I think I’m leaving Zionism, or Zionism is leaving me.

I was 21 years old the first time I went to Israel.

Like many American Jews, my first experience was through Taglit Birthright, a Jewish organization that offered a 10-day, all-expenses-paid tour of the country. For young Jews, especially the secular kind (as I was), the Birthright trip is often a moving and dramatic experience. You are greeted and spoken to like a long lost family member returning home; you are told, accurately, that the land you are on was ruled by your ancestors thousands of years ago. You are surrounded in public, for the first time, by other Jews — no longer a minority (as you would be throughout the Middle East) or subject to nonstop Christmas advertising and immature punchlines about your nose (like you might be in the United States).  

It is equal parts exhilarating and identity forming. And, like most of the people on the trip, I was moved to tears at several moments, or thought for the first time that G-d might be real, or wanted to join the Israeli army and protect this nation of my people. I wasn’t naive about the context; I was a burgeoning journalist, a skeptic of faith and organized religion, and I understood that this trip was a propaganda tour. But I couldn’t deny the feelings it stirred in me — my sense that this place felt like home, that I had centuries of connection to it, that it was a safe haven for my people in the wake of the greatest attempt to destroy us in world history (and, as we Jews are often reminded, there have been many).