Come, see Palestine!
Upstart tours of Palestine are challenging fully paid "See Israel" holidays in a battle for the hearts and minds of young American Jews.
By Rachel Shabi
Photos by ZUMA Press
Jewish men pray at the Wailing Wall in West Jerusalem (left); Israel's security barrier.
June 5, 2006 | The fight is on for the hearts of young Jewish Americans. The battlefield is Israel and Palestine. It's a hopelessly unequal battle -- one side has considerably more clout and cash and, currently, appeal. But this struggle hits the core of what it means to be an American Jew in a modern political context.
This summer, record numbers of young Jewish Americans will travel to Israel -- despite concern over security. Most of them will arrive courtesy of pro-Israel organizations that seek to reconnect Diaspora Jews to Judaism and Israel. They will be on a free tour of the Jewish state, presented to them as a gift, their "birthright."
But others will travel with Palestine solidarity campaigners who hold that being both American and Jewish (as are nearly 6 million U.S. citizens) brings with it a responsibility to at the very least understand the Palestinian position. They'll visit the West Bank and witness firsthand the effects of the occupation in Palestine. These latter tours are still in infancy but word about them is rapidly spreading through American campuses and Jewish networks. So, two camps with diametrically opposed intentions are targeting exactly the same audience of young American Jewry. And the cutting-edge cool tool on both sides of the terrain is a holiday. Well, of sorts.
The context is about six years old. Having identified Diaspora Jews as being hopelessly lapsed and in danger of intermarrying into extinction, two New Yorkers, Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman, founded Taglit-birthright israel. Billionaire Bronfman inherited the Canadian Seagram's liquor empire while Steinhardt made a small fortune as a Wall Street wizard. The latter, a self-proclaimed atheist, is nonetheless worried that Judaism is in danger of becoming obsolete. Both feature high up on a list of Israel's most generous philanthropists.
"The vision is to ensure the continued existence of the Jewish people because of the very high rate of assimilation," says Gidi Mark, Taglit's director of marketing. He admits that what might appear to be a severe stance against multiculturalism is a "bold and ambitious plan." But he believes it has "changed dramatically the attitude of Jewish young adults to Israel." Taglit offers Diaspora Jews between the ages of 18 and 26 a free, 10-day tour of Israel, their "birthright" or "homeland" country, courtesy of the Israeli government, United Jewish Communities and private philanthropists. Since 2000, Taglit has taken 100,000 young Jews, 75 percent of whom are North American, to Israel. That's an impressive figure, although one Israeli academic has noted that young American Jews might equally be interested in a free trip to the Bahamas.
But the Taglit organization is indeed a success story. Prior to it, around 1,500 Jews of the same cohort would come to the country each year. Now around 22,000 visit Israel annually on Taglit trips; places fill up rapidly and waiting lists are at bursting point. And these trips achieve what they set out to do. They are, says Mark, "the most effective Jewish educational project in the world." That's measured by polls that question former birthrighters on their feelings of connection to the Israeli state; those strong feelings don't diminish even six years after Taglit trips.
Birthright trips to Israel are many-flavored -- there are trek-focused, religious, secular or graduate and professional varieties. It's a packed schedule, socializing is a key component and sleep-deprivation is a given. Traveling in groups of 40 in security-escorted buses, birthrighters might take in the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv nightlife, a trip to Masada or a kibbutz visit. But the essentials are the same. All trips in some way cover modern Israel, Zionism and the Holocaust; all have Israeli escorts. And absolutely non-negotiable is a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem -- the remains of the second Jewish temple and therefore the holy of holies for Judaism.
Posters to the Taglit Web site enthuse about the birthright trip as a life-changing experience that showed them the "gift of being Jewish" and led them to conclude, as one trip alumini writes, "Wherever I stand, I stand with Israel." They speak of the emotional charge and the effects on young Americans just beginning to define their own identity; for many, it is their first trip abroad.
Next page: Former birthrighters say that there's no such thing as a free holiday
