queering birthright

“I’m going to Israel in December!” I told a rabbi from Berkeley I’d just met, hoping to bond over this. Her face fell.

“I’m a pro-Palestine peace advocate,” she explained gently.

“Oh,” I said, unaware that simply visiting a country could reveal my politics. “I am too. But it’s a free trip.”

“Birthright? Yes, that’s how they get you,” she said, frowning.

A few weeks earlier, my twin sister and I had decided to take Birthright Israel up on their offer to send us to Israel mostly free of charge for ten days of exploring our nascent Jewish identity and a country we knew little about. Birthright is a not-for-profit organization that has been sponsoring free trips to Israel for thousands of young Jews for over two decades. In recent months, the organization has received criticism from activist groups and scholars who say the organization is putting forth a one-sided version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hiding the cruel realities of Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from participants. In the past six months, Birthright enrollment numbers have declined by nearly half, largely as a result of these activist groups’ vocal critiques of the program.

After speaking to this rabbi, I went home and read more about the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Israel movement on U.S. college campuses, which has called for an end to the occupation but has sometimes veered towards antisemitism, and the Palestinian medic who was murdered by an Israeli sniper while trying to keep her friends safe. I read about Birthright participants who had walked off their trips in protest this summer while using the hashtag #NotJustAFreeTrip. Their anger seemed justified, but complicated. I wished for a world without borders. I was afraid my wish sounded naïve.

Though I was reluctant to go on a trip to Israel that did not include Palestinian voices, I still wanted to connect with other young Jews, and explore a part of my identity that has always felt present but mysterious (my father is Jewish, but my parents divorced when I was very young). I wanted to travel as far as I could on my limited graduate student budget, and hear what Israelis had to say, about the land and how they talk about their country’s military actions and the occupation. I felt that I was wise enough and old enough to see through hidden agendas, do my own research, and question everything.

When my sister and I arrived at the airport to begin our journey, I could tell that I would get along with the other participants. We had picked a LGBTQ trip, and I think it was the best decision we could have made. Our new friends were thoughtful and generous. I was coming down with a cold, and Pasha, who was studying to be a medicinal healer, offered me tinctures and tea to take on the long plane ride. Maddie, who works for a refugee resettlement nonprofit, told me how she had extended her trip in order to visit the West Bank and explore Israel and Palestine on her own. We chatted about why we had come and where we were from as we waited at our gate. Like me, most of the other participants were here seeking a space that was both Jewish and queer, where they could learn about a new place, and continue along a spiritual path of recovery and memory.

Once in Israel, one of our first group activities was a game called Jewish Survivor. We were given a stack of cards, each containing a different piece of Jewish identity – like synagogue, rabbi, having Jewish children, Israel. We had to choose the top five cards that we believed were essential to the survival of Judaism. Days later, I kept thinking about this activity. It taught me that Birthright’s version of being Jewish means feeling threatened. It is a defensive state of being. We were not asked what qualities were most important to being Jewish. We were asked which qualities an entire diaspora couldn’t survive without.

This fear is of course not ungrounded. Our discussions devoted to rising antisemitism focused on antisemitism in our own lives – all of us had at least one story of hate we’d encountered. But what struck me about these conversations was how narrow they often seemed. I’d been taught that you can’t talk about one kind of oppression without talking about others, and that nothing occurs in isolation. Anti-Semitic hate crimes in America have increased in number but so have anti-immigrant, xenophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes.

At the Holocaust museum, I noticed the same thing. We learned about the many Jews who had tried to survive the Holocaust by fleeing to countries that wouldn’t let them in. “That is why it is so important that a Jewish state exists,” explained our tour guide. “If another holocaust was to occur, at least Jews would have Israel to escape to.” I do not pretend to know more than I do about the many competing claims to Israel. But on this trip, conversation about Israel seemed to end with this argument: that a Jewish state is necessary, in case of another holocaust. But where do the Palestinians go? Does one kind of oppression justify another? These are pressing questions with no easy answers, and they were not ones Birthright encouraged us to grapple with.

At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, our group was distressed to see that men enter through one gate, and women another. Each gender prays at different sections of the wall. The men’s side is expansive, the women’s is not. The men are not able to see how much smaller the women’s section is. It was a jarring experience for our group – especially for the trans* students, and the women. It served as a reminder that orthodox religion tends to lend itself to sexism and old-school rigidity. And for me, it was a reminder that injustices are not meant to be seen by those with power.

Later, I asked one of our group leaders if I could chat with her privately, moved by my experience of inequality at the wall. “The men couldn’t see what the women were missing,” I explained. “If we hadn’t said anything to them, they would have thought our experiences at the wall were equal and the same. That’s what it feels like, I think, to see Israel only from Israeli Jews’ point of view. I just want to understand why we don’t have any Palestinian speakers on this trip. How can we understand this country without their point of view?”

Aliza – who volunteered with Birthright to be our group leader, and was a mother, a proud Zionist, and also clearly cared deeply about our wellbeing – was reflective, but defensive. “First of all,” she said, “Thank you for bringing your concerns to me privately, instead of in front of the whole group like those protestors did this summer. I hear you – but the thing is, Birthright can’t have Palestinian speakers because they can’t have speakers who trash Israel. Which is what would happen if we had Palestinian speakers.”

I was skeptical about this – that every single Palestinian Birthright could find would trash Israel. I asked Aliza what she thought about the people who had walked off their Birthright trips, and whether anything had changed internally in the organization since.

“You know, I’m just a volunteer,” she reminded me. “I’m not here as a representative of Birthright. But I think that is trendy right now to be anti-Israel,” she said.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because conflict sells,” she said.

But Islamophobic narratives sell, too. I wasn’t wholly convinced she got it right.

Benzi was our Israeli guide. He made our long bus rides feel shorter by regaling us with stories about the landscape and landmarks and the past. He told us his coming out story, and generally encouraged us to think for ourselves. In a short political seminar, he brought up the IfNotNow protests and criticism that Birthright has been receiving.

“I want to address the elephant in the room, which is of course, Birthright,” he said, speaking to a small group of us gathered in a hotel conference room one evening after dinner.

“I personally think the protestors are right to want a complete picture of what is happening in Israel,” Benzi said. “But I encourage you all to extend your trips and visit the West Bank, talk to people living in Ramallah. Find your own answers.”

By the seventh day of our trip, it seemed like we had all caught the same cold. We were exhausted from the days of exploring, bonding, and barely sleeping. But once per year Birthright hosts a “mega event,” attendance required by the thousands of Birthrighters currently in session in Israel – so, around 6,000 young people.

Our group was reluctant to go, and horrified once we got there. Apoplectic lights, confetti, colorful smoke and deafening pop music filled a large stadium in Jerusalem. Onstage was a dance troupe and then a rapper whose lyrics focused on Jewish identity, and our apparent claim to the land. “Live your story,” blared the pink and turquoise social-media friendly banners. “This is your home.”

Our group was seated in the balcony in a far corner, which gave us the uncomfortable feeling of looking down on the event as if from a great distance. The sea of young people jumping ecstatically along to the music filled me with dread. This was not my scene, it’s true, but it also felt somewhat cult-like, evangelical. It was too loud to speak but Amanda, a new friend, typed on her screen so I could see, “I’m a Zionist, but this makes even me uncomfortable.” She put it so well, later, away from the noise: “It’s like it took everything good about Judaism – its lack of proselytizing, its reflectiveness – and turned it in to something I couldn’t recognize.” We didn’t stay for long. Our whole group snuck away, to a quiet room in the back of the convention center. We sat in a circle and chatted quietly, about how terrible this whole event had been, and how glad we were to have each other.

On the bus ride home, Benzi mused that we were not like the other Birthright groups. “I find it interesting – not a bad thing, just interesting – that none of you were into this event at all. I was honestly a bit surprised. But I think it’s interesting that you, the LGBTQ group, weren’t into it. And I want to ask you why you think that was.”

One by one, my fellow participants raised their hands to speak. They talked about our age – being queer means you grow up fast, they said. We are too old for this shit. They spoke about the anti-intellectualism of the event, and how it felt to be in a space that felt aggressively heterosexual, and pushy, and loud. A place without nuance.

I think our reaction to this mega event helped me understand how my Birthright trip felt special and profound and problematic and intense and thought-provoking and right and wrong all at the same time. I didn’t get to meet any Palestinians. But that fact alone made me want to learn more, read more, and ask more questions. I am not close to imagining a peaceful solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine, or knowing everything I can. But I do know that for ten days I was surrounded by a group of thoughtful peers wise beyond their years, unwilling to accept any simple narrative or agenda, and appropriately skeptical of the organization sponsoring our free trip. So I’m thankful for the gift of Birthright, and glad it exists. I wish it were less defensive, less fearful, and open to complexities. I wish that above all else it was committed to justice for all – for Jews and for Palestinians. I think Judaism as I know and love it depends on that kind of openness.