I recently discovered that I have a friend who was in Beirut for the last two months. She's safe in the mountains right now, thank goodness.

What is a birthright trip?

And damn, Emily, I wish you'd moved to Kansas City. We desperately need to hire a math teacher.

What is a birthright trip?

Jewish organizations pay for Jewish kids to go to Israel for a week (or two, maybe)

Oh shit, I just remembered that some friends of mine were doing their birthright trip sometime in the near vicinity of now, and I completely forgot.

I went on a birthright trip last summer. There is very heavy security -- trip leaders are in constant contact with a central base, every road is checked before the bus goes on it, and they'll reroute things on the spot if there looks like any potential danger.

Jewish organizations pay for Jewish kids to go to Israel for a week (or two, maybe)

Ten days.

too damn hot

Jewish organizations pay for Jewish kids to go to Israel for a week (or two, maybe)

Um. Why?

I mean, free holidays are always nice, of course, but - not sure I quite understand this.

Fay, I am guessing it is sort of a roots/religion thing.

I was planning on going running tonight, but it's humid enough that I'm pretty sure any sort of exercise will give me an asthma attack. Feh. Staying inside in the air conditioning and reading, instead.

Also, I'm discovering that I really like teaching. I like it much better here, when I'm teaching kids, than I do at school, when I'm teaching college students. Not sure where this is leading me; just musing, for now.

Um. Why?

Lots of reasons. Official reasons: supposedly, Jewish kids in the US (well, young adults -- the program is for ages 18 to 26) are disconnected from Israel -- they (we) see it too much as an abstract "over there" and not the integral part of our lives that the people giving money to this think it should be. (Frankly, I found much of the stuff in this vein rather condescending, but was willing to just go along with it, because, hey, free trip.) The organization has a reputation for "brainwashing" people, for doing a heavy "You see, this is why the Israelis are good and the Arabs are bad," thing, but I didn't see that at all. We heard lots of speakers, from religious to secular, and from, well, far-right to moderate-left. That could have been better, but also could have been far worse.

As far as the "brainwashing" charges -- when we were there, we went to see a part of the security fence near Bethlehem, and a representative from the Israeli army was there to tell us about it. He started off with "I am wearing this uniform, and therefore I have to talk to you now as a representative of this army. If you ran into me on the street, I might tell you something else. But right now, I am in uniform, and I respect that." He then proceded to give us a "Why the security fence is good and proper" talk that was full of illogic. He convinced no one, and when we all asked indignant, "What do you mean, that's an acceptable consequence?" questions, he just shrugged. I think that that was the closest we got to anything resembling "brainwashing." The rest of the time, it was more getting to see stuff and experiencing the country.

I think they also wanted us to be able to go back to the States and be able to speak knowledgably about Israel, as an actual place that we'd seen and experienced, not just as an abstract entity.

Oh, I forgot to finish my thought there. Unofficial reasons for funding birthright trips: get young Jewish people to meet other young Jewish people, leading to Jewish marriages and lots of Jewish babies. They were actually rather heavy-handed with this message, though it's not officially anywhere. Most baby-boomer generation Jewish organizations and leaders will talk a lot about how our generation is abandoning Judaism, and how there's too much intermarriage, and how there will be no more American Jews in another 50 years, and all kinds of hand-wringing over that. Unfortunately, the "solution" proposed to most of this seems to be to try to bring us into the Mens Club and Sisterhood organizations that are mostly filled with our parents, and to completely ignore all the really interesting stuff (blogs, spiritual retreats, back to the land programs, innovative services, etc.) that we're creating for ourselves.

Um, sorry. Got a little off-track ranty there.