Israel and Youth Trips

I've never been to Israel. I haven't been on Birthright or the March of the Living or Young Judea Discovery or any of those other youth group trips I get daily E-mails about. Part of the reason that I've been putting it off is because, as the ethnography article states, I look at it as a rite of passage. It's this really significant event that has to happen at the perfect time with the perfect group of people. And it's become such an obvious rite of passage in Jew's life that when I tell people that I haven't gone to Israel yet, even my non-Jewish friends reply "You should." Birthright would be the obvious trip--who could pass up a free vacation? Part of what makes it less appealing, however, is that most accounts I've heard of it make it sound like one big hook-up fest, and somehow the idea of spending my first week in the Holy Land listening to a friend cry over some jerk from Rutgers didn't seem quite right. Of course, the ethnography article also says that the goal of these programs is that "in the years ahead,
these youngsters will make the most consequential "affiliation," namely marriage to a Jewish partner and all that flows from that choice—forming a Jewish family, raising Jewish children, playing an active role in a Jewish community, making a commitment to
Jewish values, literacy, and causes, and doing so through formal affiliations within the organized Jewish community" (10). I don't agree that marriage to another Jew necessarily leads to all that or is the best way to fix the "continuity problem," but maybe making lovematches on these trips isn't actually that far off from their mission.

A friend of mine once called Birthright Israel "just a PR campaign for the Israeli government." At time time, the comment really bothered me, but after learning more about these trips, perhaps they aren't as organic as I thought. They are engineered to give the students a specific idea of what Israel and Jewish identity are. I think the trips are still meaningful, however. Even if the participants don't go to shul or any other Hillel events, they have this trip as their one Jewish activity; something to tie them to a larger community out there somewhere. I haven't met that many people who've made life-long friends through these trips, but they have made connections with vague groups of friends whom they keep in touch with on AIM over the years and run into on other Hillel trips (like Professor Cohen's friends).