Toward the end of my Birthright Israel trip in January 2003, I found myself packed into a Jerusalem auditorium with thousands of fellow participants for the “Mega Event.” This was meant to be the Israeli government’s pitch for our support. But apparently the organizers had decided that a power-point presentation simply wouldn’t do. Instead, the evening began with bongo drummers and fire breathers, and just got weirder from there. Flash pots ignited, leaving a disconcerting whiff of gunpowder in the air as power chords rocked the stadium. Speakers came onstage to say nice, unmemorable things about us and about Israel, their entrances and exits punctuated by more pyrotechnics. The crowd went into a frenzy. At the back of the stage, in the midst of all the revelry, a gigantic egg began to hatch.
Little did I know what awaited me when I arrived in Israel 10 days earlier. Sleep deprived and—thanks to El Al’s incomparable security—deprived too of toothpaste and deodorant, I shuffled to our first group meeting to learn why someone had given me a trip to Israel. Over the last four years, Birthright has sent more than 30,000 young Jews on such trips. The program was ostensibly created “to diminish the growing division between Israel and Jewish communities around the world; to strengthen the sense of solidarity between Israeli youth and Jewish communities around the world; to increase the number of return visits to Israel; and to promote the role of Israel as a powerful resource in Jewish learning.” But, according to my group leader, the wealthy Jewish philanthropists who bankroll Birthright (including ex-fugitive billionaire Marc Rich) are just yentas. “The reason you’re here,” she explained elegantly, “is to get you to do it with Jews.”
And yet, judging by my experience, that is not the only agenda. The pleasures of doing it with Jews notwithstanding, Birthright is more than just a high-concept dating service. Above all, it’s a sales pitch for a country in desperate need of better public relations. On my trip, this pitch came in two parts, neither of which appears on CNN: we learned that Israel is fun and were told that Israel is good. In other words, Israel is Denmark with a terrorism problem, Canada with a better air force.
Perhaps Israel could ask for no better salesman than Momo. Shlomo “Momo” Lifshitz, chief executive officer of Oranim—the company that organized my Birthright trip–was a stocky, middle-aged man with a shaved head. He looked tough as an ox and had the type of disdain for debate that I would expect, or perhaps even hope for, in an IDF colonel. Momo promised to “educate” us, and accordingly we met with him several times over the course of the trip. At each encounter he acted as if the future of his country rested with the busload of kids in front of him. His tone alternated between thanking us for “coming home” and blaming us personally for anti-Semitism in America in general and at Berkeley in particular.
Momo seemed puzzled that Jews could hurt him by criticizing Israel at all and spent a lot of time shaking his head in sadness or disgust. He assured us that the IDF’s preference for urban combat over carpet-bombing made it the world’s most benevolent army. And like a heavy from “The Godfather,” he told us to keep our criticism of Israel “within the family” of Jews. No one in Damascus criticizes Palestinian brutality, Momo reminded us, as if that somehow ennobled Syria. Jews, he said, had to stick together since “our enemies don’t distinguish.”
Still, despite the plea for unity, Momo and our group leader displayed a slight contempt for American Jews. Perhaps this was only the disdain of the war-weary for the naive, but given my similar experiences in Texas I think it may be the universal attitude of people who can shoot guns toward those who can’t. And sometimes, the Israelis were dead on. During one Momo meeting, he asked how many (not “if any”) of our parents had offered us bribes to stay home. Several hands went up. A fat boy said his parents offered him a car. His devotion impressed us all. Then he confessed: he got the car anyway.
As far as the trip’s organizers were concerned, we the young and inexperienced had come “home” to see what it meant to be a Jew. They had to break us down so we could become new men—”New Jews,” as Momo would have said. In New York, I learned, we’ve got it all wrong. We might as well still be in the Pale of Settlement, not in the first place where Jews can be free, powerful, and unafraid. Being an integral part of Gotham apparently doesn’t mean much if you’re all thumbs with an M-16.
Birthright provided airfare, accommodation, two meals a day, entrance to all attractions and enough activities to keep us occupied all day every day. The only thing asked of us in exchange was that we be “ambassadors for Israel” on returning to campus. And so we received a staggeringly one-sided view of the world’s most divisive conflict. We sat through lectures with titles like “How to Talk About Israel.” We were handed leaflets that said things like “There is no ‘cycle of violence.’ Rather there is Palestinian violent action followed by Israeli defensive reaction.” And, “As long as the future status of the West Bank and Gaza is subject to negotiation, Israel’s historic and legal claim to these disputed territories is no less valid than that of the Palestinians.”
Israel’s substantial internal problems were never discussed. At one point, I asked Momo why we never talked about the Haredim. “They deny the existence of Israel,” he shot back. True enough. Never mind then that ultra-Orthodox Jews constitute a significant, ever-growing percentage of the Israeli population. And that therefore their perspective might give some clue as to what Israel’s about. They refuse to acknowledge Israel’s existence, and so there was no point in acknowledging theirs.
Similarly ignored went Ethiopians, Russians, non-citizen migrant workers from southeast Asia and anyone else whose existence undermines Israel’s questionable normalcy. Before embarking on the trip, we had been promised exposure to a wealth of perspectives, including those of Israeli Arabs. That encounter fell through and the only Arabs we met were some dour Bedouins who pulled us around on camels at a tourist oasis.
With the marginal members of Israeli society safely out of reach, we Birthrighters had plenty of time to interact with one another. Most of the trip’s barrage of group bonding activities wouldn’t have been out of place in a kindergarten. At the outset, we had to trace our hands and write out five hopes (one for each finger) for the trip. And throughout, there were constant sing-a-longs and organized discussions (sample topic: “What does Shabbat mean to you?”) in which we were encouraged to inflate every emotion to reality-TV proportions.
Despite my griping, I had fun in the war-torn land. We visited a Tel Aviv nightclub, the Dead Sea, a hot spring resort with a terrific waterslide, all the requisite sights, and that Bedouin oasis. It was almost like visiting with my parents. Several times a day an officious American whose status rested somewhere between participant and leader herded us together to photograph us as a group. He then posted the shots on a Web site so our nail-biting next-of-kin could see how much fun we were having, and that we hadn’t been blown to pieces.
Oranim took extraordinary measures to ensure our safety. And coincidentally or not, security, as necessary as it was, served as an effective excuse for the trip to remain “on message” as a slick political campaign. We had a private tour bus with an armed guard (two in the north); there were no visits to the Arab quarter in the Old City, no time to explore anywhere on one’s own, no public transportation, no vis
its to the occupied territories, no chance encounters, and no opportunity for any experience that hadn’t been pre-packaged.
After the trip was over I stayed in Israel to do some research. Let loose in the holy land, I met religious zealots, socialists who wanted out, struggling Arab businessmen, and ordinary people too cynical to bear. I found all these people within 48 hours and without really trying. It was a pity that we met none of them on my trip. A settler in Hebron expressed the same regret. “They say they don’t come here for safety reasons,” he said. “But they really don’t come for political reasons.” Hebron just ain’t normal.
If Israel is going to survive as a Jewish democracy it will require much more than an influx of spoiled Americans. But Birthright presented the country as a land of beach livin’ and easy spirituality unrivalled since Venice Beach in the sixties: exactly the sort of place Jews grown soft in suburban splendor might want to live. Have fun in Israel. Get weepy in the blooming desert. Never mind the bloodshed and misery.
The disconnect between Israel’s reality and Birthright’s dog and dromedary show had its climax in the Mega Event. Outside the Jerusalem auditorium, thousands of young Jews, Birthright participants from six continents, were singing, dancing, and waiting to clear security. It was a wonderful scene, a huge “Jewish salad” (as Momo would say), a terrorist’s wet dream.
There had been a double suicide bombing a few hours before. But Ariel Sharon still took time away from his emergency meeting to deliver chestnuts like: “Only when the terror is stopped, only then will we be able to talk peace.” And “We want you to make Aliya.” The audience was overjoyed. I’ve seen the Pope and I’ve seen Axl Rose, and neither had a crowd so wild.
Only the egg was left now. Perhaps all the complexities of Israel had been left for this last moment, some revelation ready to burst free of its shell. It broke open. An angel emerged. New-age music began to play. The angel flapped her wings and rose into the air as Israeli landscapes raced by on a screen behind her.
