Irreligious Jewish dopers - did you or your child go on Birthright? Tell me about it

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m 23 and never considered Birthright. Off the top of my head I can really only think of two friends who went, one of whom I’m not close with anymore. Most of my friends, Jewish or not, are irreligious. The friend who went enjoyed it, but didn’t really have specifics for me.

I was at a Hillel/college Israel type meeting a week or so ago, speaking on behalf of a nonprofit seeking to work with them on journalistic endeavors. After the meeting, we all sat around and chatted, and some of them went on Birthright over the summer. They talked about it in generalities, and strongly encouraged me to sign up. I told them I wasn’t raised Jewish, wasn’t religious myself, blah blah blah. Didn’t matter, I definitely “qualified” and should consider going. Apparently the waiting lists are very long and if you’re out of college, they encourage you to get on the list ASAP so you can go before the 26 cutoff.

Anyways I’m half Jewish and wasn’t raised much of anything. I’m firmly agnostic. So my questions are: what was your experience like? How much of it was touring/history and how much was religious study? How long was it? Did you go with people you knew, should I start actively recruiting my Jewish friends? How religious are you, how religious was everyone else around you? What was the tone of the whole trip? If the thing was any more than, say, 30% religion, it probably wouldn’t be worth me going.

And, (not as important, but still relevant) would I be doing a bad thing by taking the place of someone who was practicing? On the surface the whole thing seems more cultural than religious, which is very interesting to me.

Please state how long it’s been since you went on Birthright, so I have a frame of reference. Obviously more weight will be given to the more recent travelers.

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here’s a thread from the college kids themselves:

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The gist of the thread is that it matters which subgroup you go with, and the main point being that you marry someone Jewish and make Jewish babies. Which makes sense. Doesn’t seem like there’s too much religion, either.

Thanks for the link!

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This guy I’ve been seeing recently has very religious parents, like, he went to Hebrew school like twice a week, etc. :eek: but he is basically atheist or agnostic now and he went on Birthright last year, I believe. Apparently the main point didn’t take with him since he is now dating my non-Jewish self.

From what he says, it sounds like it was mostly a pretty standard tour package. A lot of religious sites, of course, but that was true for my Japanese friend who went to Israel too. I guess they had at least one meeting to discuss things in a kinda religious way, but super vaguely, and certainly not really evangelical.

I don’t think you would be doing at all a bad thing by going. Isn’t a large part of the point to convince Jews to be more Jewish and move to Israel? You never know, it just might work on you. :dubious: I think it would be crazy to turn down a chance at a free trip! Have you traveled outside the US before? Ain’t no one offering me a free trip to Scotland or Ireland to explore my homeland(s), alas, but if they were I’d take them up like a shot.

If you have any other more specific questions, I can ask him. He’s 25 and went last year, BTW. And we also live in Pittsburgh. :smiley:

5

I went last summer. The umbrella organization (Taglit Birthright) organizes these trips with a large number of individual touring companies. The different touring companies set their own priorities about what to see, what to do, what to emphasize. It’s all within some broad guidelines set by Taglit, but the upshot is you can have very different experiences depending what touring company you select. A few are indeed geared towards orthodox jews and the emphasis will be on religion. The majority put much less emphasis that way.

A word of warning on that. Many of these trips are full of college kids just looking to hook-up (and it’s not un-encouraged; as lindsaybluth says, having jews hook up with other jews may not be the primary goal of birthright, but it’s got to sound good to them.) The trips visit lots of bars and clubs, lots of drinking goes on, and unfortunately very little real touring. If that sounds fun to you, great. If not, definitely try to get into a trip with a 22-26 age limit.

To your specific questions, I can only really speak about my trip provider, which was Israel Outdoors. This trip emphasized seeing and appreciating the beauty in Israel. The tour was very heavy on Israeli patriotism. The tour leader very clearly loved his country and tried to share that with us whereever possible. We saw beautiful sights, we learned a lot of Israeli history, we had (obviously biased) talks about current events, we learned the national anthem, we had lots of interaction with Israeli soldiers, we visited the holocaust museum and the Mountain of Olives (the Israeli military cemetery). Put another way, they were far more interesting in establishing a connection between us and Israel than between us and Judaism.

And you know what - it worked. Israel is a beautiful country. And it is nice to know that as a jew, however non-practicing I am, I’ll always be welcome in Israel. The people are nice, the food is good, the land is gorgeous, and I definitely left the trip feeling proud of Israel and proud to have a connection there, and this was all completely independent of religion.

Religion certainly played some part in the trip, but mostly academically. Hey, it’s the Jewish State, it would be frankly remiss to not discuss the role of judaism in it’s history, it’s formation, and it’s current affairs. You will visit religious sites, but hey, you’re in Israel. Visiting Jerusalem and not seeing the Wailing Wall is like visiting Rome and skipping the Vatican.

There were a few exceptions. No real activities were scheduled for Saturday, for instance, and there were a few programs like “What sabbath means to me” and “What judaism means to me”. They were kind of lame, and a bit awkward since to many people on the trip the answer was “nothing”. But hey, a few hours of religious propaganda is a very small price for a ten day trip, and it was far, far less than the 30% number you listed.

So my summary is - definitely go. My trip had plenty of agnostics, and I believe every single person had a great time. Many chose to extend their trips beyond ten days, as I would have if I had the time. Virtually everyone (myself included) was there alone, so don’t worry about recruiting friends to go with you.

6

I have traveled outside the US before, thought I doubt it would be anything like Israel. The Caribbean islands are just touristy, Western Europe has no guns and isn’t the desert, and India is just a clusterfuck. I guess the closest I could imagine would be like the Frankfurt airport was in 2004, with tons of military dudes with machine guns. I feel safer with more guns, but that’s just me. Traveling itself is no big deal; I won’t be the dope’s Natalie Holloway, I promise. I was more concerned with the day to day stuff.

Man, so many Pittsburgh dopers! :slight_smile: Could you ask him which touring company he chose and how strongly he recommends them in particular?

Staggering Genius, I’ll definitely only go with a a post-collegiate group. Excellent advice; I was going to sign up with Hillel and obviously that’s a bad idea. The whole premise of only hooking up with your own kind is skeevy to me. I certainly don’t mind religion being taught academically, in fact I enjoy it. I figured at minimum there’d be “what does the sabbath mean to YOU”. So long as I’m not made to feel awkward for saying “that means the gym, the JCC, opens late”, then I’ll be fine.

It sounds like all I have to consider now is if anyone had a terrible experience, how to avoid those pitfalls and basically what touring group to go with. Planning will be a major hassle, of course, because I know it’s tough to get in (from what I’ve heard) and I’ll want to time it right before grad school, so this summer or next.

Thanks for all the help everyone, more is always appreciated but I have a basic idea now.

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I went when I was 19 (24 now) and had a lot of fun. My biggest mistake was going with a Russian group when I didn’t really know how to speak Russian that well.

I spent most of my time exploiting Israel’s 18 year age limit for alcohol. I even got hammered the night before they woke us up at 4am to walk up some mountain in the middle of the dessert. There was some kind of temple up there.

They do make you go on educational tours during the day to learn about Israel. I was too hung over to appreciate them, but I hear they weren’t too bad.

The girls really enjoyed meeting Israeli soldiers. I don’t know if you’re into that kind of thing, but we had a couple of young and well built soldiers guard the group. Every single one of those soldiers got laid on that trip.

Don’t worry about not being religious. The trip is aimed at non-religious Jews. The point is to get them to fall in love with Israel so that they would support her in the future.

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I went on birthright a couple years ago, and at first I had those same reservations. I’m only half jewish (on my dad’s side, making it even less meaningful), and I was raised with absolutely zero religion growing up. I did have a bar-mitzvah, which I guess is pretty religious, but honestly at the time I didn’t see it as religious at all, I just saw it as a cultural thing.

When you sign up they’ll do a phone interview to determine your eligibility but if the trip you choose is secular then there shouldn’t really be anything to disqualify you. Just say that you’re interested in your heritage and would like to explore your jewish identity, or something like that. There are orthodox and conservative tours, but the tour I went on was mostly secular. It focused more on what our jewish identity was historically and culturally, rather than religiously. We toured synagogues and did a sabbath ceremony but I never felt uncomfortable.

The trip itself was an amazing experience. I had toured outside the US before, mostly Europe, but Israel is a strange and fascinating place. Rather than a few hundred years old like in Europe, the history there is literally thousands of years old. There was a hint of pro-Israel propaganda, but the whole point of the trip is to show off Israel so that should be expected. I don’t have any plans to move there anytime soon, and although I’d like to visit it some other time in my life I’d be ok with never getting around to it, but I’m glad I got to see it at least once.

Above all, it was totally free. Free vacation to some exotic location halfway across the world! I’m amazed more people don’t take advantage of it. Even if you don’t care about Israel at all it’s worth it just to visit the Dead Sea. That place is so strange it’s like being on another planet.

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Definitely sign up and try to go!

I went in 2008, the year I turned 26, so I just made the cutoff. I too was not raised religiously Jewish (my father is Jewish, my mother is not, all we’d really do is celebrate the major holidays with my dad’s family.) My sister had gone the year before and she encouraged me to go as well, as I had never even heard of it before. My trip was through Hillel and was called something like “Outdoors-Water Activities”, so in addition to seeing all the sites that all the Birthright tours go to (Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Massada, the Dead Sea, Eilat, etc.) we also went rafting on the Jordan River, snorkeling and parasailing on the Red Sea and swimming in the Mediterranean.

My group ranged from 18-26, and while there was a bit of drunken partying going on, it wasn’t that obtrusive. You usually wake up pretty early the next morning so those who partied hard paid for it on long bus rides. Some of the nighttime activities I could have done without, like “Israeli Bar Night” where we all went to a nightclub in Tel Aviv, but it was open only to Birthright people so we couldn’t meet the locals, the drinks were overpriced and we couldn’t order hard liquor - just beer or wine. It seemed obvious to me that one of the goals (besides getting people to fall in love with Israel) was to get people to hook up with fellow Jews. In addition to the club night, other nighttime activities included a dance on a boat, a party at a cool site in the woods (which was pretty fun) and a huge mega-event party at the end with thousands of people.

And Saturday was spent pretty much just in the hotel. At least it was one of the nicer hotels and it had a pool. (We stayed in five different hotels throughout the country, starting at a pretty basic no-frills place with two beds & a cot per room, ending up at a 5-star hotel with private suites per person and seaside views.)

There were a few times where we’d take an hour or so and sit down and talk about (for example) “How I relate to Israel and how Israel relates to me” or “My Connection to Jewish Memory” but a majority of the people there was just there to see the sites and to take a free trip. I certainly didn’t feel like I was being badgered about religion or anything. Of course, some people did feel a strong connection and were very into everything religious about it. One of the guys on my tour ended up making Aliyah the following year.

All that said, it was a lot of fun! I saw so many places that I never would have gone to on my own, and it was really just awesome to be standing in structures that have existed for 2000+ years. And the absolute best thing about it was it was totally free! The only things I actually paid out of pocket for were some meals and for souvenirs. Less than $200 spent in total. For a 10-day trip plus international airfare! Really, it’s something you should absolutely try and take advantage of.

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Hmm, another positive note from the sports oriented trip. I’ll certainly consider them, wheras I never would have thought to try one (even though I love outdoorsy activities). Thanks!

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lindsaybluth, feel free to ignore me if my question isn’t appropriate, but . . .

I thought you were half Cuban and half Indian? Which half of that is Jewish? I guess I’m a little surprised because I never knew of either of those populations having many Jewish members.

[stalker] I also thought I remember you saying your mom was very active in the local church as a child and your dad is nominally Hindu . . . [/stalker]