Is the Taglit experience something to talk of?
Draft Version
Anna Pokorná
Abstract
Based on qualitative research done on three Taglit trips, the article examines the impact of TaglitBirthright experience on Czech Jewish youth. Taglit is a global ten-day-long program designed to
spark a sense of Jewish identity in Jewish diaspora and strengthen its ties to Israel. The extensive
body of research conducted rests on an assumption that Taglit is a homeland tour serving diaspora
clientele. The Czech Jewish community has been decimated, first by the tragedy of the Holocaust,
then by forty years of communist anti-Semitic regime rule. Most active members of the community
perished or left after the war. Those who stayed completely assimilated. The transmission of Jewish
tradition was broken, and it is doubtful that we can consider Tagli tparticipants members of the
diaspora community today. The article examines the impact of Taglit experience as a powerful
medium of diaspora education on the third generation after the Holocaust in the Czech Republic, who
possess very weak, if any, diaspora consciousness. Drawing on existing theories of tourism and
research on Taglit, the process of creating a diaspora community through brief tourist encounters with
the destinations without pre-conceived ideas of Israel as a homeland will be analysed. As participants
were followed for the span of three years, the sustainability of the community that emerged from the
tourist context will be described.
Introduction
Quite recently I happened to come across one of the former Taglit-Birthright participants and
a participant of my research, and had extensive talks with her about her Taglit experience. She
was full of energy and excitement and eager to tell me “good news.” She was going back on
the Taglit trip as a country coordinator – a madricha. She was happy not only to go through
the Taglit experience again, but also to have the opportunity to be back in Israel. When
sharing the news with me, she uttered half-jokingly in an ironic tone of voice that she was
“taking the Jewish kids to Israel to show them their homeland.”
The message of this short interaction is threefold. First of all, the Taglit-Birthright is a popular
and sought-after experience among Jewish youth in the Czech Republic, secondly it creates a
connection to Israel, and thirdly, the notions of Israel as a homeland and Jewish people as
“my people” is accepted with reservations.
Since 2000, twice a year a group of 40 Czech and Slovak young Jews 1 set out on the journey
to Israel with Taglit-Birthright. Taglit-Birthright is a free ten day program in Israel designed
for Jewish youth aged 18 to 26 to rediscover their Jewish identity, as well as to strengthen
diaspora-Israel connections. The Taglit-Birthright is a huge endeavor in Jewish education that
started with the cooperation between American Jewish communities, North American
individual donors and the Israeli state. Since its inception in 1999, more than 350,000 young
people from 62 countries have participated in the program. The trip is open to everyone who
qualifies for the Law of Return, granting Israeli citizenship to everyone able to prove at least
one Jewish ancestor in his or her grandparents’ generation. 2As the principal aim of the trip is
to reach out to those who “are on the margins of Jewish life” (Katriel 1995, cited in Kelner,
p.41) it brings young Jews together with all sorts of Jewish identities and varied levels of
involvement in Jewish community life. Due to its global scope, not only those on the
“margins” of long established communities were drawn into Jewish life, but also those on the
geographical margins of global Jewish community were given a chance to become part of
global Jewish life. In the following sections, I am going to examine the impacts of the
program on young Czech Jews formed by their specific historical experience in postcommunist country.
Czech Jews
Officially, the number of registered Czech Jewish community members is about 3000. The
total number is estimated at about 7000; some estimates even count up to 15,000. The
problem of arriving at single number is not an issue of statistics. Even the simple statistical
question reveals controversies of Czech Jewish life. As Vyžvaldová (2010) points out, the
number always depends on “who asks and who answers,” in another words, who is considered
to be Jewish, if it is someone who complies with the orthodox definition of Jewish identity, or
who complies with the halakha law, or if the definition of the Law of Return is applied.
Moreover, there are a number of Jews who are not even aware of their Jewish origin. By all
accounts, 7000 is the total for the country of almost 10 and half million inhabitants, not a lot
even if we are speaking in terms of minorities.
1
The trips are organized exclusively for the Jewish youth from former Czechoslovakia with equal distribution of
Czechs and Slovaks in the group. The only exception were the years 2011 and 2012 when Czech and Slovak
participants were included into International Taglit group organized by a Jewish Agency in Budapest.
2
The Law of Return 5710-1950 was enacted by the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, on July 5, 1950.The Law
declares the right of Jews to come to Israel: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh (new
immigrant)." The Law of Return was modified in 1970 to extend the right of return to non-Jews with a Jewish
grandparent, and their spouses.
This situation emerged in consequence of two totalitarian regimes that had been
systematically destroying Jewish life, the German Nazi occupation from 1938 to 1945,
exterminating the Jewish population physically, and the Communist regime suppressing any
kind of difference since 1948. Even if the Jewish community in Prague was in operation over
the whole forty-year long period of communist rule, the potential danger of being openly
Jewish put a lot of members off and definitely did not attract new ones. In order to be able to
go on with their normal lives, the Jewish population that was already assimilated turned their
backs on the community, buried their memories of the Holocaust’s horrors and tried to wipe
away whatever was left of the Jewish tradition in their families. After the Velvet Revolution in
1989, the vacuum in the transmission of Jewish tradition created over the years reversed,
bringing new opportunities to Jewish life and opening Jewish life to outside influences
(Heitlinger 2006, Salner 1995).
After the Fall of Berlin Wall, Jewish life experienced a revival. Rethinking of national
identity in terms of democratic and free state brought heightened attention to the Jewish
heritage of the country. Newly opened and reconstructed synagogues, museums, Klezmer
band performances, and Kafka´s memorabilia popularized Jewish culture and drew flocks of
tourists to Prague. Very often it was Jewish life without any real community inhabiting it,
which Ruth Ellen Gruber (2002) in her study of post socialist Jewish life in Eastern Europe
calls “virtual Jewish life.” The popularization of Jewish culture endowed Jewish identity with
a tint of exoticism with a positive accent.
At the same time, a number of prewar Jewish organizations 3were re-established, and new
associations sprang up 4. Opening up to outside influences diversified religious life. Alongside
the official orthodox Jewish community, new congregations and religious organizations were
established. 5 However, even now more than 20 years after the Fall of communism, Jewish
youth organizations are struggling with a low membership base. Unlike them, Taglit program
gained widespread popularity.
Taglit as a homeland tour
Taglit-Birthright is described as a typical homeland tour (Kelner 2012, Powers 2011, Saxe
&Chazan 2008). Homeland tours are “group travel packages that take individuals to
destinations believed to be their land of origin” (Powers, 2011, p.3). Extensive research done
on Taglit, both quantitative (see, for example, Hecht, S, Sasson,T& Saxe, L 2006, Chazan, B
& Saxe, L 2008) and qualitative (Kelner 2012, Powers 2011, Chazan, B & Saxe, L 2008, for
Europe see Kastan 2011), rests on an assumption that Jews living outside Israel form a
diasporic community.
According to Safran (1991), diasporas are “expatriate minority communities” defined by 1)
dispersion from their original center, 2) maintaining the myths, memories, or visions of their
homeland, where, when the time is right, they will eventually return 3) support for their
3
Sports clubs HaKoach in Prague, Makkabi in Brno, local branches of WIZO, B’nai Brit were re-established.
The following organizations were established: Terezín Initiative (association of former Terezín prisoners), the
Czechoslovak Union of Jewish Youth (after 1993 separate Czech and Jewish Unions), the Jewish Liberal Union (associated
with the World Union of Progressive Judaism and Jewish Reconstructionist Federation) the Society for Czech-Israeli
Friendship, the Hidden Child, the Society for Christians and Jews.
5
These included conservative BejtPraha, progressive BejtSimcha, and Lubavitch Chabad Center.
4
homeland 4) feeling of difference and belief that they cannot be fully accepted in their host
country 5) group solidarity, defined by the relationship to their homeland.
Alienation of diaspora is thus of a different nature than that of a migrant community. Whereas
in migration discourse, in spite of migrants’ nostalgia for home, assimilation is possible;
diaspora discourse with its myth of return does not allow assimilation. Discrepancy between
the homeland as a place of origin, the place of a group’s past and possible future, and actual
lived space creates difference and delineates boundaries for the group. Anderson’s (Anderson
1983) imagined community of diaspora stretches over time as well as over boundaries of
national state.
Spaces transcending national boundaries as well as time of mythic origin, present and future
are linked through a common narrative of the history of dispersion. Every narrative and every
memory, even those of deteritorialized groups, “needs the support of a group delimited in
space and time” (Halbwachs1992, p.84). The space endowed with historic meanings ascribed
to it by a group anchors a shared past in the materiality of space. Due to its materiality, it not
only produces an illusion of objectivity and prevalence, but validates the story narrated by
community. The notion of a shared past then creates group solidarity and feelings of
belonging to the group (Halbwachs 1992).
For Jewish diaspora, the place of common origin and return existed for centuries only in
religious imagination. Imagination of the utopian “promised land” was maintained by
transnational religious ritual in local communities, and connected them into a wide global
community. Today, the place exists as the nation state of Israel, and religion with its global
forms of reproduction is apart from pockets of orthodoxy in decline. In order to retain
diaspora identity new modes of the cultural reproduction of a group must be employed.
Organized tourism as a new form of diasporic practice
Homeland tourism uses place to construct imagined community. By bringing homeland
tourist to places that symbolize the past of his community, discontinuities in space and time
are patched. Brief encounters with symbolic sites link a homeland tourist to his mythical past,
as well as to his present community of both his diasporic co-travelers and members of the
wider imagined community that derives its origin from the same space. Homeland tourism
fuels diasporic global imagination that enables people to develop and sustain relationships
within and across communities, live lives in a home away from the homeland and create
Appadurai’s “global ethnoscapes” of common imagination (Appadurai 1996). Habib (2004)
thus talks about travelling as a diasporic practice par excellence.
Even though some have criticized the use of tourism in American Jewish diaspora education
as a “quick fix” (Kelner 2012, p.42) to the Jewish identity crisis, it has brought, as shown in
qualitative studies, its results. In follow-up studies participants showed growing determination
to participate in Jewish community life, not to marry out of faith, and to engage in pro-Israeli
advocacy (Sasson,T& Saxe, L 2006, Chazan, B & Saxe, L 2008).
The tourist experience of the space is structured and organized by what we expect from the
encounter. The expectations are formed by society, historical period, social group and
mediated by tour guides (Urry 2002). The impact of the place as employed by homeland
tourism thus depends on the interaction between the tourist as a diasporic individual with a
pre-conceived belief about the place, and the sites he visits as his homeland. If Czech Taglit
participants possess pre-conceived beliefs about Israel as their homeland, and consequently
might be considered diaspora, it is at least problematic. Czech Taglit trips thus raise important
questions. How do the trips designed for diaspora work with those who share a very weak, if
any, kind of diaspora consciousness, including myths of common origin and belonging? In
other words, is a brief encounter with the space able to construct an imagined diaspora
community and project its present onto the future?
Participants of the research
If diaspora is defined by a belief in being a population dispersed from the centre, by
maintaining the myth of common origin, support for their homeland, feeling of difference and
group solidarity, the participants of my research do not fit the definition. Even though I cannot
account for all Taglit participants, those who participated on the trips where I conducted my
research usually grew up in a Czech environment in the absence of a group sustaining the
myth of common origin and return. As a result, they do not feel any sense of difference from
the majority of the Czech population. Historical circumstances made their grandparents’ and
parents’ families completely assimilate, reject communal life, abandon Jewish ritual year with
all its traditions and marry out of faith. As a result, only a few participants have both Jewish
grandparents. Even if there were some remnants of the past, such as a menorah on the shelf, a
shelf full of books by Jewish authors, grandparents buying matzo bread on Passover, a few
expressions in Yiddish used only in the family circle, the second and consequently the third
generation after the Holocaust usually has only a vague idea of what these fragments mean,
and their awareness of being Jewish is limited to the family history so dramatically marked by
the tragedy of Shoah, or to the silence surrounding it. Their Jewish identity acquired in the
family circle is mainly based on the Holocaust memory. Apart from the Holocaust memory,
their Jewish families retained certain social characteristics of the pre-war urban Jewish
population. They come from middle-class families of professionals and university graduates
where emphasis was traditionally put on education. At the time of the research, most of the
participants were university students or fresh graduates ages 18 to 26.
Methodology
The data was collected on 3 Taglit trips, each of approximately 30 participants. As Jewish
Agency policy for Central Europe changed in the course of my research and trips for Czech
and Slovak participants were cancelled incorporating Czech and Slovak 6 participants into a
broader frame of Central European, two of the three participant observations were done on
Central European - International Trips. Central European - International trips include Czechs,
Slovaks, Hungarians, Serbians, Montenegrins, and Slovenians. As I wanted to focus on the
Czech specifics of the Taglit experience, I included in the sample only Czech participants. In
addition, participant observation on pre-trip orientations along with a pre-trip survey in the
form of short questionnaires for Czech participants were conducted. Afterwards, narrative
interviews and participant observation on post-Taglit meetings were done. Data yielded from
participant observation as well as narrative interviews were collected in the course of one
academic year in the MASA 7 program.
6
Until 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia formed one state. Both countries are culturally very close, and their
cultures and economies are still interconnected. The languages are so close that there are no language barriers
between Czechs and Slovaks. Until 1993 Czech and Slovak Jewish communities formed one body and are still in
close cooperation.
7
MASA is a longer term study program in Israel. It is introduced and offered on Taglit trips.
In general, participants were willing to give interviews. In total, I conducted 25 interviews
with Taglit participants. I interviewed all the participants from international trips (altogether
13 interviews) and 12 out of 20 Czech participants who participated in the Czechoslovak trip.
I participated in the Czechoslovak trip as a participant; on 2 international trips I worked as a
country coordinator – a madricha. Due to my previous stays in Israel, participants ascribed to
me instead of the role of researcher, the role of their friend and peer able to provide them with
information on Israel from a point of view that was closer to their own than that of Israeli
coordinators.
Pre-trip
The participants’ lack of familiarity with Jewish life became obvious right at the beginning,
during the first encounters with them. In order to be accepted to the program they had to
submit documents attesting to their Jewish origin and have a short entrance interview. The
interview is supposed to cover questions created by the regional organizer of the Taglit
program in the Czech Republic, a branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel in Budapest. Apart
from technicalities such as medical conditions and fulfillment of eligibility criteria, the
questionnaire inquires about participants’ Jewish background.
A few of the participants needed explanations of the terms such as bar/bat mitzvah, and
almost all of them showed unfamiliarity with religious affiliations about which the
questionnaire inquired. Apart from ignorance about the basic facts of Jewish life, the
questionnaire confused participants with its wording of the question “Do you consider
yourself to be Jewish?” Even those who qualified for the trip and submitted all the documents
attesting to their Jewish origin, answered “no.” It was not that they did not know about their
Jewish ancestry. After discussing the topic for a while, it turned out that they did not feel
“Jewish enough” to claim themselves Jewish.
The lack of confidence in claiming themselves Jewish manifested on more occasions.
Participants confided in me later on that they had not felt comfortable before the interview
because they had expected having to show involvement in existing structures of Jewish life.
They also expressed preoccupations with not being able to fit in with the group of other
participants who, as they had supposed, would have stronger Jewish backgrounds or were
“Jewish activists” involved in institutional Jewish life.
Moreover, their insecurity was reflected in their attitude toward the fact that the trip was for
free. Participants considered one participant from Jewish orthodox background who displayed
visible marks of Jewish identity, such wearing as the tzitzit and kippah, “the only one from the
group who really deserved the trip.” The trip being free-of-charge also raised suspicions
about its ideological undertones. Distrust towards ideology, collectivism and institutions are
typical for Eastern European countries with their long histories of totalitarian communist rule.
This is even more evident in the Czech Republic, historically a small state with only minor
nationalistic ambitions. The label “Jewish activist” is almost an insult in youth culture.
However, the possibility to travel to Israel for free was something that outweighed all doubts,
and participants’ pragmatism won over their feelings of discomfort. The opportunity to
individually extend return flight tickets and stay in Israel longer might also have been a factor
in their decision-making.
When they were asked about their expectations of the trip, they usually stated that they
wanted to learn about Israel, Jewish tradition and family history. Some were interested in
military history. Only a minimum of participants stated interest in the Hebrew language. The
Holocaust was not mentioned at all. Answers, however, might have been influenced by my
role as madricha. Not knowing what was expected from them, participants answered in a way
supposed to be appropriate in the given context of applying for a trip that was given to them
for free. As they confided in me later on, they had expected the trip to be a “Zionist
brainwash.”
At the beginning, the main idea behind the trip was totally misunderstood. It was understood
either as a program destined to those who are already part of Jewish life or as ideological
recruitment. The Holocaust experience of their grandparents and the family memory could not
create a feeling of belonging that would automatically justify the “gift of the trip.” In addition,
it did not occur to them to draw historical links between the Holocaust and the history of the
state of Israel. Since they did not relate the Holocaust and their private family histories to
Israel as a centre of shared collective transnational memory, the feelings of transnational
collective solidarity in the present, that would make the “gift”’ understandable, could not be
created. The whole concept of being given a trip just because of Jewish origin thus raised
suspicion.
It was also a lack of local community infrastructure, such as Jewish schooling and visible and
open Jewish institutions that stood behind misconceptions of the program. As a consequence
of forty years of communism and virtual non-existence of Jewish institutional life, Jewish
institutions now have a very low membership base and low-profile. For example, the Internet
pages of the Jewish Agency are hard to find and provide only basic information about the
programs on offer. Taglit is described in one paragraph as a program based on an assumption
that every Jew should have a chance to visit Israel. Participants had no idea about what the
Jewish Agency is, how it functions and what the objectives are. The institution was
mysterious in their eyes. The recruitment of participants, which is by informal channels and
by word of mouth, only adds to its secretive character.
Czech organizers who were supposed to introduce participants to the Taglit experience were
not able to make up for this lack of background information. The pre-trip meeting was
focused on technicalities and the organization of the trip. The organizers’ attempt to be
sensitive to participants’ backgrounds consisted of warning them about the tight schedule and
an organization designed for “American kids abroad for the first time,” which participants
might not be used to. They also tried to prepare participants for “an overly Zionist
interpretation of Israeli history” given on the trip which, in their view, stems from a different
mentality. However, they did not elaborate more on these differences.
On the trip
Out of place
As Birthright as an umbrella organization delineates criteria for local tour operators, the trips
offered worldwide follow a uniform scenario. Since the Czech Jewish community is a tiny
one and only two trips a year are organized, “niche” or ‘’community’’ trips trying to
accommodate for special interests or needs are not offered. The only adjustments done to the
Czechoslovak trips are allocating an Israeli tour guide who has experience with guiding
European groups. However, due to ignorance to the Czech context it does not change the
situation much. For example, assuming that the foreign language mostly taught in the Czech
Republic and Slovakia is French, the Czechoslovak trip was guided by a guide who could
speak flawless French, however, his English was much worse than that of the participants who
are taught English since elementary school. Although the guide, in the end, was popular
among the participants, it was partly because of his “funny accent” and grammatical mistakes
that sometimes changed the meaning of his talks and downplayed the message. Moreover,
such cultural insensitivity created in the participants a feeling that the Czechoslovak trips are
a by product of a huge endeavour in which they were included only as a matter of form, and
reinforced their feeling that they found themselves on the trip by mistake.
Community
The feelings of being out of place that popped up now and then on the trip, in general
subsided when participants became engaged in personal interactions on the trip.
I was quite relieved when I saw that everyone is normal, I mean not normal, but they
weren’t religious or members of any Jewish organizations. I don’t know, I know some
people who have been on Taglit and they told me it’s fun, but I was afraid, that everyone
would be much more into the whole thing. I’m not that kind of “team player,” who
easily goes with the flow. I don’t know, I have a kind of inclination towards Jewish stuff
but I don’t want to be part of anything. It just seems unnatural for me. I pass by a
synagogue in Prague and I’m curious but I never enter. I have no problems enter in the
church, but this seems to me too distant, to communitarian, but there (in Israel) it was
different. No one knew more or less anything, or there were also those who knew less
than me, so we went there together and the guide showed us everything. He did not look
down on us for not knowing enough. [sic.] (Jáchym 25)
The community that was created on the trip was of crucial importance to the participants.
Although they did not have to guard their Jewish identity in “their family closest” as their
parents had to, discontinuity in transmission of Jewish identity deprived them of an
opportunity to find meaningful frameworks for articulating their experience. Participants were
drawn into these frameworks by the opportunity to travel to a foreign country for free, which
seemed to them a natural pragmatic reason to come to Israel without falling under the
suspicion of being a Jewish activist. The community brought together by “pragmatism” was
also viewed as something that formed naturally. Moreover, in Israel Jewish life present
everywhere lost its “secretive” character in the small Czech Jewish community, where the
presence of someone “who does not belong and is just curious” is too obvious. Displacement
and the role of tourists ascribed to the participants in the context of the trip made curiosity
about the places when watching the “spectacle” a natural part of their roles.
The participants valued the social experience of the trip in a positive way. They expressed
their surprise at how close they became to each other. Feelings of closeness were to a large
part facilitated by their similar socio-economic background. Those who did not share it – on
each trip there was always one or two participants with a different background - stood on the
margins of the group.
Mifgash
The trip did not only provide a framework for creating a community among diaspora
participants. Each trip is accompanied by a group of eight young Israelis who are at the time
serving in the Israeli army and are given leave for the time of the trip. Since military service
forms part of young adults’ experience, they are supposed to mediate the Israel’s youth
experience. Encounters between Israelis and their diaspora counterparts, in Hebrew mifgash
form an integral part of the design of the trip and have become an acknowledged institution in
diaspora education. The aim of the mifgash introduced in the mid 1990’s is “providing
opportunities for Jewish teenagers from all over the world to interact with their Israeli
counterparts in a structured environment, thus creating a more representative encounter with
Israel …...reduce the number of stereotypes about Israelis.....“ (Cohen, 2000, p.24).Informal
interactions with them introduce participants to different notions of Jewish life and make them
see Jewish life in a Jewish country.
In the Czech Republic, you almost don’t see anyone practicing Jewish rituals. If you do,
it is only old religious people in synagogues or you see those who don’t even have
anyone Jewish in the family and converted. It seems as they need to stick to something
and they don’t do anything else than to retain this Jewish things. Because it is hard, like
kosher shops are not at every corner. At home it seems as a kind of anachronism, some
remnant of the past that does not exist anymore. I think, first time I saw celebrations of
Shabbat was in Israel. And I like it, it was like family celebration, something like
Christmas in my family. In Israel people don’t take it with this seriousness and tragedy as
in the Czech Republic, the tradition doesn’t bother you with any restrictions, like you can
eat this and that and you can’t wear this and all these things are just here … [sic.] (Hana,
25)
Young Israelis show participants that the Jewish way of life is compatible with the modern
way of life, and that being Jewish is just one part of their identity. Talks on their Jewish
experience intertwine with talks about topics they share globally as members of global youth
culture. These interactions do not turn participants into adherents of Jewish tradition, rather
they open up the possibility for them to connect their own family past to their present, and to
contemplate their Jewish identity in a different perspective.
Sites
Community created at the present, both locally among the participants, and transnationally
with Israelis, is put in a context of Jewish past by touring the sites representing Jewish
narratives. The itinerary of the trip takes participants from the ancient past, represented by
Masada, Jerusalem and the Western Wall, to the Holocaust memorial YadVashem with Mt.
Herzl above, where a military cemetery for all soldiers who have fought for the existence of
the state is placed, to Tel Aviv with its cosmopolitan modern life. Due to the packed program,
participants admitted to not paying attention to all the explanations given at the sightseeing
spots. When we were talking about the itinerary during interviews after the trip, they often
confused historical data, especially those connected to ancient Jewish history. At the same
time they felt that interpretations given at the sites of national history of the state of Israel
were too theatrical and exaggerated.
I think I learned a lot about Israel. I didn’t pay attention to all that was being said, it was
just too much information for me, especially towards the end of the trip. Also, if you are
not familiar with Israeli history it is sometimes hard to remember everything, but I really
like to be at all those places, like Western Wall. In Jerusalem, the atmosphere was just
magical. It is hard to describe it. I wanted to see it but it was kind of long term plan.
What impressed me was also Yad Vashem. I’ve been to Teresienstadt but this was
something different. Here you see how huge it was (the Holocaust)…and Mt.Herzl, it
was interesting to see that in Israel it is really different. We (Czechs) don’t have this
national pride and we are not able to put our lives on line just because of the state. I liked
when soldiers talked about their service at the cemetery, it makes you understand that
this country wouldn’t exist, if it were not for them, but singing national anthem at the top
of the mountain it was just too much for me. It reminds me of Americans. When I studied
in the States we sang American anthem every morning. I mean, even if we were making
fun of it, if you see it here, you understand and you also understand that this place
wouldn’t exist. You also feel that here it is different, you understand what stands behind
it and you know it is somehow closer to you. I was thinking about how my life would be
if it hadn’t been for the Holocaust, if we went to synagogue now if we celebrated Jewish
holidays. I think I started to think about something that I had taken for granted, like that
my grandmother had went through this experience and that this huge catastrophe was not
important just for the survivors but for the whole history. They teach us about it at
school, but there it’s just something that happened, that is terrible, but it is over. I also
tried to picture myself living in Israel, if I would be able to the same [sic.] (Tereza 21).
Even though the places and performances done at the sites do not create immediate
identification with Jewish history, they lead to rethinking of Jewish identity in a historical
perspective. Encounters with physical reminders of Jewish history give self-objectification
historical dimensions, and make participants incorporate their individual histories of their
families into the wider collective memory of the Jewish community. The sense of belonging is
widened to an imagined collectivity that includes Israel.
Not all the sites make participants relate to their personal experiences. While the Holocaust
memorial Yad Vashem and the Western Wall were the most cited sites in the interviews,
neither Masada nor visiting the places where the Dead Sea scrolls were found impressed the
participants much.
Masada has a symbolic meaning for the Zionist construction of collective memory. In 73
A.D., 960 Jewish rebels under siege in the ancient desert fortress of Masada committed
suicide rather than surrender to a Roman legion. The story of Masada attests to the heroic
nature of the Jewish nation. At the beginning of the visit of Masada, participants were shown
a film depicting the heroic uprising against Romans and how archeologist Yigael Yadin
discovered the place. The film was screened on a big screen and popularized the history.
Close ups on the narrator, walking through the sites of the ancient fortress’s excavations, and
talking about the Masada history alternated with featured scenes depicting the Masada
uprising. The story was accompanied by dramatic background music. Participants ridiculed
the story and mimicked its “bombastic” style. It seemed to them too instructive and
educational. In the same way, they did not feel addressed by the appeals to common Jewish
belonging in the Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where the Israeli state was declared in 1948.
The guide turned to them in an emotional way to deliver a story of struggles for independence
that “have not ended yet.” She used words such as “our country, our nation”.
I don’t know, it just seems ridiculous. You stand at the sites of Israeli history and
someone is telling you this is your country, this is your place. It’s not that I don’t feel
anything in here, but it’s not my country. I would like to be here longer, learning more,
because it has some personal appeal to me. But it is not my country. [sic.] (Jakub 24)
In the tourist experience, the sites are not important for their informative value but because
they are representations of values. As Urry (2004) points out, these representations are
structured and organized, in another words, even if guides and guidebooks serve as mediators,
our pre-conceived ideas form the message that comes up from the encounter with the place.
The homeland tourist is in places looking for representations of his personal heritage, for
signs of similarity. Sites constructed by guides as places of Zionist history did not create
feelings of sameness. Participants found it hard to connect with representations of heroic
Zionist myth. However, if these places were mediated through personal stories of their peers
with whom they had made personal relationships and had created community, the place
became a point of personal questioning of their own Jewish identity.
Post-trip
Sparking Jewish identity
The trip was no doubt a strong experience. However, it did not reflect in “hard data.” Czech
trip organizers were trying to put participants in touch with the Union of Jewish Youth, and
started sending out informative e-mails about the Union’s activities. The attendance was very
low, and as the time passed, it was growing even lower.
In the interviews, participants talked about their intentions to learn more about Jewish history
and culture. If their Jewish grandparents were still alive, they started to ask them more about
the family history. Their parents and grandparents asked them in return about their Israeli
experience. Participants also claimed their intention to learn more about Israeli and Jewish
history and culture, as well as about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The trip did not help them
to overcome their resistance to institutional Jewish life, and they filled in their missing
knowledge by reading books and watching movies.
Local community?
Participants kept meeting informally. Most of the time, their meetings did not include Jewish
content and were ordinary outings with friends. During one of their meetings, at which I
happened to be present, among a vast array of topics they discussed popped up the idea of
going to a synagogue in Prague to see a religious service. One of the participants, who was
the only one from the group a regular visitor to services, offered to take them to her
synagogue. Accompanied by the “insider,” everyone felt more comfortable and the deal was
struck. The visit never materialized.
Their conversations also referred back to their trip experience, the people and places that
inhabited it. Although these meetings could not be defined as “Jewish,” it was the trip that
made a framework for them and non-participants never took part. In causal talks they also
used jokes to refer to themselves as Jewish. They were playing on Jewish stereotypes and
commented on some of their behavior that seemingly confirmed the stereotypes of “typically
Jewish” behavior.
I know it is silly but it is fun. It was also on the trip and then we just built on the jokes
from that time. Like the one about Jewish noses. We were really drunk and we were
talking about how Jewish is who according to the size of the nose. And then we made a
competition. I know it’s stupid but at the time it was fun. But even now we say the things
like OK, who we have here David studies medicine, Petr law and Hana sociology typical
Jewish occupations. [sic] (Eva 22)
Transnational Community
The experience of the trip was revived by visits of their Israeli friends they made on the trip.
As the young Israelis allocated to the trip were almost at the end of their military service, their
visits to Europe were not of random occurrence. A backpacking trip abroad soon after military
service is, according to Cohen and Noy (2005), a common custom among Israeli youth, who
need to free themselves of the daily military routine and re-create themselves in order to enter
into the routines of Israeli society again. Those who chose Europe for their backpacking ritual
contacted their European peers and stayed with them for some time. From time to time,
international participants meet as a group in Budapest or Prague, again outside institutional
frames.
International connections are also maintained through social media. Participants interact on
the group pages set up on Facebook, and share and comment on photos. Their activity
increases especially in times of heightened security situations in Israel. Europeans express
their solidarity. Israelis inform them about the situation and assure them that they are safe.
Comings and goings to and from Israel are also widely discussed topics on their Facebook
group pages. One of the participants from Hungary made Alyiah 8 and regularly updated all the
participants about the process.
Only a minimum of the participants decided to make Alyiah. I did not follow any international
participants except for Czechs, and none that I know of made Aliyah. Nevertheless, short trips
to Israel are quite popular. Right after the trip, participants also sought opportunities to study
in Israel or to volunteer in Israel. Over time, their determination weakened or was postponed.
It was poor funding opportunities for studying in Israel, more attractive opportunities for
studying at prestigious universities in Europe, or professional opportunities in the Czech
Republic, that put them off. Some respondents also rejected the idea because of their nonJewish partner who could not accompany them on Jewish Agency sponsored programs.
Re-entering the majority population
The experience of the place did not only impact the creation of community from the inside.
And then when I came back everyone kept asking me about the trip. I was so tired of
explaining everything again. What also irritated me was that I became kind of expert on
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since I was in Israel I should not only know everything but it
also meant for my non-Jewish friends that I was a Jew. I don’t know if I like it or not. On
the one hand it’s good to be special in some way, on the other hand it’s doesn’t make you
different, just interesting. You don’t suffer for being Jewish, it’s just interesting. [sic.]
(Tomáš 24)
Being in Israel not only left marks in the experience and memory of the participants, but also
brought out their Jewish past in the eyes of the majority. The place not only functioned in its
physical presence as a symbol endowed with values towards which one identifies or does not
identify. Israel as a place and as a sign circulates through transnational contexts and is
ascribed to those, who seemingly identify with it, by experiencing it first-hand.
Conclusion
Prior to the trip, most of the Czech Jewish youth who participate in the Taglit program are not
part of the actual Jewish community based on face-to-face regular interactions. They also
cannot be considered members of the imagined “diaspora community,” as defined by Safran.
They do not share diasporic consciousness, feelings of solidarity or distinction from the
majority of society. The only link that connects them to the wider imagined Jewish collective
is the Holocaust that so dramatically affected their families’ histories. Growing up in
8
Aliyah is immigration of Jews from the diaspora to Israel.
mainstream society, there is no community accessible to them, in which they could remember
the past, and that would turn the history into Halbwach’s collective memory. Only collective
memory maintained by a group serves as a model for the present and forms identities,
identification and a sense of belonging to a community (Halbwachs 1993).
The program’s use of place creates a framework for remembering their family past so that it
becomes their present. An attractive opportunity to travel to Israel brings dispersed
individuals of Jewish origin together. A community that is created apart from home shares
experiences of travelling and their difference from the surrounding culture makes them realize
how close they are to each other. The emergence of this common ground of understanding is
constructed by the trip, as a result of common Jewish historical experience. History is revived
by the present community, defined by the eligibility criteria for the trip as Jewish, as well as
by physical presence at the places of common origin.
The sites to which they travel serve as physical reminders of shared history and attest to its
stability and realness. Not all of them provoke reflection, but the knowledge of some of the
basic facts of Jewish history they acquire on the trip creates feelings of distinction when they
return home and are asked by their non-Jewish friends about the experience.
In order for sites to provoke reflection they have to bear some connection to their pre-trip
conception of what it means for them to be Jewish. It was therefore at the Holocaust memorial
Yad Vashem where they reflected on their own place in Jewish history. Remembering the
Holocaust in Israel, away from where the tragedy happened, makes them connect the
Holocaust part of their family history to the wider Jewish narrative and reconstruct their
perception of the imagined Jewish collective. The imagined Jewish collective is stretched over
place and time by movement in space and commemorating the past. The presence of Israeli
peers who place themselves in the succession of generations and historical events and embody
the outcome of Jewish history makes them connect history to the present. Jewish life is no
longer a thing of the past, but a lived reality. Similarly, the plurality of Jewish identities Israel
offers makes them feel that they could have a place in it. Dislocation of tourists also makes
them overcome feelings of alienation when entering the sites defined as Jewish. To be
alienated forms a part of a tourist’s role. What is considered alienation in one’s own
community in the Czech Republic is in Israel just a natural part of the experience.
The experience of the trip leaves longer lasting imprints in participants’ lives. It cannot make
up for the discontinuities in the passing down of Jewish tradition that left them without
meaningful frames for maintaining the Jewish identity that sustain the boundaries of a
diaspora community. Nevertheless, it draws them into a wider transnational imagined and
actual community. Local and international friendships established on the trip encourage
participants to learn more about Jewish life and their intention to return to Israel. Although the
impact of the trip is almost invisible on the local level, in the transnational perspective the trip
succeeded in creating frames for contributing to collective memory. The collective memory
sparked on the trip might but also might not become a starting point for creating diasporic
consciousness. Whether it becomes a start of a journey towards creating a diaspora depends
on how actively these frames created by the trip are maintained and revived.
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