My Birthright experience

I had a substantially different upbringing than most people do in many ways, the most significant of which is my lack of an organized religion.  Not that my parents are atheists, because atheists make a conscious decision to be atheists.  Sure, my dad goes to church sometimes, and my mom prays when someone dies, but does that make them religious?  Oh, I should mention that my parents are of different religions—my mom is Jewish, and my dad is Episcopalian (or, as he likes to call it, "Catholic Lite").    

In these assumptions I've made, I've overlooked one very key point.  I'm sure most of the people in the world will agree that in order to be religious, one has to be active in the religion itself.  That means attending services, participating in religious traditions, observing the holidays, etc.  Is this assumption a valid one?  Can one be religious without actually participating in it?  According to my parents, the answer is most emphatically, "YES!"  

For so long, my mom has told me, "If you're a good person, you don't have to go to synagogue or church or wherever else to prove it."  And for so long, I believed her.  I still believe her.  But during the past year or so, my opinion has changed slightly.  

When I first heard that people between the ages of 18 and 26 who have a Jewish mother or grandmother were eligible for a program called "Birthright," I was very excited.  A free trip to Israel?  Why not?  That was before I started paying close attention to the Middle East on the news.  Then I got scared.  Suicide bombers and missiles fired from preschools in Gaza at Israeli cities—these were common kinds of stories on the news.  I was reluctant.  However, after much convincing, I decided to apply.  When I was accepted, I was less than excited.  "Maybe I shouldn't go," I thought.  "I've never been a practicing Jew, so maybe I should let someone more religious take my place. And it's so dangerous!  What if a bomb goes off while I'm there?!"  Needless to say, I was worried.  Petrified, actually.  It was thanks to many of my friends, all of whom had traveled to the Holy Land many times before, that I began to realize that my vision of Israel may have been unnecessarily tainted.  Yes, I was worried, but I went anyway.  

When we first arrived at the airport, Patti gave us a very stern warning.  After she left, Gil and Shira took over.  I'd like to take a moment to applaud Gil and Shira's immense aptitude.  Without them, our trip would not have progressed as smoothly as it did.  Having traveled to Israel so many times before, they knew their way around so well.  But enough gushing. 

How can I describe the feeling?  How does one put into words something that is inherently indescribable?  When the plane landed and we disembarked, I peered out the window at the city of Tel Aviv in the distance.  I heard voices beckoning me on.  Ancient voices.  

In Jerusalem, at the Western Wall, the voices again regaled me with stories of times gone by.  They reminded me of the suffering that the Jewish people have endured since the time of Abraham, many thousands of years ago.  They prayed with me as I prayed.  

They followed me, their bones buckling beneath their weight but continuing to trudge onward for my sake, up the mountain to Masada.  They exclaimed, "Masada will not fall again; the Jewish people are alive!"  The love they felt for me, for all of us, was implicit.  Many of these people sacrificed themselves for their religion.  The people who committed suicide at Masada died for their deep faith and trust in their G-d.  It bonded them.  It united them.  It gave them meaning.  In the Holocaust, almost seven million innocent Jews perished simply because of their Jewish identity.  To the Nazis, the Jews were not human.  They were evil, calculating, underhanded, disgusting beings whose sole purpose was to torture the Aryan race.  

I thought about those Jews a great deal during this trip.  Those voices who spoke to me suffered at Masada, died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and disappeared in a puff of smoke at the hands of a car bomber in the West Bank.  But they were all together, united as one.  The man whose limp body fell by his brother's hand at Masada was no different than the woman whose life was senselessly cut short when a Nazi soldier locked her in the gas chamber.  They shared something that transcends time: they were both Jews.