My Relationship with Judaism 5
If it wasn't for Birthright Israel, I don't know if I'd still be Jewish ten years down the road. After being Bar Mitzvah'd, there was little that still linked me to Judaism besides food. For instance, eating latkes every December, fasting on Yom Kippur, and suffering through Shabbat services on the rare Friday night I visited my grandparents and great-grandma at Temple Zion in Long Beach, New York. At the University of Pennsylvania, I was roped into joining the Chabad's Jewish Heritage Program under the pretense of unlimited wine on Shabbat and an opportunity to meet guys in the fraternities I wanted to join. So, the extent of my faith was a faith in good matzoh ball soups and free alcohol, never a tenable belief that I was a member of a people that had fought and died for the last 5,000 years to allow a kid like me to be Jewish. Birthright Israel for me was ten days of firsts. My first trip to Israel, my first time really learning about how the country's neighbors were doing everything in their power to destroy it, and my first time feeling like being Jewish mattered for
JOURNEYS • ISSUE 13
something. Perhaps most poignantly, it was my first experience befriending Israeli soldiers who, despite matching me in age, lived lives unrecognizable to my own. In history class, I had read about 18-year-old Americans who were drafted in World War II and Vietnam to go off and fight. But now it felt real—now I saw what it meant to sacrifice some of the best years of your life to do something that benefited people other than yourself. They told stories of how their friends had died. While I was at college trying to get smarter, prepare myself to get a good job, and set up my life for the future, Nir, Naama, Max, Dan, and Rotem were serving their country and protecting their loved ones. I felt proud because although I wasn't Israeli, they were also fighting for me because I was Jewish. At the Western Wall, I found out what it was like to be Jewish. I saw men with black fur hats and silk coats dancing in circles and holding hands. I saw hundreds of other Birthright Israel participants laughing and praying and bowing to the huge stone wall. Above it all, I saw birds—hundreds of common swifts— circling like an audience for the weekly festivities of Shabbat. 5
