It was the night before Melanie Preston\u2019s immigration flight to Israel and the 28-year-old daughter of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father knew exactly what she wanted to eat.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI want a cheeseburger, right now,\u201d she said, scanning a trendy South Florida menu. \u201cYou can get cheeseburgers in Israel, but you can\u2019t get a really good one. You know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n
This wasn\u2019t just a wisecrack about the kosher tradition of separating meat and dairy products. This was the kind of symbolic issue that Preston faced when she signed up for one of the free tours that have taken 70,000 young Jews to Israel during the past five years.<\/p>\n\n
The global Birthright Israel program is open to young people between the ages of 18 and 26 who have never been on an organized tour of Israel. It doesn\u2019t matter if they have one Jewish parent or two. It doesn\u2019t matter if they have no idea why some Jews eat cheeseburgers and some do not.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThere are cheeseburgers in Israel. You can get them at McDonald\u2019s and some places serve them just like regular hamburgers,\u201d said Marlene Post, chair of Birthright Israel in North America. \u201cYou make your choices. If she\u2019s planning on being religious, then she will never see another cheeseburger in her life. If she\u2019s going to be secular she will have all the options she would have anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
This tension between Judaism the faith and Judaism the culture has been part of Israel from the start. Thus, one of the key philanthropists behind www.BirthrightIsrael.org is Wall Street legend Michael Steinhardt \u2014 an avowed atheist. Nevertheless, he joined the Israeli government and a coalition of donors, foundations and civic groups to fund this experiment.<\/p>\n\n
The young people can select tours that emphasize education, art, recreation, religion or nothing in particular during their 10-day visits. They float in the Dead Sea and hike the Golan Heights, hang out with young Israeli soldiers and meet Holocaust survivors, visit security checkpoints and tour in buses tracked by on-board global positioning systems.<\/p>\n\n
It isn\u2019t hard to spot the agenda, said Roman Smolkin, a 24-year-old computer professional in Aventura. Insiders stress the need for young people to \u201cbond\u201d with the state of Israel. Others talk about helping them establish a sense of \u201cJewish identity,\u201d whether religious or secular. Clearly, the constant late-night socializing is meant to facilitate friendships, some hooking up and even Jewish marriages.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI think they\u2019re just trying to get people like us to be us, to be ourselves. They want us to act like young Jews,\u201d he said, during a dinner with Preston and several other tour veterans in South Florida. \u201cBut the people funding this must be thinking in terms of a very long-term investment for Israel and for Judaism. They must be thinking that they give us this trip now and, 30 years down the road we\u2019ll be different people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
For Harrison Heller, the impact was immediate. When he returned to Boca Raton he promptly signed up with Students for Israel and began speaking out politically. He still considers himself non-religious, although he now wears a prominent Star of David necklace.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe whole religious thing is impossible to avoid,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the very first application forms that we had to complete came right out and asked that question. It said, \u2018Are you Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or just a Jew?\u2019 You can\u2019t get more direct than that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Preston wrestled with the faith issue as she prepared for \u201caliyah\u201d \u2014 the Hebrew word that means \u201cto ascend,\u201d or move to Israel. She said she was raised \u201csort-of Reform\u201d and \u201cdid the Christmas thing every year, but with no church services.\u201d Before Birthright Israel, she thought a \u201ckibbutz\u201d was a kind of boat.<\/p>\n\n
Long after the tour, she had a tearful epiphany when she heard a Scottish folk singer attack Israel during a music festival in Montreal.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWhat I\u2019ve discovered,\u201d she said, \u201cis that it\u2019s almost impossible to get involved in the life and politics of Israel without getting underneath that into the religious questions. \u2026 That\u2019s what Israel is all about. It\u2019s great. It\u2019s scary. I love it. It\u2019s frustrating. I\u2019m moving there. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cWhat can I say? I know that I can\u2019t escape the Israel question now, because it\u2019s my question.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was the night before Melanie Preston\u2019s immigration flight to Israel and the 28-year-old daughter of a Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father knew exactly what she wanted to eat. \u201cI want a cheeseburger, right now,\u201d she said, scanning a trendy South Florida menu. \u201cYou can get cheeseburgers in Israel, but you can\u2019t get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[464,1538,496,555],"class_list":["post-1296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-israel","tag-judaism","tag-kosher","tag-middle-east"],"yoast_head":"\n