Taglit -Birthright Israel Reflections

            A number of Temple Israel’s college students went to Israel with Taglit -Birthright Israel over the holiday break in December-January.   Birthright Israel, now in its fifth year, provides a gift of a first time, peer group, educational trip to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 – 26.  The Temple Israel students did not travel together – they each went with groups organized at their colleges.  All of the Temple Israel students report that they had an inspiring, powerful experience that has awakened their feelings about and identification with Israel and Israelis. 

            Here are the reflections of some of the students:

What can I possibly say to explain how I feel about my trip to Israel this past December?  After returning, I felt like everything I could say had been said before.  How many times had I heard that Birthright Israel is a life-changing experience, that when you return you will have a new found respect for Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people as a whole…  I left for Israel, with the traditions of the Jewish religion ringing in my head, pounding into me things I didn’t understand or feel and often didn’t agree with.  Having attended Solomon Schechter Day School for part of my childhood and having grown up in a Jewish home, with four grandparents who survived the Holocaust, being Jewish was a given. There was no way out of it, and yet I was constantly trying to escape. 

            I did not return from Israel an orthodox Jew, I am not convinced that Israel is right in all its military tactics, nor have I decided that Jews may only marry Jews.  Instead, Israel gave me a glimpse into a world I can only hope I will be able to live in one day.  Being Jewish in Israel does not involve all the stereotypical “Jewishness” we American Jews seem to cling to so dearly.  Typical Israelis rarely attend temple, and they do not know the prayers we know or many of the religious rituals we have learned.  They sometimes celebrate the holidays.  Being Jewish in Israel is not only about the “religion” -- a lot of Israelis have significant problems with the Orthodox power over the state.  Yet, to me they are more Jewish than most of us will ever be.  They live as Jews every moment.  They populate and protect the land we face when we pray in our American synagogues and look toward Jerusalem.  They embody our identity as a Jewish people, not only the Jewish religion, but our culture.

            What is Jewish culture?  I never knew how to answer that question. Is it the latkes my mother makes on Hanukah?  While in Israel, I realized that Jewish culture was all around me. For example, all the street signs and store signs were in Hebrew…the country was immersed in a beautiful language, that we here in America use only for prayers in temple or in our homes.  Yet, what else can we do here?  We are not Israelis, we live in an Anglo-Saxon country, where Christianity is the majority and you will be hard-pressed to find any Hebrew signs other than the signs for kosher delis.  Jewish culture is the 18-year old men and women that enter into the army and go out with or without fear to the pizza parlors, the discos and the coffee shops.  It’s the music I heard, the way people treat each other, the foods I ate. It’s the feeling of being among people who “understand”, who are not shallow or overly materialistic, who care.  Some may say that I am confusing Jewish culture with Israeli culture.  Maybe so, but so what?  And how can you possibly draw the line?  If we say that Israel is the “Jewish state known as Israel”, then Jewish culture is Israeli culture.  My trip to Israel showed me a different way to be Jewish, a way that I can find comfort and stability in.

 I attempted to find my connection to Israel within the first few moments of being there, the excited walk to the bus and the drive to Caesarea. I attempted to find it in the sand and in the aquaducts, in the ruins of our past, in the mountains of the Golan, and the Dead Sea.  I searched the stones of the Kotel and the streets of Tel Aviv. I looked for it in the eyes of our Israeli soldiers and in the voices of over 3,000 young Jews from all over the world at the Birthright Mega Event.

I found my connection to Israel in my bed, in my house in New Jersey on the night we returned.  I lied there sobbing, while my mother held me whispering over and over “You only forget what you felt and what you are feeling, if you let yourself forget”.  I discovered my connection to Israel, once I realized that I was no longer there.  That the Western Wall was no longer ten minutes away and that Masada was no longer touching the sunrise in front of me.  My connection to Israel came suddenly, which is how I always hoped it would be.  My connection to Israel stays vibrant everyday, through the words I exchange with my fellow Birthrighters, in the phone calls to my very own Israeli soldier, and through my plane tickets, which will take me back to Israel in March.

I left for the land of Israel on December 27, 2003…I have yet to return.

Jessi Birenz is a freshman at George Washington University; e-mail raddancer@aol.com

What could possibly improve ten days in Israel? Ten days in Israel with Jewish peers from across the globe with the same unbridled interest to explore the country, learn the history and culture, and connect with other Jews.  I quickly learned this after the first day on the Hillel Birthright Israel trip.  Although I was groggy at the 6am wake up call, the fresh air of the Golan Heights revived my senses and I became ready for another day of sight-seeing, lectures, Israeli cuisine, and entertainment.  The trip would have not been the same without our tour guide, Yuvall, who enlightened us with his wealth of knowledge of Jewish, Israeli, and World History as we explored the Golan, Negev, and Jerusalem. 

For five days eight Israeli soldiers joined us on our tour.  It took effort to remind ourselves that these soldiers were our age, as they were spending two to three years serving in the military while we were complaining of sub-par college food for four years.  The mifgash with the soldiers allowed for discussion of culture and experience in the army, and while I left with my questions answered I also came away with new friends.  The lectures on the trip from Jewish leaders on politics, Judaism, and history presented ideas and questions that had been absent from my mind despite years of Jewish education. 

Security Issues forced the trip administrators to request that we did not explore on our own.  While I yearned to wander the streets of Jerusalem at night, I developed friendships in the in the hotel lobby nightly by socializing and talking to others over a drink. The bonding experience with other Jews in an enriching environment is what makes Birthright special and memorable. 

I have always been part of a Jewish community whether it is the one in Ridgewood or at Washington University; however, Birthright Israel made me feel the significance that I play in these small Jewish communities or in world Jewry.

Michael Bortinger is a 2nd year student at Washington University in St. Louis; e-mail mbortinger@wustl.edu

For most of my life, Israel, Judaism, and Jewish identity had remained separate entities.  Israel was, in many ways, a place with which I could identify and support, but not one that I could solidify as my own.  Through a multitude of lenses, Israel is an enigma: In a synagogue, it is a religious landmark; on a college campus, a political arena; in a kitchen, the soil cultivating the finest olives and sweetest dates.  Upon being in the land itself, these facets were synthesized as I discovered beauty rooted in complexity.

My most poignant memories of Israel are made of stone and dirt; a wall and a desert.  The most skilled photographers have captured the brilliance of Jerusalem stone, the gold radiance in sunlight; the copper glow in a waxing moon.  Books document the awesome, empty expanse of the Negev Desert.  But like anything tactile, stone and dirt are body experiences.  They are not meant solely for the eye, but for the fingers and calves, forehead and cheek.  They are meant to be touched. 

I visited the Kotel on a Tuesday night, a time when the Old City pauses from a day of bustling and gently exhales.  In the absence of street vendors and falafel stands, there is a peaceful stillness in the air when many people congregate in prayer, myself among them.  At the Wall, I was filled with a unique energy; the sensation of my ancestry flowing through my veins; a collective soulful yearning in which past, present, and future seemed to flow and meld like wax.  It was an experience that marked a meeting with all that came before and all that is yet to come; the Wall itself was the epicenter of Jewish existence. 

Several days later, upon entering the desert, I was overcome with a similar feeling.  I recall how the snakelike formation of the ascent of Mt. Yishai mirrored the shoreline of the Dead Sea in the distance; how the cyclical rising and receding of a gentle tide resonated with the “gives” and “takes” of wanderers in a land of thirst.  Physical contact to the land revived my spiritual connection to a people and affirmed the need to live that connection openly. 

I’ve returned to the Diaspora with a refreshed sense of inner peace and curiosity.  I have fallen in love with a land and with a people whose tradition of struggle and survival feeds a world of wonder; a world nourished with Kabbalistic art, drumming circles on sidewalks, fragrant smells of oil and salt, resonant melodies, reflective whispers, and glistening stones; a world that no longer feels otherworldly, but one that I can call my home.  Israel has indeed rooted me in gratitude, in celebrations of love and lack, in pride, and in yearning.  The Zohar teaches that “the world is a huge human; and the human is a huge world.”  My experience in Israel has brought such text to life.

Jordan Namerow is a junior at Wellesley College; e-mail jnamerow@wellesley.edu

You can get a lot of thinking done at 5:30 in the morning.  I know this because I’ve been awake at this time every single day since I returned home from Israel, compliments of some brutal jet lag.  I kind of enjoy this time of the morning.  When I’m away at school it means I have a few more hours to sleep.  But the past few days, it’s meant that it’s about half-past-noon in Israel and I really should be sitting down at the lunch table with some humus and a slice of pita.  It sure is quiet outside; the sun hasn’t come up yet.  Normally I’d try and fall back to sleep, but I tried that yesterday and the day before.  Trying to fall back to sleep means keeping yourself awake thinking about how nice it would be to fall asleep. 
            5:30 a.m. is incredibly peaceful…so peaceful that you realize how beautiful peace really is.  I felt peace when I was in Israel.  Ironically, it was about the same time in the morning, 5:30 a.m. or so.  We had hopped off the plane from New York about an hour earlier and were sitting on the beach in Tel Aviv.  The sun was coming up over the ancient port of Jaffa and the Mediterranean Sea.  It was probably the single most inspiring and peaceful moment of my entire life.  This was my introduction to Israel. 
            I cannot begin to explain how incredible it is to feel peace and serenity in Israel.  For weeks prior to my trip I was bombarded with a great deal of skepticism and alarm about why I’d ever, in my wildest dreams, travel to Israel.  I remember awkward goodbyes from friends before I left who honestly believed that they’d never see me again.  And I’d be lying if I told you that fear never crossed my mind, but that morning on the beach I truly felt as free and as secure as I ever had.  Anyone who hasn’t spent time in Israel would think of this as naïve and peculiar, but it was neither.  This was real.  And those same emotions, intense as ever, overwhelmed me for the following ten days, and they were real, too. 
            I see time in Israel not as an escape from reality, but an escape to it.  Israel and its people give you a taste of what life is really about and how beautiful life can be.  Every encounter is more passionate and energetic than the last.  The people speak so fervently about their lives.  There was a certain inescapable aura of genuine purpose surrounding each and every person I met and every place I visited.  It wasn’t about a good job or a spacious home or a flashy car or anything external, but something much deeper.  I learned from these people that there is something much more important to live for, something virtuous, something righteous, and that these other things don’t matter.  There is the awesome belief among so many of the Israelis that I spoke with that it is possible to make a difference, that enthusiasm and energy will lead to something real, something as real as a legitimate homeland, something as real as a bright and beautiful future for the Jewish people and their traditions, something as real and magnificent as peace.  And this feeling, this great wisdom that there is something so meaningful and important to live and work for, seldom left my thoughts during those 10 days in Israel.  Even more importantly, they have occupied my mind for every waking minute since I’ve returned home. 
            I don’t mind waking up at 5:30 in the morning, only to lay silently in my bed, so deep in thought.  My thoughts are engulfed not by the flames of terror and bloodshed, but by the spirit and resolve of the Jewish people, the hopefulness and passion of the Israelis, and this unbelievably bold and beautiful reality that is Israel.

Benjamin Weiss is a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; email brweiss@wisc.edu