by Allie Kahan
Lewis Summer Intern, Israel Education Center
The wooden door brushed against soft metal chimes as I
entered the gift shop. The shelves were overflowing with keepsake objects
ranging from handcrafted dreidels to the blue Hamsa necklaces which every girl
decides to buy for herself before returning from Birthright. I had grown used
to the constant company and chatter of my Shorashim group. To be in the absence
of noise felt strange to my ears. I walked to the front counter and grazed a
stack of Hamsa bracelets with my hand. I stood there, trying to silently count
how many friends I should actually buy one for, when an older Israeli gentleman
emerged from a hidden office in front of me.
“American?” He asked me, looking up and down at the girl in
front of him with the fanny pack and a double fistful of Hamsa bracelets. The
answer was obvious. I nodded. “Birthright?” I nodded again, smiling. “Do you
know the reason why you are here?” He leaned across the counter, his eyes
shining with meaning.
“To connect with my Jewish identity and experience Israel
for the first time,” I answered, paraphrasing what every single website had
told me the purpose of a free, 10-day trip to Israel was. At this, the man
burst into laughter, a real belly shaking laugh that made me go through my
answer word-for-word and wonder if there was some sort of unintentional joke I
made.
“Rachel, you are so naïve!” he chortled, catching his
breath.
“Actually, I’m Allie—“
“The thing is, Rachel,” He continued, unbothered. “Yes, you
are here for all of those things. But most importantly, you are here to fall in
love.”
“Me?” I looked at him
with genuine confusion.
“You, her, him, anyone.” The man threw his hands in the air
and shook his head. “Birthright is not a vacation. It is a journey. It is a
journey to fall in love and have a million Jewish babies.” He took off the glasses that were
precariously perched on his nose, rubbed them on his shirt, and put them on
again. “You got that, Rachel?”
I walked out of the store with 10 bracelets and a million
questions. The shopkeeper was not totally wrong. All around me I saw my once
big cohesive group pairing off, whispering and giggling about how they found
their “Birthright romance.” It was something I knew happened before the trip
when older and wiser Jewish girls told me that “practically everyone couples up
by Shabbat.” While there were many affaire de Coeur in the winter of 2014, none
were quite as legendary as my friend Summer's*.
When Summer first arrived in Israel,
she was mostly looking forward to meeting the Israeli soldiers on our trip. She
first saw Eitan* in Ben-Gurion Airport, where the IDF soldiers were meeting us
for the first time. He was in uniform and playing guitar for everyone as we
introduced ourselves. The next day she discovered that he knew French, a
language she also loved. They hiked side-by-side along the Zevitan River in the
Golan Heights, talking the entire three hours. He was trying to play it cool; she
thought he was being weird and aloof. Although they did not know it yet, this
was the beginning of something special.
“It’s
weird, because four days doesn’t sound like a lot, but on Birthright it’s like
forever,” Summer told me. She was right. It only took three for me to
completely forget that I had a life that wasn’t on that tour bus, and to
seriously wonder how I had ever lived 19 years without having these
people in my life. Day One you meet, Day Two you laugh, Day Three you bond, Day
Four you fall in love. Summer and Eitan spent most of Birthright together. He
helped her climb Masada, where we rang in the New Year back home with a sunrise
on top of a mountain. He showed her a beautiful skyline of Tel Aviv. They
laughed, debated and celebrated their time together the way any happy in-love
couple would. Even though those 10 days felt like forever, eventually they
found themselves back at the airport to say goodbye. “When we left Birthright,
I didn’t know if we would keep on talking or not. There was a plan that he
would visit in the summer, but that was six months away from when we got back,”
Summer said.
When
Summer returned to Chicago she and Eitan talked every day. Not because they
promised they would, but because they both genuinely wanted to. I distinctly
remember her carrying an iPad around with his face on it during a reunion
party, FaceTiming him in so that he could be with everyone again too. They
decided that they didn’t want to date other people, and she flew out to visit
him during her spring break. As soon as his IDF term ended, he came to Chicago
for the summer. After she graduated from college, Summer did a Masa program in
Tel Aviv to teach English. Together they traveled the world, documenting their adventures
in photos and writing. Neither of them planned on it, but that Birthright trip
completely changed the course of their lives. This trip gave them their start
to an epic love story, one that would not have ever happened had they not
signed up. How else would two people so perfectly perfect for each other on
other sides of the world meet?
Summer
and Eitan are still in Israel together. After her program ends, they will move
back to Chicago for a bit before embarking on their next adventure. When
friends of mine question fate, this is the tale I tell the nonbelievers. Going
on Birthright, I felt nothing but love. Love for my new Birthright family, love
for the Israelis we met along the way, and love for this amazing country that
leaves every visitor changed for the better. For every person contemplating
whether or when they should go on Birthright- go! Who knows- maybe the next
love story I’ll be telling will be yours.
*Names have been changed
