‘Riding camels on Birthright isn’t allowed anymore. Now you only feed and pet them’

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Michael Broh, 25; lives in Memphis, flying to New York

Hi Michael, what were you doing in Israel?

I was with Birthright for two weeks and I extended the visit a little, because I enjoyed it so much.

How did you get to Birthright?

It was a process of a month or two. There was an interview, a medical examination, and then I had to get vaccinated. In the interview you’re asked if you’re Jewish, of course. You need at least one Jewish grandparent.

In another context that would sound antisemitic.

That’s what I thought, too. It’s funny you should say that. Like, it’s not a laughing matter. We were also at Yad Vashem. Anyway, we had one Israeli counselor, Benny, plus a Jewish American woman who works here for Birthright. I think she’s just gone back to school in the States, because there is no more Birthright and we were the last group before they shut down the project again.

They came to Israel as interns. Thanks to COVID-19, they’re staying

Birthright cancels remaining summer trips to Israel over new COVID quarantine rule

It was terrific to see you guys carrying on in Tel Aviv again.

It’s one thing to be a tourist and something else to live in the city we’re in now. We must be very irritating.

Maybe before the coronavirus crisis. In the past two months it’s been, like, “Birthright come back, world come back.”

I opted for a program that was mainly outdoors, so we traveled a lot, we slept in tents, we biked, we camped with Bedouin and we looked after camels. It turns out that riding camels is not allowed now, because the Bedouin didn’t treat them so well, so now it’s become something positive – where you feed the camel and pet it.

Where did you travel after Birthright?

I spent two days in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. I think they were surprised to see me there. Maybe because I’m Jewish, but to me it looked mostly like they hadn’t seen a tourist for a long time. They were glad to see me and my friends. We saw everything: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Al-Aqsa, I went to the Western Wall three times.

Why did you go to the Western Wall three times?

I was curious. When we were in Jerusalem our guide talked about it, but not in depth. I wanted to talk to them.

By “them,” you mean the Haredim?

Yes. At first they looked threatening with their coats and all, but the ones I met were very nice. My family’s Judaism was a bit muted. I grew up in Ohio, not in an area with a large Jewish population like New York. There aren’t too many synagogues and we celebrated the major holidays, Pesach and Hanukkah, but I didn’t feel I had a Jewish background. That’s why I wanted so much to talk to Haredim.

What did you talk about?

One was a Canadian who made aliyah, and I asked him what he thought about a third Temple. He said that the majority think we need to wait for the Messiah, and that it’s not in our hands but in the hands of God. It was interesting.

Wow, straight to the third Temple?

I tried to understand what he thinks and what the differences are between Reform Judaism, which I come from, and Orthodox Judaism. In most cases in the world you can’t communicate instinctively with people. Here, and maybe in New York or areas with a large Jewish population, you can connect with people more easily and feel more at home. I don’t have to think, “What if this guy doesn’t like the fact that I’m Jewish?” Because everyone here is Jewish.

Do you think about these things in the United States?

Depends where I am. There are neighborhoods where I do, yes. In the States in general, things are okay, but we have a long history of interracial tension. So if I’m in a bad neighborhood, in Baltimore or someplace, and I look obviously like a Jew or a white person, it might not be safe to walk in the street. You’re always thinking that you’re a minority in the country. I don’t know; it’s hard to explain. It’s just a different feeling. We got lost in Tel Aviv, we were supposed to check into a hotel but thought that it was some sort of scam, that there wasn’t really such a hotel. We went all the way to some strange street in the city; we didn’t know where we were and we looked lost. Then a woman saw that we were lost and suggested that we come to her place. She was amazing, she and her younger brother live in a big apartment, they gave us pita and hummus, we stayed there for hours until we figured out that our hotel wasn’t a scam. I can’t stop talking about the good people in Tel Aviv.

Milana Yaari.Hadas Parush

Milana Yaari, 42; lives in Jerusalem, arriving from Crete

Hi Milana, what did you do in Crete?

It was a family vacation. We met a cousin there with his family, from New York. All the cousins were supposed to go on a cruise, but it was canceled because of the coronavirus. In the meantime, we did something small. We’re a big family, we came from Uzbekistan. Half immigrated to Israel and half to the United States.

How did you decide who would go where?

It’s a long story.

Go ahead.

We grew up together. There was a large courtyard in Tashkent, where we were born. My grandmother had three children. The daughter was in the U.S., but the apartment of one son was on one side of the courtyard and on the other side was the other son’s apartment. It was like a hamula [clan]. Family meals, afternoons together, very different from Israel. We were going to immigrate to the States, but then my dad was killed in a road accident and my mom decided to make aliyah to Israel, because her family was here. I was 12 when we got here.

Are you disappointed that you came to Israel?

That’s a tough question to answer. Today I’m here already, I went to school here, built my career here, established the family here, so this is where my life is. But when I was young I was ambivalent. I felt like I’d been torn from the family I grew up with, and I asked myself why my mother brought me here.

Where did you settle?

I grew up in Ramle-Lod. In high school, I did a graduation project under the auspices of the Hebrew University, and that’s how I found out that there was a different Israel.

What do you mean?

My mom was a widow, so she got a public housing apartment in the so-called Train Neighborhood in Lod, which is quite a bad area. The whole community around me was on welfare, and there were quite a few criminals and drug addicts. And then in 11th grade, I discovered that in the theater track you could do a graduation project at the university with a tutor, and I had high ambitions. I just did it, the only one in my graduating class, and it opened a world to me. I would arrive at the Hebrew University and it was like I’d arrived in another country. Wow, it was like being in a movie. Afterward I learned about the concepts of a “First Israel” and a “Second Israel.” I really encountered those differences and it was amazing to see how much it wasn’t the same Israel, how different the environment was.

Do you remember your first time on campus?

Yes, it was very pretty. There’s lots of green. There’s a nice view on Mount Scopus, which overlooks the Old City. There’s a lot of green in Tashkent, but in Lod you see a completely different landscape. Housing projects, streets with no trees.

How did you feel when you got back to Lod after a visit like that?

Look, we are grateful for even having had the possibility to live in that apartment, because my mother couldn’t afford to buy anything. She was a widow with three kids. But it was clear that I wasn’t going back there. When I came home to Lod, I cried nonstop. I felt like I had arrived in a hole. Afterward I understood that I had to leave.

Did your brothers also leave?

Yes. One did an engineering degree and is in high-tech, married with three children and living in a lovely neighborhood in Ra’anana. The other studied law at the Hebrew University and got into real estate in Tel Aviv, where he lives. I am a doctoral student in the field of social-business entrepreneurship and also an organizational consultant.

Is your mother still in Lod?

No, she moved to Holon.

So you all left.

Yes. We’re from an educated family on my dad’s side, a family of doctors and engineers, so from age zero I heard from my grandmother, “You have to get higher education, you have to be independent, you have to able to support yourself with no connection to your husband.” I am from the Bukharan community, and in this context she was very feminist. In retrospect, I think it’s pretty amazing and not self-evident, certainly not in this generation. When I got married, my other grandmother said, “Be a good woman, be disciplined.” She was more traditional, so family values were far more important. To be disciplined was more of a value from her point of view.