Outlying Statistics on Shabbat

Friday night my friend and I went for Shabbat dinner with another family in Haifa. The food was declicious, but the conversation felt like a mix between and interrogation and a time share presentation for aliyah. The parents came in the late 1960's after the 1967 war, and so naturally, they were big proponents of all Jews returning to Israel. It got to the point where the conversation became uncomfortable because all the was discussed was aliyah, military service, how much "better" life in Israel is, and how every Jew should find his or her own connection to not just the recognized State of Israel, but also the occupied territories. One of the sons offered to take me on a tour of different places in the West Bank. My response to him was that I have no business going to the West Bank because there is nothing there for me.

I have no plans to make aliyah. I have nothing to gain and I certainly do not believe that it is my divine right to move into the occupied territories. I guess I'm the outlying statistic. Some of my friends in my program are planning to make aliyah after college. It's cool, but it's not for me. The ultimate goal of MASA, an organization that gave me scholarship money, is to get Jews to make aliyah after spending a year here. Again, I am the outlying statistic.

And don't tell me that I'm paranoid about them and their intentions. When they gave their presentation to us, they said 5 times that they were not trying to get Jews to make aliyah, however the very next day I went to their website and saw that they were having an aliyah fair. Similar to a career fair in America. WTF? They also said that they were trying to encourage dating and marriage within the Jewish people and to get people to go back to their home countries and tell Israel's side of the story, whatever it may be. So to sum up, they want people to blindly defend Israel publicly, have lots of Jewish children, and move here. I'm glad I gave the money back. I like thinking freely and standing up for what I believe in, not what people tell me to. I like being the lone outlying statistic. It makes life more interesting.