I’m half-Jewish and half-Christian, or at least that’s what I’ve always said. My mother is Unitarian and my father is Jewish, although neither one is particularly religious. I grew up searching for both Easter eggs and afikomen.
My parents raised me in a relatively secular household in which I was exposed to holidays and traditions of two religions. But the level of “exposure” I got was minimal. Our Christmases centered around decorating the tree and baking cookies, while our sedars always included WASPy family friends who had never been in a synagogue, let alone to a sedar. Still, while our holidays might have been void of real religious meaning, they brought my family together for peace and celebration.
Not only was my household secular, but my elementary and high school education was as well. I hardly had any friends who could quote the Bible or tell the story of Jesus. Even less than this, however, was my number of Jewish friends. Despite going to a relatively diverse school, most of my friends were blond, occasional Sunday church-going children with whom I learned to play tennis and golf. I never felt different or left out. In fact, I felt that I had some special, elite passage into two religions where I got to celebrate twice as many holidays as everyone else.
When I went to college, I was surrounded by friends and classmates with strong religious convictions. I started to feel inadequate not only in my knowledge of religion in general, but also in my lack of a real religious identity. Suddenly, being half of a religion was equivalent to being part of no religion at all. I didn’t think that I deserved to call myself a Jew or a Christian.
During my sophomore year, a Jewish friend suggested that we go on a Birthright trip together to Israel during the upcoming summer. I knew that Birthright was an organization that sponsored free ten-day trips to Israel for young Jewish adults, most of whom are American, but I had never considered going; I never thought it was an option for me. I discovered, however, that the trip was open to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent on either of their parents’ side, which made me more than qualified. When my friend was forced to back out of the trip due to a summer job, I decided to go through the application process alone.
Within the Birthright organization (the full name of which is Taglit-Birthright), there are about twenty-five different trip organizers that offer participants different experiences. Some, for example, are more religious than others, while some offer a rugged, athletic experience. I chose a group called Oranim, which friends said was the trip for people who wanted a mix of education, culture, and fun, and who had a minimal religious background. After completing a few simple forms, a casual phone interview, and several weeks of waiting, I received an e-mail informing me that I had been accepted to leave on June 10, 2008.
My group was comprised of forty people, from the ages of eighteen to twenty-five, all from the States. I could tell, almost immediately, that I was the least religious person on the trip. I tried not to tell anyone that my mother wasn’t Jewish, as Biblically, one’s mother has to be Jewish for her to be Jewish, too, regardless of how she is raised. When we visited the Western Wall on our first day, I watched as my weepy-eyed peers became overwhelmed with emotion. I tried to provoke tears myself, as though sadness would somehow prove that I was Jewish, but no tears came and I felt like a guilty outsider.
On our second day, we drove to Tel Aviv, where I was taken aback by the city’s modernity. After having visited Jerusalem, Tel Aviv was a bright change with its billboards and nightclubs. We visited Independence Hall, where Israel was declared a state by the country’s first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, in May of 1948. We listened to a recording of Gurion’s speech in the room where he gave it, with the original microphones on the podium still intact.
