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Birthright Israel, Jewish Peoplehood, and the Opportunities and Dangers of Religious Journeys

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Birthright Israel, Jewish Peoplehood, and the Opportunities and Dangers of Religious Journeys 2 Encountering the Other: Birthright Israel, Jewish Peoplehood, and the Opportunities and Dangers of Religious Journeys Sylvia Barack Fishman Fellow Travelers—or Itineraries to Different Destinations? What is the impact of Orthodox participation in transdenomina- tional Jewish activities? the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts has for many years run a Unity Mission, bringing boston-area Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform young leaders to New york to visit Ortho- dox, Conservative, and Reform rabbinical seminaries. the journeys have been a great success. yeshiva University, the Jewish theological 27 Non Orthodox Relationships.indb 27 7/13/10 10:06 AM Sylvia Barack Fishman Seminary, and Hebrew Union College each provides prestigious, em- pathetic, and effective speakers. boston participants have the opportu- nity to discover everything they always wanted to know but never had a chance to ask about other wings of Judaism (and sometimes about their own). but the most successful aspects of the SCM Unity Missions were the friendships and respect that developed among Jews across denomi- national lines. Participants said they discovered that Orthodox Jews were not narrow-minded bigots, that Conservative Jews had standards, and that Reform Jews cared deeply about Jewishness, israel, and klal Yisrael, Jewish peoplehood. One Reform woman remarked to me in wonderment when she came back from a SCM Unity Mission: “there were two Orthodox men on my mission. i had never really spoken to Orthodox men be- fore, and i was blown away. they were the most gentle, interesting, and non-sexist men of any religious persuasion i had ever met.” As it happened, i knew both of the men she was talking about, and her de- scription was more or less accurate. i uttered a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn’t encountered some of the other, less politically sensitive Orthodox men i know! that conversation taught me the importance of interaction be- tween Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews. Orthodox Jews can have a profound impact on the Jewish community—but only if they don’t se- quester themselves. the SCM Unity Mission experience suggests that when Orthodox Jews are unknown to the majority of the non-Ortho- dox community, negative images will undercut any positive religious impact they might have. the potential for negativity may be even more potent when people’s idea of Orthodox Jews are gained exclusively from media images, such as those surrounding the Rubashkin kosher meat scandal, and are not balanced by positive images of Orthodox Jews encountered in daily life. However, influence can go in two directions. Many in the Or- thodox community have worried that rather than Orthodox Jews influencing the non-Orthodox in a positive Jewish direction, during transdenominational activities the non-Orthodox may undermine Orthodox commitments. that side of the story was articulated viv- Non Orthodox Relationships.indb 28 7/13/10 10:06 AM Birthright Israel: Opportunities and Dangers of Religious Journeys idly in 2003 when Gil Perl and yaakov Weinstein, doctoral students in Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Cultures program (NELC, Jewish studies) published “A Parent’s Guide to Orthodox As- similation on University Campuses.” the ten-page pamphlet argued that interactions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox students on college campuses constituted an “alarming trend” which too often results in a “religious transformation”—the abandoning of Ortho- dox standards of behavior and belief by young men and women who heretofore have lived entirely within the fold, including day school at- tendance and israel yeshiva study. the authors concluded that parents should gauge for themselves “whether your children are prepared to face these challenges.” if parents decide that nonsectarian liberal arts institutions pose too great a spiritual threat, the authors urged, “have the courage to say so.”1 the publication caused a windstorm of discussion in the United States and israel, with the result that many Orthodox institutions and individuals actively discouraged young Orthodox Jews from inter- acting with non-Orthodox Jews, lest their religious commitments be weakened. Most of these discussions were based upon fear rather than on factual evidence about the impact of universities among young American Jews. Moreover, the impact on non-Orthodox young Jews of having no interaction with Orthodox Jews was not a matter of any concern in most of these discussions. A new wave of similar discus- sions discouraging Orthodox/non-Orthodox interactions have now surged in response to the birthright israel program. Arguments about the wisdom of interacting with—and encouraging one’s children to encounter—non-Orthodox peers at work, at school, and in social ac- tivities still divide segments of the Orthodox community. this chapter explores the ramifications of Orthodox/non-Ortho- dox encounters from a sociological standpoint, drawing upon recent studies of birthright israel and its impact, and upon other research on the relationship of American Jews to israel and to the concept of Jewish peoplehood.2 Several years ago i traveled on one of the Taglit buses in israel as an evaluator for brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (CMJS), which has conducted most of the birthright israel studies. Part of the evaluation process involved ob- Non Orthodox Relationships.indb 29 7/13/10 10:06 AM Sylvia Barack Fishman serving the participants experience the trip and interact with each oth- er and the way the various leaders implementing the trip fulfilled the goals of the program—ranging from nonsectarian organizations like Hillel to Orthodox outreach organizations such as Aish Hatorah.3 the bus i observed was facilitated by “Mayanot,” leadership from Chabad- Lubavitch. in this chapter i draw upon my field notes from that trip and place my observations into the context of data from sociological studies of Jewish education, Jewish and israel connections, and sev- eral recent reports conducted by the CMJS research team and israeli counterparts, as well as American Jewish Committee Annual Public Opinion Polls, to discuss Orthodox participation in Taglit-birthright israel and other transdenominational activities. Among other subjects, i look at the proportion of Orthodox to non-Orthodox participants, interactions between Orthodox and non-Orthodox trip staff and par- ticipants, observance and attitudinal levels of participants and non- participants before the trip, and the relative impact of the trip on Or- thodox and non-Orthodox participants. Birthright Israel Encounters the mifgash—an encounter between young israeli army person- nel and American college and post-college youth—is one of the pri- mary educational strategies of Taglit-birthright israel, a free ten-day trip, which has brought close to 200,000 North American young Jews to israel over the past nine years in a program called Taglit in its is- raeli context and birthright israel in the United States. its goals cluster around strengthening connections to Jews and Judaism in the hearts and minds of young diaspora Jews by strengthening their ties to israel. Among other activities, Taglit brings israeli and diaspora young Jews together for a few days in a mifgash, with the creation of bonding and understanding between Jews who have many different experiences and assumptions about life and who in many ways inhabit different plan- ets. However, another type of mifgash—much less remarked upon or studied—is also taking place: encounters between Orthodox and non-Orthodox birthright israel participants. Orthodox participa- tion in birthright israel has varied year by year, and it was generally Non Orthodox Relationships.indb 30 7/13/10 10:06 AM Birthright Israel: Opportunities and Dangers of Religious Journeys higher early in the program than it has been in recent years but has averaged about 20 percent of participants over the lifetime of the pro- gram. Obviously, four out of five participants are not Orthodox. On the other hand, since Orthodox Jews comprise fewer than 10 percent of the American Jewish population, one could say that an Orthodox participation of 20 percent is disproportionately high. the strength of Orthodox participation, especially in past years, is especially strik- ing since attending one of the many schools/yeshivot catering to dias- pora Jews during the “gap” year between high school and college has become normative in the American Orthodox community. birthright israel mandates that students who have already made an education- al israel trip cannot participate—so Orthodox participants typically have deviated from the norm and will not have had the israeli yeshiva experience. Orthodox participants may probably be drawn disproportionately from (1) Orthodox families with lower discretionary income; or (2) non-Orthodox families of ba’ale teshuva (newly Orthodox Jews), who are less willing to fund an extended stay in israel for their children. in recent years the proportion of Orthodox participants from the United States has declined considerably, while “the growth in the size of the program appears to have disproportionately expanded Taglit-birth- right israel’s reach into the ‘Just Jewish’ population, which, collectively, is less connected to its Jewish identity on most measures.”4 As we might expect, the religious profiles of Orthodox and non- Orthodox participants look dramatically different. daniel Parmer and i compared the behaviors, backgrounds, and attitudes of Orthodox and non-Orthodox young men and women before the trip. Some of our results are illustrated in Figures 1 through 6, adapted from daniel Parmer and Sylvia barack Fishman, “bridging the Gender Gap: Ameri- can young Adults’ Jewish identity and birthright israel.”5 Birthright Israel Participants Span a Broad Continuum of Jewish- ness these figures show young people who applied to participate in birthright israel trips, divided by gender, by wing of Judaism, and by whether or not they did in fact participate in a trip. As these tables il- Non Orthodox Relationships.indb 31 7/13/10 10:06 AM Sylvia Barack Fishman lustrate, participants and non-participant applicants to the program start out almost identical to each other.
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