Birthright – Wrap Up
My Final Thoughts…
I’d have to say that overall, I was quite disappointed with my trip to Israel. I had always had a certain image of the Holy Land in my head due to the education I got at Hebrew School. The videos and images they used when showing us this amazing country were dated, and often times focused on the wars fought by the IDF. Because of this, I always saw a run down, old, ’70s view of Israel in my head. As a result, I was never quite intrigued to visit. I was told that I was mistaken: Israel is a modern country, with so much culture and history! As a history major, I should be dying to go and visit.
So when I first stepped off the Austrian Airline plane at Ben Gurion Airport, I had mixed expectations. On the one hand, I had my original ideas of what I was about to see, and on the other, everyone else had hyped up the experience. I think my trip proved my original vision to be quite true – at least in the areas of the country that I happened to visit. The architecture, though definitely not what I would call classic and old, was not modern and did look very worn down. When in Tel Aviv, I did not get to experience the “new Israel,” and when I visited Jerusalem, I saw very little of its ancient attractions. Over the ten days, I experienced very little art and culture, and was disappointed by this. Although Chen was absolutely superb in explaining the history of the country to us, we rarely went to specific historical sites or museums. The trip was extremely restrictive, and this resulted in a very narrow experience of Israel. Considering the amount of time we had, about ten full days, we accomplished very little and had way too much down time.
In the end, as a Zionist program, I unfortunately believe Taglit failed to engage me and many of the members on my trip as much as I would have hoped.
