Jewish kids meet Israel

They met her and they loved her - Yishai and I just got back from a wonderful 10 day Birthright trip to Israel in which we escorted 40 first-timers to Israel throughout their ancestral home. With all of the painful issues at the forefront (what else is new?), this trip was the opposite of gut-wrenching, the opposite of painful or sorrowful. It was beautiful.
To see these young people experience their land for the first time, watching them absorb the curves and colors, the society and the other-worldliness, was such a joy and inspiration. They hiked, they swam, they talked and they prayed. They asked the difficult questions that belie their desire for truth, and they cried for the problems we all face - in Israel, in Judaism, in life...
And on the last night, hours after a suicide bomber blew up 20 of their brothers and sisters, sitting in a circle, they summed up their experiences. Some of them, who had never before been out of the country, meekly offered to the group that they might like to come back and make their lives here, "If I'm lucky enough."

It was sweet and special and real. Not the kind of real that everyone's focused on these days - the death and the politics and the money - but the kind of real that everyone wants to hear about but no one seeks out, the revolution of Jewish youth, one person at a time. Yishai and I feel extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to meet these people, the future of Israel, because that's exactly what they will be.