Since its founding in 1999, Taglit-Birthright Israel's mandate has been to renew and strengthen the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora. Over the past decade, it has proudly sent more than 200,000 young Jews from around the world on a free 10-day trip to Israel.  It is considered a great success story by many in the Jewish community and its popularity has gained such attention that other American religious and ethnic groups have been inspired to implement similar programs within their own communities.  But is Birthright truly deserving of its accolades?   After speaking with numerous alumni and carrying out my own research, I found many reasons to be skeptical.

How Birthright structures its program raises significant questions.  The organization's website describes its mission to "diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world."   Yet for all its advocacy of fostering stronger ties between Diaspora and Israeli Jews, the trip offers little opportunity for young Jews to connect with Israelis themselves, and from them understand the daily realities and nuances of living in Israel.   Discussions on the trips focus primarily on Israel's past with "a mandatory 40 hours of educational lectures about the history of the state and Zionism" (according to Ben Murane, a former peer leader).  Contemporary issues are glossed over in favor of an emphasis on Biblical-era Jewish history and grand philosophical questions.  There are moreover few unstructured opportunities to experience contemporary life and minimal interaction with Israelis. Marissa Katz, a Birthright alum from Long Island, described her interaction with Israelis as limited to tour leaders and a few young soldiers.

When contemporary topics are broached, they are typically presented from a politically conservative viewpoint, often lacking nuance and context.  Another participant from a trip in 2000 told me that while she loved being in Israel, she "bristled... at elements of the trip that seemed a bit ‘indoctrination-ish' -- especially because some of the people on the trip didn't know enough about Israeli culture and politics to know they were only being presented with one side of a controversial debate."  Discussions are tightly controlled-Murane explained that "...[there is] lots of oversight into what should be said -and there is virtually no critical examination of Israeli history or the impact of Israel's tangled relationship with its neighbors on Israeli society or outside.  Yet according to the November 2004 Birthright Israel Research Report, seventy percent of students feel "at least somewhat confident" about their abilities to explain the political situation in Israel at the conclusion of their trip,.  This number is consistent with the goals of the Birthright leadership who, as defined by the same report, "[want] to enable young Diaspora Jews to speak intelligently about the situation in the Middle East from a perspective sympathetic to Israel."

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Many Jewish groups are tired of listening to me badger them -- by email, listserv, message board, phone, and carrier pigeon -- for specific outreach to adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage. Some of them wish I and the Half-Jewish Network would just (expletive deleted) off.

Others have asked me, with the exasperation of an adult who has been relentlessly nagged by a three year old for an entire Shabbat weekend, "So what do half-Jewish people really want, anyway?"

That's an easy question for me to answer -- we want the same resources and help that are given to interfaith couples and Jews by Choice (converts). Now. Yesterday would have been nice, too. So why don't these programs exist?

Ghosts In The Communal Attic

Once of my biggest problems in advocating for adult children and other descendants of intermarriage is convincing Jewish outreach organizations and Jewish communal groups to admit that we actually exist.  Now, you'd think the documented existence of over 300,000 of us in the United States, and thousands more elsewhere in the Diaspora and Israel would be proof that we exist. We are estimated to be 48% of all Jewish-identified college students in the United States.

But officially, for many Jewish organizations, we don't exist. Over twenty years ago, in the late 1980s, American Jewish outreach professionals -- at that time a tiny network of a few rabbis, Jewish social workers, sociologists, and interfaith couples -- adopted a "raising Jewish children" strategy for interfaith family outreach. Ironically, this outreach strategy helped continue our exclusion from many Jewish communities. This requires some explanation.

The Origins Of The "Raising Jewish Children" Policy

The "raising Jewish children" advocates saw only two outcomes for us: either our interfaith parents must raise us as a "real Jews," in a very draconian manner -- no Christmas trees or Rastafari posters! Every trace of our "non-Jewish" parent's heritage to be banished from the house! -- or if we were not raised as Jews in a very strict manner, we were to be treated as "non-Jews" who must convert as adults through the "Jews by Choice" programs.

And whether we were raised as "real Jews," or became adult "non-Jews" to be placed in "Jews by Choice" programs as adults, we would never need any special outreach programs, unlike interfaith couples and Jews by Choice.  At least that's what the tiny outreach network of the late 1980s thought.  Children of intermarriage who were already teens and adults in the late 1980s were to be written off as a "lost generation," in the words of one rabbi. No resources were to be provided for outreaching them. This decision meant that thousands of potential adult Jews were simply abandoned in the 1980s and 1990s, and many could not find ways into the hostile Jewish community of that era.

As a much younger adult in that era, and often the only adult child of intermarriage present at these outreach policy discussions, I vigorously protested the policy of abandoning the Baby Boomer and early Gen X teen and adult children of intermarriage as a "lost generation" and the harsh "raising Jewish children" policies that scrubbed every vestige of the other parent's culture out of the house. I was frequently told that Jewish outreach needn't concern itself with people like me -- because interfaith family programs would ramp up so quickly that most young children of intermarriage then existing in the late 1980s -- the late Gen X and the early Gen Y Millenials -- would be raised as "real Jews." People like myself -- already teens and adults -- were to be regarded as expendable. But how has this worked in actual practice?

Raising "Jewish Children"

It must be understood that the great "ramp up" of interfaith family outreach programs has never taken place. Despite all of the Jewish communal complaints about intermarriage, they've never been willing to put their money where their mouths were. Pennies out of every federation budget were allotted to a few overworked outreach professionals, who could contact only a small number of interfaith couples. So most of the adult children of intermarriage around today were raised outside of Judaism.  How did the "raising Jewish children" policy work for the minority of children of intermarriage who were "raised Jewish"?

Under the draconian "raising Jewish children" of twenty years ago, all vestiges of our non-Jewish parent's heritage were to be banished from the house. The policy intended that we would grow up to be "real Jews" -- clones of the middle class Ashkenazi Jews of today -- with no input from our "non-Jewish" parent -- you know, the Swedish Lutheran or Afro-Jamaican who gave birth to us or sired us? Made our school lunches? Drove to us to Hebrew school? Who bequeathed us her blonde hair and that miserable asthma or his Jamaican dreadlocks and sense of humor?

This policy hasn't worked well. Even the children raised as "real Jews" are aware that the other parent is, well -- Swedish, or African-American or Korean -- and, if they forget it, some other Jews with more curiosity than tact are plenty willing to remind them: "You look kinda Swedish. Are you black? Hey, are you an Asian convert?"

The "raising Jewish children" policy of twenty years ago has left some young adult half-Jewish people ashamed of their other heritage, which they then try to play down, referring to their other heritage as "my non-Jewish relatives." Sometimes the ethnicity and religion of their "other" relatives are never discussed, as if their other heritage was a sordid family secret involving criminal activity.  Some "raised Jewish" young adults won't date other half-Jewish people or make friends with them, focusing on filling up their social circles only with born Jews with two Jewish parents. They sometimes advocate for Jewish communal policies that discriminate against other half-Jewish people -- a Stockholm Syndrome reaction.

I have listened with dismay and incredulity to adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage defend and make excuses for many Jewish communal policies that harm us, such as our exclusion from a teen Jewish summer camp, Israel's increasingly harsh "who is a Jew" policies directed against us, and the failure of Jewish institutions to set up outreach programs for us.

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I sometimes think if I receive one more email inviting me to send half-Jewish people to Israel on trips or special tours for interfaith families, I'm going to have a neural meltdown. It's not the kindly trip invitations that get to me, though: it's the viewpoint. Here's their collective message:

Robin, why doesn't your group for adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage sponsor trips to Israel? They are the new silver bullet for identity problems among interfaith family members!

And some of them have actually used the phrase "silver bullet." The terminology is dreadful -- "silver bullets" are ordinarily used on werewolves and, in the 1950s, the Lone Ranger fired them at the Bad Guys on black-and-white TV shows. What is the subtext here: that identity problems among half-Jewish people can be resolved by killing them?

The implied message for members of my group, the Half-Jewish Network, is that we're apparently the Bad Guys for -- having been born. Well, then excuse me for living. Anyway, some Jewish organizations -- well-meaning to be sure -- have decided that the best way to deal with us having been born with one non-Jewish parent or grandparent is to ship us to Israel, where we will thus be overcome by the allure of Jewish identity. Ideally, we will then return home wanting to be completely Jewish, supporting Israel's government without question, donating to our local Federations, and not asking awkward questions. There's just one big problem with these trips. A huge pink elephant in the room. It's so pink, it's probably magenta.

The outreach officials organizing these trips -- the rabbis and tour guides and Jewish communal professionals conducting them -- almost none of them tell the members of interfaith families that Israel has legal and social policies in place discriminating harshly against interfaith couples and adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage. That's the real silver bullet -- straight to the heart. These policies are no secret. Israeli newspapers -- free, available online, and often in English -- discuss them endlessly.

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How's this for rank cronyism?

Birthright Israel, the program that gives every Jewish young adult in North America a free trip to Israel, also funds ‘aftercare' programs back home under the auspices of Birthright-NEXT meant to keep newly-Jewishly-enthused Birthright participants in the Jewish communal fold.

Birthright has so far shown little success in aftercare and retention. Most participants barely participate in Jewish communal life after returning from the greatest free vacation many of them will ever have. Of those participants who have already finished college, only about half participate in any measurable way, and "participation" can mean as little as attending one program several years ago.

A recent study commissioned by Birthright emphasizes the need for varied programming conducted in small intimate settings by many organizations in each locale.

To achieve this, many different organizations need funding. But that is not what Birthright does. Indeed, in the New York City area, home to the largest concentration of young Jews in North America, Birthright focuses its funding on a small handful of organizations. One of them, the Jewish Enrichment Center, gets a heavily disproportionate amount of that funding.

The JEC is an ultra-Orthodox founded and run outreach center, started as part of the Kiruv Movement - in other words, the JEC was conceived and birthed by Jewish missionaries out to make you ultra-Orthodox.  Beginning in 2002, the JEC was the NYC "outreach post" of Ohr Somayach, the right wing ultra-Orthodox kiruv yeshiva and missionary network. So why is Birthright-NEXT funding ultra-Orthodox missionary activity?

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On June 6, the New Israel Fund (where I work) gathered one hundred young Jewish activists in New York City to discuss social justice and Israel, and the deep chasm between them. It's no small matter, considering that the average Israel organization wants you (young impressionable Jewish scions) to give up your funds and your fealty to the Jewish state, but never mind those starving people in Tibet. And the average social justice organization wants you to donate your shekels and spare time to disempowered people all over the world. Good thing there are no disenfranchised people in Israel, right?

If only that were true. Israel is quite the unfinished project. Beyond prevalent poverty, there are serious structural problems with minority rights, religious freedom, environmental protection, and the rights of migrant workers, gays, and women, for example. Not to mention the human rights issues of the territories. Sadly, progressive causes are in no short supply in the modern State of Israel.

It's a blind spot in the Jewish psyche, one which the New Israel Fund has made its mission. Who else will support the young, new social justice organizations and grassroots activists of the Jewish state? Israel's equivalents of the ACLU or the League of Conservation Voters need funding and training to make Israel a state worth living in.

Last year, 40 participants joined a Birthright Israel trip sponsored in part by the New Israel Fund. In addition to the normal Birthright stops, they met a dozen of Israel's most inspirational activists and organizers.

On day one, a staff member of the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages led a tour of a Bedouin village near Beer-Sheva, a ramshackle hovel of corrugated aluminum siding and cracked concrete without electricity or water. Several participants had recently visited New Orleans for Hillel service trips and the similarity of state disenfranchisement wasn't lost on them. This was no touristy "ride the camel" Bedouin camp.

By day three, participants debated a panel of five young Jewish activists: an environmentalist, a Mizrahi empowerment organizer, an Ethiopian immigrant organizer, and an orthodox advocate of religious pluralism. (See here for short videos of these issues.)

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G-d told me to go on tour with a punk band called CAN!!CAN.

No shit, I wish I were making this up.

I'd love to wake up in the morning, eat a bagel, go to work in a cubicle Office Space style and fly under the radar for the rest of my life. But I can't. As The Blues Brothers said, "we're on a mission from G-d".

It came to me like a flash in the dark; like a warm feeling in my stomach after eating hot tomato soup on a cold day. I need to go on tour with my band. I need to sing about spirituality, G-d's love for humanity, tikkun olam, olam haba and all the things that drove me crazy-in-love with my creator.

And I needed to do it through indie punk, hipster metal and noise pop. 

So I started messaging some friends; frum-punks, hippiedox kids, tattooed Reform rejects...anyone who would listen to what I was trying to do. 

It worked out. My tour is being guided by the great people at Shemspeed, Artists4Israel, ModernTribe.com, Frumsatire.com, HeebnVegan, Bahay Shalom, Birthright Israel - Next, PresenTense...you name it! And I get to work with some awesome cats like Y-Love, Matthue Roth, Diwon, DeScribe, Stereo Sinai, Juez, Darshan and others.

The greatest thing that ever happened to me was waking up and realizing that my life was no longer about me anymore. Luckily, G-d saw it fit that the one thing I'm good at, playing in a rock band, is the thing he needed me to do the most.

I'm one lucky guy. Shalom...and I better see you guys rocking out with your cocks out!

TH Aug 13 Louisville, KY @ Derby City Espresso

F Aug 14 Louisville, KY @ Adath Jeshurun Synagogue Patrick A Dvar Torah!!

SN Aug 16 Chicago @ Empty Bottle sponsored by Birthright Israel, PresenTense, Shemspeed

M Aug 17 Indianapolis, IN @ The Vollrath

T Aug 18 Teaneck, NJ @ Shemspeed Summer Music Festival - Mexicali Live

W Aug 19 Baltimore, MD @ Sidebar

TH Aug 20 Philadelphia, PA @ Shemspeed Summer Music Festival -The Raven Lounge

F Aug 21 Providence, RI @ AS220

S Aug 22 Trenton, NJ @ Millhill Basement 

SN Aug 23 Amityville, NY @ Broadway

M Aug 24 Asbury Park, NJ @ The Saint

TH Aug 27 NYC @ Shemspeed Music Festival - The Bellhouse

F Aug 28 Hickory, NC @ Drips Coffee House 

www.punktorah.com

www.myspace.com/cancanband 

Birthright Palestine: the trip of a lifetimeBirthright Israel has a doppelgänger called Birthright Palestine. The Palestinian program aims to "gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation."

Birthright Palestine participants are offered opportunities to volunteer in Bethlehem, take daily Arabic language classes, engage in cultural events, and party hearty. Although the program mimics the structure of its Jewish, Zionist counterpart almost exactly, there are some fundamental differences between the two. Shocking, I know.

One major difference is that Birthright Palestine doesn't support a two-state solution. Another is that they describe some of their destinations as the "1948 territories, which some people refer to as 'Israel.'" (Emphasis mine.)

Other differences: The Birthright Israel trip is a 10-day gift that covers roundtrip airfare, hotel, transportation, most meals and other associated land costs, while Birthright Palestine requires participants to cover their own airfare and pay approximately $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the length of their stay.

Though the site describes Birthright Palestine as a "concept created by the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS)–a new non-profit, non-governmental Palestinian organization," the Birthright Palestine domain name is actually registered to Palestinian-American Nader Muaddi at an address in good ol' Pennsylvania, and Muaddi is an alum of the Palestine Summer Encounter–a strikingly similar program.

The first annual Birthright Palestine Program is launching this summer, and in case you're not convinced, more details about the experience can be found here.

Congratulations! You’ve managed to get through the first 2.5 weekdays. To help you get through the second half of your week, Jewcy is happy to present you with Hump Day Art. Think of it as an opportunity to devote your attention to the more cultural things in life, or at the very least, to zone out at your desk for a few minutes while you look at some pretty pictures.

In a continuation of Jewcy's recent birthright blogging, today's Hump Day Art features some lovely photographs taken by one of the participants on the birthright trip I staffed this summer. Ian Aleksander Adams is a young, accomplished photographer who documented our trip. He managed to come away with some impressive photos, despite an unfortunate run-in with an airport security x-ray on his way home that damaged much of his film. Here are a few of his best from our excursion to the Negev desert.

All this talk about the desert compels me to include this video by Israeli sand artist Ilana Yahav.

Last week: Interview with Patrick Winfield

Vive la difference: The event flier Last Thursday night, NYU hosted a debate between Birthright Israel founder Michael Steinhardt, rabbi and TV personality Shmuley Boteach, and law professor Noah Feldman on the question “Are Jews different?” But as commenter agenious put it over in the Noah Feldman thread, what took place wasn’t really a debate. (I suspect agenius and I don’t agree on much, but we’re together on that.) It was more like a chance for three very different Jews to air their beliefs about Judaism, followed by a mini-drubbing of Noah Feldman by the NYU audience.

Rabbi Shmuley, who spoke first, testified to the virtues of Torah-based Jewish values. I can't top Jewlicious's hilarious description, so I'm just going to quote it: "Shmuley Boteach is, and I do not exaggerate, an evangelical Protestant minister with a beard and hand gestures." The girl sitting next to me, wearing a sensible skirt and loafers that I can only describe as tsniut, leaned over and whispered “Isn’t he great? I was at his house for dinner last Shabbat.”

Michael Steinhardt, up next, argued that Jewish values are indeed worthy, but not because of the Torah. He believes that Jews developed a series of core values over the centuries: education, tzedakah, belief in the here and now, a beneficial sense of outsiderness, a strong sense of group responsibility, and an ability to succeed any society based on individualism and meritocracy. These six values make Jews special, he explained, so we can really scrap the rest, including the Torah. At this most of the crowd gasped, and the NYU freshman in front of me put down her Sidekick and reapplied her lip gloss.

Noah Feldman: Dapper! Noah Feldman was up next. (“He’s so cute!” said my new Orthodox friend. She was right—if Tiger Beat made pin-up posters of Jewish intellectuals, he’d be their best seller.) He put forth a third opinion: There’s no point in preserving Jewish values if they’re not worth saving. Rather than argue about how best to sell them to the 12 million unaffiliated Jews of the world, we should be examining them critically, to see what good they do. “We are not in the business of preservation for its own sake,” he said, “at least we ought not to be.”

To me, this makes perfect sense. I should reveal my biases: I’m one of those 12 million unaffiliated Jews. My family belongs to a Reform synagogue which I attend twice a year on the high holidays because, like a lot of Jewish girls, I’m fairly close with my parents. I had a Bat Mitzvah the year My So-Called Life debuted; the latter had a much greater influence on my adolescence. I’ve tried Shabbat on occasion and I basically enjoy it, but I enjoy bacon-wrapped shrimp too. My mind is open: I’m curious about Judaism and I think about it constantly. But nothing has ever successfully convinced me that a life of Jewish observance would be better than my current secular existence.

Both Shmuley and Steinhardt, it seemed to me, were preaching to the converted—or the unconverted, I suppose, in Steinhardt’s case. Shmuley’s points seemed tautological: The Torah is great because it’s great. Steinhardt seemed to be participating in a different discussion altogether; he was essentially arguing for a re-definition of “unaffiliated,” since the Jewish values on his list don’t require any kind of behavior change for most of us prodigal types. Only Feldman took the conversation away from describing Judaism and towards engaging with it.

The Jewish community's best mustache: SteinhardtI may have been the only unaffiliated Jew in the audience, though, because everyone seemed less interested in discussing Judaism’s role in contemporary society than in Noah Feldman’s family life. The moderator started the pile-on by asking a spectacularly wimpy question about a legal case Feldman had handled between two different members of the Jewish community. At the time, Feldman had said it was a shame this intra-Jewish conflict couldn’t be resolved without bringing in the Federal government. “So,” asked the moderator, “when is it appropriate to bring inside Jewish issues to the outside world?”

“Nothing is ‘inside’ anymore,” Feldman replied. If you’re proud of your community, you should be public about what takes place there. Also, he added, it was pretty obvious that the real issue at stake wasn’t the intra-Jewish legal case he’d handled a few years ago; it was his infamous New York Times article.

An effusive 2004 NYU grad stood up to gush about Birthright. He said he’d been to the recent reunion, and the whole room burst into applause—I guess a lot of people had been there. On the bus on the way up to the Steinhardt estate, he’d been struck by what he described as a spiritual experience: a sudden, overwhelming certainty that someday he would have his own kids, and Birthright would send them to Israel too. “You’re doing a good job,” he concluded to Steinhardt, “and it’s working.”

Then he turned to Feldman. “My question is for you. How are you going to raise your children?”

“Ooooooooooh,” said everyone in the room. This was the Jewish equivalent of smacking your dueling partner with a silk-lined glove.

Feldman replied that of course he was raising his kids Jewish—it’s a part of who he is. But he’s also raising them in his wife’s tradition.

Preach on: Rev ShmuleyThe girl next to me chose this moment to whisper that she has a friend who thinks it’s evil to raise as Jewish the children of a non-Jewish mother, because when they turn 18 they’ll find out that they’re not real Jews. “Can’t they convert?” I asked her. Just like that, our friendship ended.

Agenius wonders why Feldman wants to be accepted by his community. He’s a success in every other aspect of his life—Shmuley compared him to Einstein, another intermarried Jew who did his people proud—so why does he want to be a star among Jews, too?

This question may have been intended rhetorically, but it’s a good one. Why would someone embrace both Judaism and a non-Jewish spouse? Perhaps because, for most of us, Judaism is only once facet of our fractured 21^st-century personalities. We’re not used to swearing total allegiance to any single identity, and we see no reason to join organizations that ask us to give up every other part of our selves. That’s why unaffiliated Jews don’t show up to debates about Jewish values—because they’ve come to believe that you can’t engage curiously with Judaism without becoming a Super-Jew. (I see this all the time as a Jewcy editor recruiting writers; I ask them if they want to participate in a professional relationship with the magazine, and they react as if I’m trying to get them join a cult.) Of course it’s risky to ask secular Jews to participate in honest discussions about Judaism; they might discover that they don’t like it. But to me it seems like a worthwhile pursuit – much more useful than fretting about Noah Feldman’s personal life.

Past Jewcy coverage of Noah Feldman:

Q&A with the Author of "Orthodox Paradox"
JTA Misses the Point on Feldman
The Rules of Engagement
The Feldman Flare-Up

There’s an article in today’s New York Sun about Taglit-Birthright Israel’s multi-million dollar initiative to build on its program of sending young Jews on free 10-day trips to Israel. The program as it stands is a pretty remarkable thing. Birthright Israel has sent almost 145,000 young adults to Israel since 2000. Here’s the new plan in a nutshell:

[T]he as-yet-unnamed initiative will build new, fully staffed Birthright Israel program offices in 17 American cities, where alumni would be able to choose from a menu of free subsidized programs including seminars, festivals, conferences, retreats, and trips back to Israel — or obtain seed grants to create programs of their own.

The idea is to extend the return traveler's excitement for Jewish life into their everyday world.

The post-trip rush of enthusiasm for Judaism has become legendary in Birthright Israel's seven short years. Studies by researchers at Brandeis University found that Birthright Israel participants are more likely to participate in Jewish events on their college campuses; more likely to want to learn Hebrew, and more likely to say they want to marry within the Jewish faith and raise Jewish children.

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The findings in the most recent Kelman/Cohen studyare not as blazingly obvious as "men want hot women", but they are nonetheless unsurprising.

Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel.

According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49.

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DAY FOUR

We go to the Tel Aviv Center for Educational Technology in order to hold an experiment in “open space technology,” which is a fancy way of describing the act of sitting in rooms and talking. Sessions include “Can I Be a Bad Jew and Good Person?” “The Future of Fundamentalism,” “Kosher Sex,” which I don’t attend because I don’t want people to get the impression that I’m some kind of pervert, and “Jewish Continuity in 2020,” which I do attend hoping for a discussion of flying cars. Unfortunately the conversation is a series of tirades against intermarriage.

“Why should Jews survive?” I ask to my own surprise. Everyone stares. “Like, if it’s just about breeding for the sake of breeding, what’s the point? And even if Judaism does die out, billions of people are still going to worship our God, right?”

The other attendees stare at me with eyes like daggers (For the record: I’m not a self-hating Jew; I’m a self-loving asshole.)

Worse for the Jews than the Babylonian hordes: The bacon double cheeseburger“Oh, I’m just fucking with you,” I say. “We survived Pharaoh, the Romans, the Diaspora, Hitler and the Bacon Double Cheeseburger. The fact that WASPs finally let us bang their daughters is not exactly the most daunting crisis that we’ve ever faced.”

(Replies to my outburst: “It is a crisis,” “It’s the crisis of freedom,” “You are clearly misinformed.”)

Later in the afternoon a few Israeli ROI attendees complain that American Jews are pathetic, neurotic dweebs who analyze our identities to no end and refuse to perform any manual labor. None of the American Jews protest these hurtful stereotypes because they are 100 percent accurate.

This gets me thinking: If secular American Jews and secular Israeli Jews don’t have a shared religion or culture, what do we have in common besides a distant family tree? But there I go analyzing my identity like a weakling American Jew who enjoys laughing, knows how to stand in a line without cutting and doesn’t dress like a European disco addict or flamboyant homosexual.

We enjoy dinner and more free wine (this time really good free wine; I help myself to nine glasses) along the Tel Aviv port. Lynn Schusterman announces a $100,000 grant for ROI participants’ projects but I’m too busy getting loaded off her booze to pay much attention. The next couple of hours are hazy in my memory; apparently I reminisced about seeing a live porn shoot in Los Angeles (I believe the working title was Atomic Ass Whores), belted out Beatles and Elvis Costello tunes as everyone tried to sleep on the bus back to Jerusalem, and when I overheard a hippy chick from California say, “I just love animals so much and want to help them in any way possible,” I replied, “Yeah, I like to help them into a bowl of honey barbeque sauce.”

Everyone thanks God when I lose consciousness.

…………..

Organic farming: One of the 613 commandments?DAY FIVE

Amazingly I do not have a hangover, but I am sickened when the hotel charges me $35 for my late laundry. The desk clerk won’t let me check out until I’ve signed. Without getting too dramatic, this fucking hotel is the only place in Israel that I hope Palestinian terrorists incinerate on the condition that only the desk staff is killed.

A closing ceremony follows lunch. A top ROI staffer suggests that we all make aliyah and asks us to stand for “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem. (Apparently I’m the only person in the room who does not know the lyrics.) After the closing ceremony everyone hugs goodbye and swears that ROI has changed their lives. And maybe it has. These Young Jewish Innovators are clearly passionate about our religion and culture. I might not understand them or their nonprofit world, but maybe they will make a difference someday. Then again, I’m still not entirely sure why it matters that these goddamned hippies are Jewish goddamned hippies. (Correct me if I’m wrong but the thirteenth-century Kabbalists didn’t equate tikkum olam with campaigning against factory farms, which by the way are awesome.)

As for me, I’m Jewed out. All I’ve heard for nearly a week straight is Jewish this, Jewish that, Jewish Jewish Jewish Jewish Jewish, and I need a vacation. I don’t want to talk about Jews anymore, I don’t want to think about Jews anymore, and I certainly don’t want to look at Jews anymore. You hear me? I’m done with Jews.

So I say goodbye to my fellow Future Jewish Leaders, take one last glance at the Jewish Promised Land and board a plane back home…

To Brooklyn.

• In three years I'm gonna be nominated for an Oscar and you're still gonna be fat, big brother.Turns out Birthright Israel is more than just a 10-day sojourn into the inebriated, weed-infused depths of soul searching. [The Jerusalem Post]
• Bill O'Reilly might actually have a legitimate point. [Human Events]
• Athletes need to be more sensitive like kids need ritalin. [Jewishinstlouis]
• Doh! I've been Yentled. [The Ross Blog]
• Bollywood star still marketable even though she's no longer a "virgin." [The Himalayan Times]
• Enough with the prepubescent sex slave meshugas! [The Defamer]

Amos Oz: Who doesn’t want to spend a night in a Bedouin tent with Amos Oz? Yum!Politics aside, it goes without saying that an incredible, personal, mind-blowing experience in Israel is one of the best and most concrete ways to experience your Judaism.

And you have likely already heard about the birthright Israel program, which sends vast quantities of young Jews to Israel for FREE each year. But I just got some really cool news. About a brand new kickass trip you want to be on! Especially if you're a smart person, interested in literature and journalism (which of course you are if you read Jewcy, right?)

There are a slew of different birthright trips... trips for people who like to hike and trips for Reform Jews and Sephardic Jews, or trips for people interested in studying the Holocaust... but the reason I'm blogging this TODAY is that there's now a trip I would've died to go on when I was a few years younger.

A trip to Israel, for FREE, with a special focus on journalism, writing, and literature, brought to you by the Jewish Book Council.

You get to do all the regular stuff—hiking, jeep rides, climbing Masada, floating in the Dead Sea... But you also get to join in discussions with journalists and authors in Israel. You get to explore the Israeli literary scene.

It sounds amazing! When I lived in Israel, I got to know a lot of Israeli writers in Jerusalem, and it was so incredible, a community so different from the literary scene in the US. This trip could provide all kinds of opportunities for you. It might spark an interest in translation, expose you to new styles of writing, and help you create some new work of you own. Seriously, this is a chance of a lifetime. Check it out!!!

(And for the record, the birthright program is totally above board, with no strings at all. Just Jewish philanthropy at work. I was skeptical myself at first. It sounds too good to be true... but truly, I've never known anyone to come home unhappy with the trip.

The only weird thing about it is that I've got a sneaking suspicion the ulterior motive is to get you to meet a nice Jewish boy or girl so you can get married... but that's not so evil. Especially not if they're HOT!)

Somebody really likes Carmen Sandiego a lot. So much so that he made a video for his Taglit (Birthright) Israel trip.

I think it's kinda cute.