SPECIAL COMMENTARY

Post-Birthright Buzz

Israel); Oslo and the White House
handshake; peace with Jordan; Yitzhak
n a recent millennial Sunday
Rabin's assassination; waves of terror-
morning, I arose at 5:30 and
ism; rise and fall of Bibi Netanyahu;
drove down to the Dead Sea.
Israel's Americanization; a high-tech
Heading south from Jericho,
explosion; high-level corruption; one
the sun came up over Jordan, rising
million Israelis living in poverty; Ehud
above the mountains of Moab where
Barak's landslide victory; and a whiff
Moses stood peering at the Promised
of peace with Syria.
Land he would sadly never
It's been exciting and
enter.
historic, but stressful, and
If only he'd been eligible
full of more existential anx-
for the Birthright Israel pro-
iety and tedious internecine
gram.
strife among Jews than is
I passed Ein Gedi, where
healthy for them, or me.
David hid from the mad King
These thoughts I did not
Saul, and Masada, whose story
share with the Birthright
of mass suicide continues to
students. On the whole,
haunt the Jewish psyche. I
they came innocent of pre-
parked in front of the fabulous
STUART
vious immersion in Jewish
Hyatt Hotel and walked into a
SCHOFFMAN
tradition or Israeli history.
room filled with 700 or so
Special to
Later that morning, they
Birthright students. Before
the Jewish News were to meet in Jericho with
beginning my briefing about
peace pioneers Uri Savir and
Zionism and the peace process,
Saeb Erekat, so I prepped them with the
I told the young people, "I envy you on
ABCs of 1948 and 1967, Rabin and
your first trip to Israel the way you envy
Oslo. I told them that this land is their
someone who is about to read the best
birthright as Jews, a claim we will never
book you ever read. The wonder, the
give up.
surprise, the eye-opening exhilaration."
I meant it.
I also told them that the Palestinians
have a very different national story, with
It's hard to hang onto exhilarated
which we are now, slowly, reaching
wonder when you have lived in a very
accommodation. I said that in America,
small country for 11 years that feel
much longer. In that time, we've seen
the Jews have a long-term lease on the
honeymoon suite in the finest hotel, but
the Intifada (the Palestinian youth
that in Israel we own the hotel. So you
protest against Israeli soldiers in the
have to do the dishes and take out the
late '80s-early '90s); Gulf War; mass
garbage. Jewish sovereignty, of which
rescue of Ethiopian Jewry; extraordi-
Jews everywhere are intensely proud,
nary Russian aliya (immigration to
also means heightened moral responsi-
Stuart Schoffman is an associate editor
bility. Jews with an air force are different
of the Jerusalem Report. He can be
from Jews without an air force. Wel-
reached via e-mail at
come to Israel.
steart@netvision.netil
Four days later, I encountered some

Jerusalem

0

of these students at an Education Expo
in Jerusalem, one where I served as a
teacher with people from widely varied
institutions. The students were offered a
two-day menu of classes on Jewish
prayer, Torah and ecology, Chasidic sto-
ries, music and spirituality, Bible, Tal-
mud, aliya, antisemitism — you name

The students are back
in America, but their
presence made an
impact on this Israeli.

it and, of course, Jewish sex.
I taught "Greatest Hits of Jewish
Thought," and tried out several
favorite texts: Psalm 19 as an illustra-
tion of Jewish art; a midrash (philo-
sophical interpretation) on the Book
of Lamentations that reflects Rabbi
Akiva's cyclical vision of Jewish histo-
ry; and Maimonides' letter to Obadiah
the Proselyte, a powerful example of
Jewish openness and inclusivity.
They listened politely, exhausted
from a non-stop week of intensely
choreographed experience. What woke
them up was an old chestnut, a passage
from the Zionist philosopher Ahad
Ha'am's seminal essay "A Spiritual Cen-
ter," which was first published in
Hebrew in 1907. It said: "When all the
scattered limbs of the national body feel
the beating of the national heart,
restored to life in its native home, they
too will once again draw near to one

another and welcome the inrush of liv-
ing blood that flows from the heart."
"He's like a prophet of what's hap-
pening now," gushed one of the
Birthrighters. The roomful of kids
from Indiana and New Jersey, Florida
and Massachusetts, began talking
about pride, and roots, and new ener-
gy, of being switched on by the
Birthright experience.
"I never felt such a buzz in my
entire life as I felt at the Western
Wall," one college kid said. That
brought me right back to my very first
day in Israel. I, too, was in .college, but
on a family visit in 1968. I dropped
my bags at my aunt's house and
rushed down to the Wall, my soul
teeming with the joyful. Six-Day War
triumph (of 1967). Naomi Shemer's
song "Jerusalem of Gold" replayed in
an endless loop in my brain.
How I envied this young man his
buzz, one unadulterated by an over-
dose of Jewish history, or by images of
ultra-Orthodox and liberal Jews fight-
ing at the Wall for a clean and pure
place to pray.
Obviously, not every single
Birthright kid there felt that buzz, nor
will all those thousands who will fol-
low. And it is fair to ask whether this
is a one-shot charge of static electrici-
ty, and to wonder skeptically if it can
really be transformed into a high-volt-
age current that will revitalize the dor-
mant margins of American Jewry.
It is always an open question
whether money can be better spent.
But as for Birthright, I say: Let it be,
if for no other reason than to give
weary Israelis like myself yet another
chance to dust off our copies of
philosopher Ahad Ha'am. ❑

LETTERS

Check The Source
Of The Statistics

This is in response to letters ("Gun
Control Propaganda," "Is There Alarm
Behind Numbers?" and "Did We learn
From History?," all Jan. 28) criticizing
the Jewish News for its excellent edito-
rial, "Stand Up For Gun Control."
Where did the stats come from that
guns are used 1 million times a year to
protect innocent lives, or 2.5 million
in self-defense? According to federal
figures for 1996, every time a citizen
used a firearm in a justifiable homi-
cide, there were 160 lives that ended
in firearm suicides, murder and unin-
tentional shootings.

One letter raises the specter of Hider
enforcing the registration of guns, which
were then taken away from all the Jews.
Most industrialized countries have strict
gun-ownership laws. The Jewish popula-
tions of Britain, Japan, Australia and
even Germany, where gun ownership is
nearly impossible to obtain, are hardly
fleeing for their lives.
Statistics were cited that say the more
states allow citizens to carry concealed
weapons, the more murders and crimes
have gone down. Yes, murders and
crimes have gone down, but not because
of relaxed carrying concealed weapons'
laws. A good economy, legalized abor-
tion and longer incarceration of crimi-
nals have been cited as reasons for the
drop in violent crime.

In Texas, however, where a CCW law
was signed by Gov. George W. Bush in
1995, Department of Public Safety
records show that from Jan. 1, 1996, to
Oct. 9, 1997, concealed handgun
license holders were arrested for 9,456
crimes, including murder, kidnapping,
sexual assault and burglary.
In 1997, guns were used in 17,566
suicides. Dr. Kay Jamison, professor of
psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of
Medicine in Baltimore, says the number
of young people who killed themselves
in the U.S. has tripled since the 1950s.
Studies show having a gun in the home
increases the risk of suicide. Unfortu-
nately, it's easier to get a gun and kill
yourself than it is to get treatment for
mental illness today, according to Laurie

Flynn, director of the National Alliance
for the Mentally Ill. Suicide has become
a public health issue in the U.S.
Why shouldn't we register guns in
this country? Why shouldn't we strive
for more sensible gun legislation? It's
totally disgraceful that the U.S. has the
highest rate of gun violence among the
world's most prosperous nations.
Yet, despite these figures and the
recent tragedies in American schools,
Congress refused to close a simple gun
show loophole last June. It was a loop-
hole that allowed an 18-year-old to
buy the guns used in Littleton, Colo.
This is unacceptable.

Marj Jackson Levin
president, j
Birmingham

im E

2/18
2000

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