Editor’s note: Kiera Feldman has an important article in the current issue of The Nation pulling back the curtain on Birthright Israel – the all expenses-paid trips to Israel for 18-26 year old North American Jews. It discusses the history, ideology and goals of the program which until now has received barely any critical attention in the mainstream press. Below is a slightly expanded version of a passage from the piece that describes one of the key parts of the trip – the mifgash (or encounter) between the young Jews participants and Israeli soldiers:
Birthright co-founder Charles Bronfman, the billionaire heir to the Canadian Seagram’s liquor empire, began directing his philanthropic dollars to teen Israel trips in the late 1980s. “To me, in order to be a complete Jew, one must have an emotional and physical attachment to Israel,” Bronfman says. But he was bothered that the kids on those early trips weren’t bonding with their Israeli peers. Bronfman’s answer: developing the mifgash—the encounter—between Jewish Israeli teens and their diaspora counterparts. This made the tour bus less of “an isolated bubble,” according to Elan Ezrachi, the Israeli educator who developed the mifgash on Bronfman’s dime. Birthright adapted the mifgash by way of IDF soldiers. These encounters between American youth and youthful Israeli soldiers “move very fast to what we call ‘hormonal mifgashim,’” Ezrachi told me. “Things happen.”
Soldiers meet Birthrighters in full uniform, spend the remainder of the mifgash in civilian clothing and then dress back in uniform for the encounter’s final day: the Holocaust Museum followed by a visit to the graves of Theodor Herzl and fallen soldiers. Lynn Schusterman, a Birthright funder and board member, told me the bonds formed during the mifgash help participants gain an understanding of soldiers’ “moral and ethical standards.” After the 2006 Lebanon war, Brandeis researchers found that Birthright alumni were more likely than other young American Jews to view Israel’s military conduct as justified.
The originator of the Birthright idea was Yossi Beilin, a Labor Party stalwart and an instrumental figure in the Oslo Accords. Widely considered an archliberal and reviled by Israel’s right, Beilin is an unlikely figure to boast the moniker “godfather of Birthright.” In a recent phone interview, Beilin compared his worries about intermarriage and Jewish identity to “the personal feeling of an old man who wants to see that his family is still around.” Among Beilin’s top goals for Birthright: “to create a situation whereby spouses are available.” An ardent Zionist and longtime friend of Bronfman, Beilin unsuccessfully pitched Birthright to him and co-founder Michael Steinhardt in the mid-1990s.
Eventually, Barry Chazan writes in 10 Days of Birthright Israel, Steinhardt saw Birthright’s potential to “plug the dam of assimilation,” and Steinhardt got Bronfman on board. “The people we wanted were those who were not committed,” Bronfman says. “The only thing that would get them to Israel is a free trip.”
The common denominator of the Birthright experience is the promotion—by turns winking and overt—of flings between participants and the IDF soldiers who accompany them. “No problem if there’s intimate encounters between participants,” an Israel Outdoors employee told American staffers during training. “In fact, it’s encouraged!” Between 1999 and 2009, one popular tour provider, Momo Lifshitz, instructed 50,000 Birthrighters to see the sights, be afraid of the Arabs, and “make Jewish babies.” When co-founder Michael Steinhardt visits Birthright groups to play matchmaker, he asks participants, “How many of you want to be fixed up?” Birthright boasts alumni are 51 percent more likely to marry other Jews than non-participants.
“The bus is a love incubator,” Elissa Strauss writes in What We Brought Back, a glowing essay collection from Birthright’s alumni program. “It works.” Strauss’s entry is written with her husband, whom she met, naturally, on Birthright. Many groups pass a night in a fake Bedouin tent, where participants sleep crowded together, a setup conducive to first kisses.
Early Zionism, too, was marked by alarm over intermarriage and demographic decline. Zionists saw the answer in the creation of a “new Jew,” a virile conqueror and tiller of the land who would channel sexual energy into nation-building. Today, the goal is a new diaspora Jew who channels that energy into Zionist activism.
In November, Jewish Voice for Peace created a satirical website, “Birthright For Us All,” which criticized Birthright’s fear of “miscegenation.” Promising to “bear witness to the occupation,” the fake trip was advertised for Jews and Palestinians. Barry Chazan, the architect of Birthright’s curriculum, told me that such a mifgash would never happen on Birthright. “This is about a Jewish journey,” he said. One wonders where it will lead.
Read the entire article “The Romance of Birthright Israel” here.
