Alef: The NEXT Conversation

Real

By Lisa Kaneff

A hurricane was brewing that fall as I walked my Birthright Israel application from my dorm room at the University of Miami to the Hillel House. The wind whipped through the palm trees, the air was devoid of the humidity I’d come to expect after most of my first semester at “The U.” Barely 18, I was fighting all of the identity demons one would expect to fight when you move at such a young age so far away from home, family, and the life you know. It was 1999, and this would be the first official Birthright Israel trip.

Greeted with fanfare suited more for celebrities than bleary-eyed university students, our welcome to Israel was delayed by three hours thanks to a package allegedly left on our ElAl plane by someone attempting to slip his way back through security. The 747 packed with the young and excited participants was escorted off the plane, and quarantined in the airport lounge until both sets of bomb-sniffing dogs cleared us for take off. It was a dubious start to a trip we were assured would be safe, fun, and above all, meaningful.

The details I remember: I was on bus #1. As I understand it, Birthright has consecutively numbered all buses since that first trip and I was on #1. I remember Leif, a student from FIU, was #15 during our “did we lose anyone” count-offs. Why do I remember that particular detail? Because we were always losing Leif. The silence after #14 was deafening and memorable as we missed things like sunrise at Masada because of #15 and his predilection for tardiness. I remember that I wore a Superman T-shirt that day we climbed Masada. I remember I was lapped climbing that mountain by a blind student smoking a pipe. And I remember that was the first time I realized my safe, fun, and meaningful trip to Israel would be more of a mental, physical, and spiritual challenge than I had signed up for.

A dreidel tells the story best: “A great miracle happened there,” becomes, “A great miracle happened here.” Here. All of the stories you read, the tales you’re told… No longer are they tall tales told by Hebrew School teachers to purvey a life lesson — a fable told during those painful hours between the long-endured school day and long-awaited television show you knew was around the corner — a piece of the sermon you may have heard during High Holy Day services when you weren’t scribbling notes to your best friend you were lucky enough to sit next to on the longest day of the year. But.

But in Israel, you are forced to confront the reality of religion. You meet faith head on for a jetlagged, spiritual Battle Royale. Could it be that what I had, as an impetuous youth, blown off as a tall tale be true? Could the stories be real? What does that mean for me and my faith? At that moment on the mountain looking down over where tragedy struck thousands and thousands of years prior, I knew things had changed. That Judaism, my Judaism, had just become… real.

Photo by Ani Carrington, licensed under Creative Commons.

Read more posts from Issue #19: Israel.

Tags: birthright israel trip, bus #1, hillel, Israel, masada, miracle

Posted by Emily.Comisar@birthrightisraelnext.org, Friday, August 27th, 2010, 1:29 pm, Israel.