But some former birthrighters say that there's no such thing as a free holiday. They question whether Taglit may be pushing them a little too hard to have a profound experience, particularly at the Wailing Wall. "Our tour leader got everyone to close their eyes and put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them," says one tripper. "He walked us all in a line to a spot where we could get a high-up view of the wall. Then he said something like, 'Your ancestors were praying towards this wall for generations.' And you open your eyes and there it is ... and there are tears streaming down everyone's faces."
One 25-year-old graduate student from Chicago describes the last day of the trip, on a Tel Aviv beach. "It's a really hot day and one guy from our trip runs into the water, and the sea's beautiful, at a perfect temperature for swimming and he says, 'OK, OK, I'm a Zionist!' It's facetiously said, but also ironic because that's exactly what [tour leaders] want." This graduate is still with the young Jewish woman he met while on the trip last summer. The matchmaking element is a key component of birthright trips, say past participants. After all, the idea is to stem the assimilation tendencies of Diaspora Jews.
What worries critics, however, is not the "I love being Jewish" outcome of a trip to Israel but the underpinning political goals of Taglit. Susan, a 27-year-old Seattle student, took the Taglit tour last year. She was struck, she says, by "the levels of Zionism" and the prevalence of anti-Palestinian comments during her trip, organized through the University of Washington (campuses often coordinate birthright trips). She didn't like the tour leader expressing his view as universal truth while leaving out facts that supported the Palestinian side.
The Taglit tour might encourage tears at the Wailing Wall, but the 8-meter-high, concrete separation wall snaking through the West Bank is rarely mentioned. When it is, says Susan, the context is dismissive. "At one point I saw what looked like the [separation] wall in the distance and asked our guide about it," she says. "The guide gave a very terse response about how, yes, that was the wall and, see everyone, the Palestinians are trying to drive 'us' from 'our land' and so we must keep 'them' out." Taglit trips do not go beyond the Green Line marking the internationally recognized border between Israel and Palestine. According to one former birthrighter, the Green Line was not even marked on the map he was given on the tour.
The Taglit trip, one former participant says, does a good job of "tugging at one's Jewish heartstrings," and then seeks to equate being Jewish with the need for Israel to "protect us and all the Jews." According to Susan, her attempts to redress the pro-Israel slant were not welcome. Group discussions were zealously facilitated and stuck to a narrow script that excluded any conversations about how participants felt about Israeli policy.
Aaron took the trip in December 2004 when he was 22; he's now back in Canada where he lives and works in community radio. He believes Taglit aims to encourage pro-Israel activism overseas. His trip leaders, he says, "kept emphasizing how much we could do to help on campus at universities." He adds: "This point was driven a lot: that Israel is suffering from constant insecurity and a state of war against them, and the way we can prevent that is to try and promote Israel's good image back home."
Taglit bats off any accusations of having a political agenda. "I don't think it's political for Jews to support Israel," says Mark. "It should be an integral part of every Jew's identity." Mark draws a distinction between supporting Israel and supporting Israel's policies. He adds that Taglit trips incorporate organizers and speakers from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. As to why Taglit trips don't go to the West Bank, he first cites the security issue and then says, "We feel that people first of all should feel strong about their own identity and then know about other ethnic groups."
For those who want a different experience of the region, there's now an altogether different sort of trip on offer. Last year, around 30 young Jewish Americans took the first Birthright Unplugged trips to the West Bank. "It changed my world," says Jessy Tolkan, 26, a political consultant from Washington, D.C., who was on one of the Unplugged trips last year. "Everything I had learned as a Jewish person prior to the trip was turned totally upside down."
If Taglit trips gloss over the Palestinian experience, Unplugged trips live it. Traveling on Palestinian transport and staying in Palestinian homes, participants experience for themselves the difficulties of life under occupation.
"We are offering an opportunity for Jewish people to be exposed to a narrative and life experience that they would rarely encounter," says Hanna Mermelstein, an American Jew who co-founded the project with Dunya Alwan, an American-Iraqi of Muslim and Jewish descent. Both are members of the International Women's Peace Service, which supports the nonviolent Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation. An architect by training, Alwan became involved in social justice work prior to the first Gulf War, and by 2002 was engaged in human rights and education work in Palestine. Mermelstein has a degree in international and intercultural studies, women's studies, and peace studies; she turned her energies to the Israel-Palestine conflict during the second intifada.
Next page: "[Taglit] was just my vehicle to get to Israel and Palestine"