Funding In-Marriage Out Of His Own Pocket

“You have to try to find Jewish love,” Momo Lifshitz, inset, told his Oranim trip participants, pictured here near the Syrian border. LEFT CREDIT: Sharon Udasin

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Tel Aviv — Tucked into the rocky thickets of Mount Carmel in northern Israel, 43 American 20-somethings gathered in a hotel conference room to play a simple game — using their bodies as place markers, they lined up across the room according to how important they found dating Jews, and Jews alone.

At first, only four people stood on the “date Jews” side of the room. But when the question changed to marriage, four soon grew to 15. And when marriage changed to raising children Jewish, a good 15 more shuffled over.

“If I were going to raise my kids with a religion, I would want it to be Judaism,” said Matt Lakind, 29, from Hoboken, N.J., who had joined the trip with his girlfriend, Erica Roth. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t want them to have any religion, that’s all.”

A week later, after touring Israel from top to bottom, east to west and back again, his opinion changed. “Now coming here I can see there’s actually a whole ethnic culture to Judaism that has been harder to find in the past,” he said. “Now I understand why when people ask where I’m from, I will tell them: ‘I’m Jewish.’”

Lakind and Roth were participating in an inaugural free 10-day trip to Israel, sponsored by Oranim Educational Initiatives, and funded personally by the owner of the organization, Shlomo “Momo” Lifshitz. Though their trip followed an itinerary quite similar to that of the better-known Taglit-Birthright Israel, this 10-day journey was under the auspices of Oranim alone.  Continue reading…