As Copycat Birthright Programs Proliferate, Questions Arise About the Changing Nature of the Melting Pot
In early March, mainstream Jewish publications picked up the story of a start-up organization called Birthright Palestine. Founded by Ahmad Lahham, a business student at Bethlehem University and a lifelong resident of the Dheisheh refugee camp, the new group plans to bring American-born Palestinians to visit the West Bank starting this summer. The Jerusalem Post reported on March 5th that the program “mimics Zionist and Jewish initiatives almost exactly.” A post on Jewcy.com reaffirmed the Post‘s analysis, sourly referring to the new program as Birthright Israel’s “doppelganger.”
Lahham has no love for Birthright Israel, calling it “a Zionist mechanism for manipulating foreign Jewish people…to believe that their homeland is Palestine, with hopes of further Israeli colonization.” But he feels that the Birthright model, roughly translated, is applicable on both sides of the Wall. “Our program is a channel to connect the [Palestinian] Diaspora with its homeland,” Lahham says.
Birthright Palestine is not the only program to model itself after Birthright Israel. While some organized trips taking young members of diaspora communities to their ancestral homelands have existed for decades, the unprecedented success of Birthright Israel since its inception in 1999 has spurred a renewed interest in the concept. Now, as more American diaspora communities follow Birthright Israel’s lead, some are questioning whether Birthright has inspired a new wave of anti-assimilationist identity politics.
In 2003, Linda Yepoyan decided to start an organization to help young Armenian-Americans develop a personal relationship with Armenia. She envisioned a program that would sponsor travel to the former Soviet republic and sought out organizations that were doing similar work with other ethnic groups. In the course of her research, Yepoyan spoke with representatives from Birthright Israel. “They were pleased to help in any way they could,” she says. Evidently, relations were good. Birthright Armenia kicked off in 2004.
However great its influence, Birthright Israel was not Birthright Armenia’s only inspiration. Yepoyan reports that she also had conversations with a representative from Irish Way, a group that organizes travel for Irish-American high school students to Ireland. Irish Way is perhaps the best indicator that the concept behind Birthright is not a new one. Conceived in 1967 by Princess Grace of Monaco, an Irish-American by birth, Irish Way sends 125 high school students to Ireland each year. According to Irish Way executive director Jackie Walsh, the group seeks to “get younger generations of Irish-Americans to be reconnected to Ireland and to [their] Irish heritage.”
Gidi Mark, a spokesperson for Birthright Israel, says that Birthright Israel’s founders were not aware of Irish Way when they created Birthright. “When we launched,” says Mark, “we were not looking for other examples because we thought that we were the first and only such organization.” Of course, Birthright Israel was not even the first organization to send young diaspora Jews to Israel; starting in the 1950s, Zionist youth groups recruited diaspora Jews who then helped build modern Israel. However, Birthright has certainly been the largest and most successful. As of 2008, over 160,000 young Jews have taken part in the program.
“The Birthright Israel format is a powerful example, and it has been imitated,” says Khachig Tololyan, professor of English at Wesleyan University and editor of Diaspora: a Journal of Transnational Studies. In addition to Birthright Armenia, Birthright Palestine, the Irish Way, and a trip informally known as “Love Boat,” which brings diaspora Taiwanese to Taiwan, there are now similar trips to Italy, Ethiopia, India, and Iceland.
Shaul Kelner, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University, says that Birthright Israel has caused groups like Irish Way and Birthright Armenia to recognize that they’re doing similar work. Says Kelner, “Only in recent years have people begun to draw connections and realize they’re not the only ones.” As late as 2002, when Kelner got in touch with the Irish Way for research he was conducting on Birthright Israel, it was still unaware, or only vaguely aware, of the trips to Israel. Irish Way’s Walsh concurs. “We weren’t aware of any other programs,” she says.
Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a 2007 Yale graduate, is working to develop a similar program for black Americans called Black to Africa. “As an American-born child of Eritrean immigrants,” Ghebreghiorgis says, “I always felt this desire to return to the ‘motherland,’ but only later did I realize the profound psychological and cultural impact ‘back to Africa’ trips would have on the global African diaspora. Upon hearing about Birthright [Israel] did I realize that this wasn’t some untenable fantasy only to be realized by wealthy black Americans; with Birthright Israel, I realized a nonprofit could be made out of this.”
In these movements, some see a sea change among ethnic communities in America and their thoughts on assimilation. “There really is a huge movement for people to get back in touch with their roots,” says Yepoyan, whose children speak Armenian at home. “People are naming their children by their historic, ancestral names.”
Ghebreghiorgis remains skeptical. “The white supremacist patriarchal system still exists,” he says. “In the U.S., [assimilation] is less about infusing your cultural tradition into the melting pot and more about shredding what is standard to you.” Nonetheless, he too believes that “nowadays there is definitely a more tolerant, multicultural atmosphere that seemingly is open to a plurality of beliefs and perspectives.” Kelner agrees. “America is much more accepting of difference than it used to be,” he says. “We don’t have this Anglo-model anymore.”
Does this mean that Americans, once strict adherents to the melting-pot theory of assimilation, now prefer their birthrights to their lentil soup? Not quite, Kelner says. Instead, it is becoming “easier and easier” for them to both assimilate and identify strongly with their heritage.
If it matters that Birthright Israel has been copied (and it has) it is not because mimicry is wrong, or even unusual, but because the proliferation of Birthright-style trips reflects a shift in the nature of identity in America. There is, as Yepoyan puts it, a “movement” of people who want to reconnect with their roots. By using physical places to symbolize “roots,” Birthright-style trips are able to help diaspora populations build their unique American identities. Political differences aside, the philosophies that undergird these programs, including, perhaps to the chagrin of the Jewish press, Birthright Palestine, are fundamentally connected.
