homeland Of course, I expect this experience to be rife with attempts at brainwashing. Normally, this would turn me off, but the fact that it’s free means nothing about this trip turns me off. Besides, my brain is safeguarded by an innate membrane of skepticism—a natural defense that will be reinforced by my in-flight reading of Foreskin's Lament (at least until the Ambien my friend gave me kicks in). If I do change my mind, I want it to be deliberate rather than involuntary.

Despite the knots in my stomach, my brain tells me that this trip will be fun. I love traveling, I love meeting new people, and I love not having to pay for stuff. Then again, I'm a bit of a girly diva and hope I’ll be able to handle feeling filthy for ten days (the provided packing list says “expect to be dirty”). Though I’m not open to religious propaganda, I am open to new secular experiences. If I do have to run around with greasy skin and mismatched clothes, I'll gladly let my inner-geek shine like the Hanukkah candles I thought really hard about buying this year.

Next up: Day 1, or Orthodox Hippies and Badass Babes