The State of the Jews

Last week, I argued that Taglit-birthright israel is an astonishing, unexpected success, but that the communities that send their young people to it have failed them by neglecting any follow-up programming. Thus, the experience doesn’t get a chance to transform into a long-term identity-building relationship with the Jewish world.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner, who directs one of the largest post-birthright programs in North America, begs to differ.

The JPost published a short letter from him. I’m publishing the full text (which he emailed me).

Post-birthright programs, he says, are “invisible” beside the thousands of birthright buses crisscrossing Israel. But they’re there, and they’re huge.

Birthright Israel’s Post-Trip Doubling Effect

Rabbi Daniel S Brenner

In his opinion piece on December 30th, 2009 Haviv Rettig Gur writes regarding Taglit- Birthright Israel “these connections are wasted if they are not directed at new Jewish experiences back home.” He ends the piece with a short question: “Where’s the follow-up?”

The work of “follow-up” is not as apparent to the public eye as the sight of hundreds of Taglit- banner buses on Israel’s roads. But since I have the pleasure of working with a young staff who have succeeded in providing new Jewish experiences to over fifty thousand Taglit-Birthright Israel alumni in North America during the past year, I have the opportunity to see the follow-up every day. Here is one example:

In 2009, the total number of Taglit-Birthright Israel North American trip participants for 2009 was just shy of 19,000. In the last few months, we have worked with volunteer leaders from those buses to host over 12,200 young adults for home-hospitality Shabbat meals in North America. 93% of our NEXT Shabbat meals involved some or all of the core ritual elements of Shabbat. More importantly, we found that nearly every volunteer felt that this was a positive Jewish communal experience and wanted to host again and get more involved in their local community. By the end of 2010, volunteers from this group of 19,000 trip participants will have hosted over 30,000 young adults for a NEXT Shabbat event.

This particular program is one of four areas of focus for Birthright Israel NEXT that begin on the trip and flow naturally into involvement post-trip (the others being Hebrew language learning, deepening the Israel connection and encouraging community involvement). In addition to the Shabbat program, Birthright Israel NEXT runs ulpanim for young adults in ten North American cities, works with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through local consulates in select cities to deepen ties to Israel, and has involved thousands of post-college young Jewish adults by partnering with local Jewish and Israel-focused organizations (we linked up with thirty-two such organizations in the last year). It is through these four areas (and through many partners) that we are on track to involve 100,000 young Jewish adults in our programming in 2010.

These figures do not count the “ramping up” of programs from our on campus partner Hillel and from our colleagues at MASA, two organizations who have certainly devoted significant energy to “Birthright follow-up” in the last two years. Nor do they include the work of forward-thinking Federations, like the CJP in Boston, that have adopted new models on campus that are delivering follow-up success.

Gur asks the right questions, but I would like to offer a counter-analysis. Those young adults who go on Taglit-Birthright Israel trips and then get involved in Birthright Israel NEXT or with campus-based partners are actually doubling and in many cases quadrupling the overall impact of the trip. In our programs, we see young Jewish women and men come off of their Israel trips with a spark of energy that causes them to reach out to their friends (most of whom have not gone to Israel) and involve them in Jewish life. As a result they are transforming their social circles and injecting Jewish content and Jewish experiences in ways that they never did before. Our job at NEXT is to work within these social circles and to provide critical initial steps that will help grow sparks into new commitments. Those commitments, however, ultimately require the active engagement of young adults by the entire Jewish community. We hope to partner with many more community-based organizations, both established and emerging, as we continue to grow.

Although it is often unseen, Taglit-Birthright Israel participants are quietly transforming their generation in North America and every Jewish organization has the potential to benefit from their renewed passion for Israel and for Jewish life.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner
Executive Director
Birthright Israel NEXT

Unbelievable. A once-in-a-decade event. Enjoy it while it lasts. YNet, the largest Israeli news site (in Hebrew, at least) is leading with a story about the next Jewish decade.

Of course, the story is negative, predicting a shrinking Diaspora and a demographic crisis in Israel. But at least we’ve discovered how to punch through Israeli media’s deep disdain for Jewish issues: wait a decade, make it grim.

Here it is, preserved as evidence of this rare event:

A wonderful discovery, Dr. Emmanuel Navon of Tel Aviv University and his blog For the Sake of Zion.

He expresses beautifully the consensus feeling among most Israelis. Shlomo Sand may be sexy in a certain foreign milieu, but he is so radically disconnected from the Israeli discourse and Israeli identity that no one even bothers to challenge him here. The Jewishness of the Israeli state is so obvious, and ethnic Jewish identification so universal that Sand is little more than a circus curiosity in this country. Only abroad, among those profoundly ignorant and exceedingly loud about Israel, can he find his groupies.

Navon’s latest captures the hypocrisy of the likes of Tony Judt and Sand, and should be read by, well, Judt and Sand. Unfortunately, their academic credentials don’t seem to drive them to self-critical reflection.

One wonders what happens when Navon and Sand pass each other in the hallways of Tel Aviv University.

Anyway, here’s Navon:

The understandable frustration with the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has led some people to suggest that, for the conflict to abate, one of the two protagonists must give up. But what if both sides prove relentless forever? A Freudian answer to that question has recently been devised by (you guessed it) Jews: explain to the Jews (but not to the Palestinians, Heaven forbid), that they don’t actually exist, and they will stop fighting for their “imagined self.”

It is logically undisputable that there would be no Israeli-Palestinian conflict if there were no Israelis or no Palestinians (or both); that there would be no anti-Semitism if Jews didn’t exist (though even that is debatable); and that there would be no car accidents if cars hadn’t been invented….

This is the underlying argument that Shlomo Sand is promoting in his book The Invention of the Jewish People. A historian of modern French and European history at Tel-Aviv University, Sand is no expert in the Ancient Middle East and in Jewish history. His book has been dismissed and ridiculed by scholars of Jewish history as a cheap and embarrassing piece of falsifications and propaganda. Even Tony Judt (also an expert on modern European history, and also an anti-Zionist Jew), had to admit that Sand’s contribution to the knowledge of Jewish history “is at best redundant” (”Israel must unpick its ethnic myth,” Financial Times, 7 December 2009). Judt does not dispute that Sand’s book is academically sloppy, but he argues that this sloppiness is irrelevant (if not forgivable): What counts, according to Judt, is the point that Sand is trying to make.

For Judt, “the perverse insistence upon identifying a universal Jewishness with one small piece of territory … is the single most important factor accounting for the failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio.” In other words, one of the central tenets of Judaism is “perverse” and is “the single most important” reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So Jews must abandon one of their strongest beliefs –a belief that gave them hope and helped them survive throughout two millennia of exile. On the other hand, the fact that Islam holds that a land that was once ruled by Muslims must be “liberated” from “infidels” is not a problem. Nor is the fact that the Palestinians insist on invading Israel with millions of descendants (or alleged descendants) of the 1948 refugees, or that they deny the very existence of the Jerusalem Temple. The problem is not Muslim theology or Palestinian myths. The problem is Jewish faith.

Update: The partial interview was replaced with the complete one.

Shameless plug: A conversation on how the Jewish people may be falling apart.

How do you know you’re losing touch with Israeli society? For one thing, you forget that it exists.

The latest “MAKOM Hot Topic” on Ha’aretz’s website:

If the Freakonomics guys liked it, then there really must be something behind the fascinating book Start-Up Nation. In the book, Senor and Singer explore reasons why Israel has more companies on NASDAQ than any country other than the US, and the highest number of start-ups per capita than anywhere else in the world.

To the liberal mind, the success of the book and its subject matter, ought to give cause for concern. First, it would seem to be an attempt to draw attention away from Israel’s political failings – in its very apolitical-ness, it is political. Second, it hints that business and hi-tech success is the pinnacle of Jewish endeavor. Third, it would seem to credit the Israeli army with much of this success. Fourth, and most importantly, the book draws attention to an Israeli and – dare we say it – Jewish exceptionalism.

This would then beg the question: Can we express pride about anything? Is any Israeli collective achievement – so long as it isn’t peace with the Palestinians – to be frowned upon?

Are these guys for real? The book “ought to give cause for concern” because, possibly, “any Israeli collective achievement” is bad if it doesn’t concern the Palestinians? So, for example, democracy? Or the rescue of the Muslim world’s expelled Jews or Europe’s tattered refugees? Or how about cures for some cancers? Or Yehudah Amichai’s poetry? Or simply surviving the 20th century, an achievement in no way guaranteed at the century’s start? Or being the only country in the Middle East that has more Christians, not less, than 60 years ago?

How about this question for a hot topic: What kind of obsessive advocacy leads someone to suggest that an entire society is nothing more than a single political process? Is MAKOM dangling dangerously off the edge of the Israeli discourse, about to fall off?

Another of the endless series of reports about the disgrace of Israeli officialdom’s treatment of converts – once again despite the approval of the conversion by the official Orthodox rabbinate.

The thing about power, it corrupts. And religious power? It just corrupts religion…

(Hat tip: Religion and State in Israel.)

Maksim and Alina were due to exchange their wedding vows in 10 weeks, but instead of being busy preparing for the joyful event, they have been going through a nightmare – Their marriage was not approved by the Chief Rabbinate clerks in Ashkelon, where the couple resides.

…

Two weeks ago, after setting the wedding date, Maksim and Alina went to the Rabbinate in their hometown to open a file with a marriage registrar.

To their surprise, Ashkelon’s chief Rabbi Haim Bloy told the couple he will not approve their marriage, and suggested that they get registered in a different city.

“The rabbi explained that because Maksim only observes some of the mitzvot, we will have to register in a different city,” said Alina, explaining that “meanwhile I met with a different rabbi that agreed to register me, but not in my city, because in Ashkelon ‘they don’t register converts for marriage’.”

…

Rabbi Shaul Farber, director of the Jewish Life Information Center (ITIM), said on Thursday that “it is not plausible that marriage registrars who are employed by the country and are getting paid by the Chief Rabbinate will make up their own mind whether to recognize documents issued by their employers.”

“Registrars who distrust the Chief Rabbinate must resign from their positions. If they don’t do it themselves, the state should do it,” Farber added.

Following this recent phenomenon, ITIM institution opened a hotline that will guide converts and help them bypass the rabbis. The hotline number is 1-700-500-507.