First Day

Pre Birthright

So I’m at the Canadian U.S. Border right now, waiting to get back on the bus. There is a Haredi couple here and they have two children. I’m half tempted to tell them I’m going to Israel in a week, but they have already rebuffed several attempts by others to speak with them about their beautiful young daughter who is looking around at everyone and blinking slowly. I wonder if they have been to Israel, or if they plan on going anytime soon or even if they support the state at all. Whatever they think, their dress tells me that it’s not usually up to debate. I think that I’ll just let them be.

Birthright Day 1

"Orthodox's Stranglehold"

So far the most rhetoric to which we have been exposed has been of a slightly different sort than I expected. We received a packet at the Airport in New York containing information about the trip, the trip organizers and Israel. I am on a trip for reform Jews and the packet contains articles about the place of this strand of Judaism in Israel. It includes an article called "Rabbi: Reform Worse Than Muslims" by Neta Sela. It is about an orthodox Rabbi, Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, who claimed that Reform Jews, particularly in America, are more of a threat to Judaism and the integrity of Eretz Israel than Muslims. This article was included to prepare the Jews on the trip for the possible attitudes toward their religion they may encounter in Israel, and maybe fire them up a bit to fight against what they will come to see as the Orthodox Hegemony of religious life in Israel.

The next article was printed in the Jerusalem Post on October 16th, 2006 and is by David Forman. I'll quote a section of the article entitled "Orthodoxy's Bigotry"

"How long will we Reform Jews allow the Orthodox rabbinate to deny us the right to choose alternatives for our Jewish Identity? How long must we acquiescence to this contemptible assault on our dignity?...Are we furious enough at their spitting in our faces since the establishment of the state? Are we prepared to take on the rabbinical establishment and by extension the government, not exclusively for ourselves, but for Conservative Jews, Ethiopians, Agunot, single mothers and even Palestinian farmers who come under attack from "religious settlers?"

The first day consisted of lunch at a Kibbutz and then an Archeological Dig. The lunch included a speech by a guy from New Jersey who had mad Aliyah years ago. He said that we won't tell us why we're in Israel, but that we are here to figure that out ourselves. I wondered if anyone else would try and tell us why we were there, if he wasn't. Maybe they would take us around, show us the sights, bring us to an Arab Neighborhood, the Wall/Barrier/Fence and Jerusalem and let us figure it out ourselves.

The rest of the day we were digging. None of us had slept for over 26 hours, and yet we were at the bottoms of caves in the Judean Hills digging up Edomite pottery from 1122 B.C.E. Sure it was fun, but it was tiring. I met Josh Hahn in one of the caves ( a musician from NY going to Bard University and studying musicology), Aaron (Penn State undergrad in Accounting) Liron (our IDF Guard) and several others. I have sort of forgotten the order of events, but we eventually ended up at the hotel where our tour guide Ronnie and our group leaders, Jesse and Diane, spoke with us about our expectations from Israel, what it meant to us now, what it we think it will mean to us after the trip, and how we plan on getting there. Here they started talking about "your land and your people" and "the connection that you all have to this place." They asked us to share some of our initial thoughts. Everyone was still timid, barely knowing everyone in the group, so very few out of the 40 raised their hands to speak. Some did however. Thoughts ranged from "I’m curious to see what religion means to both secular Israelis and the more religious Israelis" to "I want to know what is happening in the government." Everyone at this point seems a little unclear about what they are doing in Israel exactly and what sort of connection they should feel as Jews to the land. Most of the people here are American college students between 19 and 21 years old. Some are in Frats and sororities, some know each other, and some don’t. No one speaks Hebrew and I don’t think most are very religious but I’m sure I’ll learn more about that. We’ll see what these people are saying about Israel by the end.