Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2000, pages 67-68

Israel and Judaism

“Birthright” Program to Tie Young American Jews To Israel Is a Dead End in the Quest for “Continuity”

By Allan C. Brownfeld

A subject which has, in recent days, attracted the increasing attention of the organized American Jewish community is that of “continuity.” With approximately 50 percent of younger American Jews marrying non-Jews, there is a fear that American Jews will, in the future, disappear into the larger society.

An important way to stem this tide of assimilation, a number of Jewish leaders have concluded, is to tie young American Jews ever closer to Israel.

In 1998, a group of philanthropists, led by Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman, announced the creation of “Birthright Israel,” a $300 million fund that would totally support first-time travel to Israel by Jews aged 15 to 26.

The New York Times described the plan as “an attempt to rebuild religious identity among young Jews…The assumption behind Birthright Israel is that even a spring break spent in Israel can form a connection to Judaism for young people who have little or no affiliation with a synagogue or other Jewish institutions. The program is also an effort to mend the fraying ties among Jews. Trips to Israel could also be a means of consolidating support for the Jewish State.”

Michael Steinhardt, a Wall Street money manager, said that Israel “is the cement that can bind the Jewish community together. It is my hope that over time, 10 or 15 years perhaps, a Birthright trip can develop into a tradition analogous to that of the Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Our hope is that a trip to Israel will be another rite of passage of Jewish life.”

Mr. Steinhardt, an atheist, said that, “Israel has frankly—through my life and for much of my life—been a substitute for theology. I have lived an important part of my Jewishness through association with Israel rather than through adherence to a religious law or substantial observance.”

At the time the “Birthright” program was announced, ties to Israel had been waning for some time. A study conducted by Hebrew University sociologist Steven Cohen found that while faith in God, ritual observance and religious commitment appear to be stable, only 20 percent of those surveyed think it is essential to support Israel. Visiting Israel at least once is considered essential to being a good Jew by only 18 percent. “Israel attachment” by Jews 55 and older was 46 percent; among those 25 to 34 it dropped to 23 percent. Steve Doochin, a United Jewish Appeal fund-raiser from New York, told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz that, “Israel has not been on our agenda of late. Israel is just not on the fund-raising screen for a lot of the donors I have.”

“Israel has frankly been a substitute for theology.”

In January 2000, 6,000 young Jewish college students from the U.S., Canada and a number of other countries were flown to Israel. The “Birthright” program was described by The Washington Post as “nothing less than a $210 million marketing campaign to sell Jewishness to Jews.”

Richard Joel, president of Hillel, the college campus Jewish organization, said: “This is the first Jewish generation where being a Jew is an option and not a condition. If we can get Jews to feel comfortable with their Jewishness and proud of it, they will make more of their lives Jewish-flavored.”

The rising rate of intermarriage is a symptom of Jewish success in America, analysts say, “Victimization is historical now,” Joel declared. “The Holocaust is history, not memory. Anti-Semitism is not a defining experience of every Jew.”

Criticism of the program has been widespread. “Providing vast sums of money to youngsters, including many from affluent homes, for 10-day junkets without requiring any form of commitment is demeaning to Israel,” said Isi Leibler, the chairman of the board of the World Jewish Congress. “It is inconceivable that a 10-day trip can be the jump-off point for creating newly committed Jews.”

Naomi Blumenthal, a member of the opposition Likud Party, who chairs the Israeli parliament’s committee on immigration and diaspora affairs, said the government was throwing money at the wrong people for the wrong purpose.

“It bothers me that huge sums are being spent to bring young people here for free, while children in poor Israeli towns cannot afford a class trip,” she said. “The main goal of the project is not immigration to Israel but strengthening Jewish communities abroad. That’s not the thrust of the State of Israel.”

A Questionable Premise

Challenging the “Birthright Israel” program, Dr. Andrew Glick, professor of anthropology at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, declares that this “is emblematic of what is lacking in Jewish American life today. Projects of this kind perpetuate the self-deprecating concept of America as just another part of ‘the Diaspora’ and of Jewish Americans as a tangential and historically inconsequential population. Why should young Jewish Americans, indoctrinated by programs of this kind to think of Israel as the proper focus of their loyalty and attention, conclude that their foremost concern should be the fate of the Jewish American community?”

Dr. Glick notes that, “We are not living in a vaguely defined no-person’s-land called ‘the Diaspora.’ We are in America, and our destiny is here. Jewish Americans, religious and secular alike, are the principal heirs of a 1,500-year European Jewish history and legacy, and, for better or worse, it has fallen mainly on us to maintain, extend and appropriately interpret that legacy for the society in which we live…We are Jewish Americans, not Israelis, and our foremost goal should be to endow our young people with pride in their Jewish-American identity and determination to preserve it.”

In Dr. Glick’s view, “Rather than sending students to Israel or anywhere else, we might do well to invest more of our resources in educating Jewish Americans of all ages in our European-Jewish and Jewish-American history, and in the meaning and purpose of Jewish identity in the American context. Cultural pride and self-respect, personal commitment and communal unity will grow best in foundations provided by solid understanding of our own past and our place in the world. For most Jewish Americans of every age that place is America, and we would do well to recognize and act on it.”

Despite such criticism, the enthusiasm over the “Birthright Israel” program is growing. In April, it was announced that 76 Jewish federations, representing 83 percent of the North American Jewish community, have signed letters of support for the “Birthright” program and their new umbrella group, the United Jewish Communities, is on its way to becoming a partner in “Birthright.”

Young people who traveled to Israel in January have expressed their support for the program. Whether they are being brought to Judaism by the “Birthright” program or to an identification with Israeli nationalism is, however, a question which should be of concern to those who are now promoting this program. Consider Gabriel Stern, 19, a Duke University student from Long Island, NY who described himself as an atheist.

“My parents always impressed upon me that I’m Jewish, but I have never really bought into it,” he said. “But after going to Masada, seeing that my people were there 2,000 years ago, touching the stone, it hits home. There’s a passion here. People my age are walking around with guns, defending their country, all with a purpose. In Long Island, the biggest problem is what I’m going to wear the next day.”

It is fanciful to think that Jewish “continuity” in America can be promoted by trips to Israel and efforts to tie young American Jews to that country. This enterprise has little to do with religious identity and belief in a free, diverse society. It is as if the Episcopal or Presbyterian churches, declining in membership, sought to tie young people closer to their denominational identity by sending them on trips to England and Scotland, where those communions began. It completely ignores the spiritual dimension and the fact that American society represents an open marketplace of religious ideas in which an individual’s religious identity is based not on birth but on individual choices.

Larry Witham, religion editor of The Washington Times, notes that Americans are now in the midst of a new religious landscape: “In an era when loyalty to doctrines and denominations has waned, a new American behavior called spiritual seeking has surged. Its quarry is personal experience, the sacred, the soul.”

A recent report, “The Next American Spirituality,” done by pollster George Gallup, Jr., reveals Americans’ spiritual thoughts and activities over a 24-hour period. One-third had a roller-coaster day of spiritual highs and lows. Thirty percent felt “indescribable joy” during their day. Nearly 40 percent had opened a Bible, and 60 percent had felt part of God’s plan. Yet the biggest response was to the word “spiritual.” Nearly 80 percent expressed a desire to “experience spiritual growth.”

Mr. Gallup says that embrace of the “S” word over the “R” word should not come as a surprise. For several decades now, most Americans have said that religion will decline. Now more than ever, 80 percent agree that “an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue.”

Until the 1960s, the spiritual was found by “dwelling” in a religion, but now the operative word is “seeking,” says sociologist Robert Wuthnow. He says the search pays off only when it ends in “practice-oriented spirituality”—a routine of either study, prayer, worship or service.

From Beyond to Within

The new spirituality has moved American religion away “from what is beyond us to what is within us,” Mr. Gallup says. It has little use for doctrine, and picks and chooses from various Scriptures. It is as likely to quote from LaoTzu and Bob Dylan as from Moses or Jesus.

Political scientist James Reichley, who attends a Presbyterian church, thinks people have turned away from doctrinal religion and toward spirituality to feel more comfortable in a diverse society. “I think it’s a reaction to pluralism,” Mr. Reichley says. “It’s a way of transcending the diversity in America.”

Boston University sociologist Peter Berger, a Lutheran layman, has called this “the age of credulity.” The walls that once defined traditions and creeds, he argues, are now breached by, among other things, growing rates of interfaith marriage. The borderlines of denominations have blurred, and denominational “switching” is becoming more common.

The fact is that this generation of Americans, both Jews and others, has new spiritual needs which are not being met by established religious institutions, in particular by bodies which have substituted Jewish ethnicity and concern for Israel and Middle East politics for God and religious faith. Jews, they should be reminded, were not called upon to worship themselves.

Rabbi Sidney Schwartz, who directs the Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, has written a thoughtful new book, Finding A Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews Can Transform the American Synagogue. He states that, “I have met thousands of Jews who care deeply about being Jewish and about their spirituality. I have come to the conclusion that synagogues were not acting as the places in which spiritual needs were being fulfilled for our generation. If the synagogues are not doing their job, then people will pursue their spirituality elsewhere, both in secular and non-secular areas.”

While previous generations of Jews were concerned about questions relating to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, which revolved around a survivalist agenda, this generation, says Rabbi Schwartz, “is no longer motivated by those same things. Instead, they care about matters of membership, meaning in life, spirituality and God. We, as Jewish leaders, have to follow the new priorities…Baby boomers are classic religious shoppers. No one, in general, seems to be committed to just one religion anymore…We no longer need to stick with the tribe, if you will, because the outside world is no longer threatening to us or our religion…We need to move away from the definition of inclusivity we operate under. Our agenda cannot be just ethnically focused. People are in search for a meaning and a purpose.”

Rabbi Schwartz reports: “I encounter more and more Jews today who are engaged in a spiritual search…They experiment with alternative religious disciplines, from meditation to yoga to a variety of Eastern religious ashrams or fellowship houses…Some of these Jewish seekers find their way to a local synagogue. Most leave, convinced that the religion of their childhood is incapable of meeting their need for spirituality…Unless synagogues begin to ask themselves questions about what they can do to speak to the Jews who have not yet walked through their doors, the Jewish community will continue to dwindle and decline.”

For anyone to believe that Jewish “continuity” can be ensured by passing rabbinical resolutions against intermarriage and sending young American Jews on free “Birthright” trips to Israel is to completely misunderstand the religious dynamics at work in today’s American society. For Judaism to survive, it must free itself of ethnic chauvinism and a focus upon the Middle East and return, instead, to the humane and universal Jewish religious tradition which, in reality, has much to say to the spiritual searching of the present generation. Given the commitment of time, energy and resources to the “Birthright” program, however, such a return does not seem to be on the current agenda.

Allan C. Brownfeld is a syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review, a journal published by the Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, and editor of Issues, the quarterly journal of the American Council for Judaism.