By Joshua Rosenstein, Special to JTNews
Celia Kerr, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Washington, traveled to Israel on the most recent Hillel birthright trip this past December. Before the trip, she identified as a Jew and generally supported the idea of Israel, but she did not feel any personal connection. She decided to go, however, because the pilgrimage for young Jews between the ages of 19 and 26 offered her a free trip.
On the tour, Kerr said she did not feel worried about security and or in danger at any time. Indeed, while the group was in northern Israel, a terrorist attack took place at a bus stop in Tel Aviv. She says the soldiers accompanying them didn’t want to talk about it and tried to keep the mood positive.
Now that she is back at home, Kerr says she is taking a more active role in staying informed about what is going on in Israel. Since she returned, she is also significantly more involved in Jewish campus life and with Hillel. She attributes this new direction to her experience in Israel.
“I came out of the trip with many new friends and a ton of opportunities to get involved with Hillel that otherwise I never would have known about,” she said.
Birthright Israel runs many different programs which are sponsored or organized by different organizations. Renee Cohen, assistant director of the UW Hillel, led this group of 27 undergraduates along with Dave Basseer, Sigma Alpha Meu Jewish Campus Fellow. Rabbi Dan Bridge, executive director of Hillel, accompanied the trip as group rabbi. Most of the students that went were not involved with Hillel before the trip.
Rabbi Bridge, who for many years has encouraged strong support of Israel, has accompanied many birthright trips in the past. As with all of his visits, he said enjoyed watching the students make connections with the Jewish State.
“You can almost see the wheels turning, when they walk in the old city of Jerusalem and realize that they are walking in the footsteps of 3,000 years of history,” he said.
As a veteran of educational Israel trips, Rabbi Bridge was also in a position to be aware of just how limiting the new security measures are, and how many places the students were not allowed to go.
“Security is definitely tighter,” Rabbi Bridge said. “Because of the matzav, there are progressively fewer and fewer places where the kids can go safely.”
Birthright was created nearly five years ago, when a group of 14 Jewish philanthropists partnered with the Jewish Federation system and the Israeli government. Each of the three entities committed to putting up a total $210 million to fund the five-year pilot program. The goal: to bring 100,000 young, impressionable, Diaspora Jews to Israel on a 10-day, peer group, educational tour at no expense to the participants.
Since 1999, birthright has brought around 50,000 young adults to Israel. The trips are conveniently scheduled over school breaks or the summer to make it easier for students to participate. Birthright’s self stated goal is to reduce the growing separation of Israel from the Jewish communities around the world due to intermarriage and assimilation, increase the number of return visits to Israel, and to promote the role of Israel as an invaluable source of Jewish history, education, religion and culture. The trips also serve to bring badly needed tourist revenue into the Israeli economy.
In early September, the Israeli government cut its $70 million portion of program funding to a mere $450,000. In addition, the United Jewish Communities cut its allocation by nearly half, putting a strain on the overall financial picture. Michael Steinhardt, one of the leading philanthropists for birthright, has stated the program could end as a result.
For each of the past four years, The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle has also allocated $19,000 beyond its UJC dues to help pay for local birthright participants.
Still, the students on the most recent Hillel birthright trip had to pay for their round-trip flights to New York. Birthright says the students will be reimbursed $190, but one participant, Alina Pimenov, 19, with the purchase of a last minute ticket and a change in flight times ended up spending more than $600.
In a last-ditch effort to fund as many trips as possible, however, birthright managed to send 10,000 of the 15,000 applicants — almost double the usual number. Another 3,000 young adults will most likely have the opportunity to participate over the coming summer, but after that, organizers will not commit to anything further.
The UW group encountered this strain firsthand when they discovered that there were not enough seats on the plane for all the people who had signed up for the trip. Between five and seven students were not able to go. Rabbi Bridge is working with them now to get them on a future trip.
As with anything that involves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the issues involved with the birthright program are many and complex. The program has changed the lives of thousands of young Diaspora Jews from all over the world.
Of necessity, birthright must take its security seriously. Therefore, in addition to the two armed guards that continuously accompany each group, strict rules dictate where the participants may or may not go. They never leave the group, they never leave their hotel, they never travel on public transportation, and they are not allowed to go to any public places where there may be large groups of people. In many cases, they are not able to visit relatives or friends.
“I would have liked to have had a little more freedom but I realize they had to think not only about our safety but about our families’ reactions. Under the circumstances I think they gave us as much freedom as possible,” said Pimenov.
“It might have been a little more fun if we could have left the group, but I totally understand,” added Kerr. “The days were so full, we were too tired to want to go out much at night.”
One student caught standing outside the hotel after hours speaking with a friend was immediately expelled from the program. Had it not been the last day of the program, he would have been sent home. He was, however, excluded from all of the remaining group activities.
A result of the strict guidelines is that the students were not exposed to the myriad conflicts that confront the Israeli people, including in the occupied territories. They never entered an Israeli Arab village, and the only time they actually spoke with a live Israeli not accompanying their group was during the mifgash, a component of the program in which Israeli soldiers spent a few days traveling on the private bus with the group. That one experience did end up making a difference, however.
“The mifgash component of the trip really made it special,” said Kerr. “We were similar ages, but our lives were so very different.”