American Students at Hebrew University Face Life, Selves, in Israel

A panel of American students at The Hebrew University recently aired both satisfaction and disappointment in Israel, in a frank public discussion with Mordechai Bar-On, head of the Youth and Hahalutz Department of the World Zionist Organization. This discussion was viewed as the first of a series of such meetings, where American students and Israeli authorities would “really listen to each other.” At the meeting, jointly sponsored by the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation and the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel, under the title “American Students in Israel: Reality or Escape?” a cross-section of the more than 1500 American students at The Hebrew University engaged in a dialogue with Bar-On, who emphasized the need for Americans and Israelis to work together despite some basic differences in approach and outlook, and, appreciating one another’s sensitivities, to engage in a fruitful struggle whose goal is “to find each other.” The four panelists, all members of the Hillel Enrichment Program, touched on such points as obstacles to be overcome in order to obtain more communication between Americans and Israelis (termed “a new breed”), the impact of America or “Americanism” on Israel now and in the future, and the sobering experience of discovering that the idealized Israel of their Zionist childhood is in fact a flesh and blood collection of real people and real problems.

These “real problems” were a surprise to political science student Carl Vinia, 19, a New Yorker who has studied at Cornell University. Carl freely admitted that he came to Israel running away from America, and looking for something–looking, for example, for an education uninterrupted by strikes–and was not prepared for the realities he found here. What David Bedein, 20, of Philadelphia, found in Israel is friends, a social milieu of like-minded young Jews who are expressing Judaism in other than synagogue situations. David, a former University of Wisconsin student who is here majoring in Jewish Education, sees great value in American Jews immigrating to Israel in groups, for mutual support in the adjustment phase, with a clear idea of what they can do for Israel. Grappling with the question of the “Diaspora values” of the immigrant, Steve Zipperstein, a 20-year-old Sociology major from UCLA, expressed doubt that such values would have an impact on Israeli society–rather, for better or worse, they were bound to dissolve or be suspended as the immigrant became part of the culture. This was contested by Bar-On, who hoped that the constant inflow of new ways of thinking would stimulate creative ferment in the Israeli society. The fourth panelist, Jerry Snider, 20, a history major from Rutgers, agreed that a great discrepancy existed between the student’s preconceptions about Israel and the reality, and ended with a statement that concisely summed up the positive tone of the whole meeting: “Now let’s talk!”