Katie* joined the modern Orthodox youth group Bnei Akiva (BA), which she now describes as “a militant Zionist youth group”, when she was six. Katie never felt completely at home in the group, but it was the only Jewish youth movement with a presence in her small Essex community.
By the time it had come for Katie to go on Israel tour – a rite of passage common to British Jewish youth movements, in which sixteen-year-olds spend a month travelling around Israel – she was beginning to feel uneasy about BA’s ideological leanings, particularly its support for members moving to Israel and joining the IDF, and its strong opposition to Jews “marrying out”.
Tour was an alienating experience for her before it even started. As the coach full of teenagers arrived at Heathrow, Katie says she heard a chorus of boos directed at a sculpture of an Emirates aeroplane. “I remember another kid standing up and being like, ‘Guys, that’s not cool,’ and then people calling him an ‘Arab-lover’,” she continued. ….more