On a recent Thursday evening in July, the line outside Manhattan’s MCC Theater looked like someone had mixed a bubbe convention with a Camp Ramah reunion. This largely Jewish crowd, old and young, had come on a religious pilgrimage of sorts to the far west side to see Birthright, Jonathan Spector’s new play about a group of six friends who met on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in 2006. Over more than three hours, Birthright explores the vicissitudes of their relationships with one another, their shared region, and the Jewish state itself.
During the first intermission, in an audience spotted with yarmulkes, tattoos, and Chanel bags, I heard a 20-something asking her friend, “Did I tell you my latest jihad has to do with the Cardi B tickets I bought?” A few feet away, two 50-something women were bemoaning how young people just don’t understand what “the state of Israel meant to an older generation.”
They’re right. Today, Jews under the age of 25 might be more likely to see a play called Birthright than to actually go on a Birthright Israel Foundation–sponsored free trip to Israel. According to a March 2025 survey, only 35% of 18- to 34-year-olds currently identify as “Zionist”—an increasingly fraught label that has come to be associated with an unjust war led by an ethnonationalist government.
But for a little over 200 minutes, Birthright gives audiences a break from debating these issues in the group chat or the comment section. “The play is offering something cathartic to them. They are seeing themselves onstage, and it’s creating a space that has become very strained in their circle of friends,” Spector, the Tony-award winning playwright, told me over Zoom. MCC has extended Birthright’s sold-out run through August 23. A source at MCC says the company is seeing a lot of groups attending together, as well as playgoers coming with multiple family members. According to the source, at least one of those groups was made up of people in their 20s who just got back from their own Birthright trip and all bought tickets together.
Hale Appleman and Molly BernardEmilio Madrid
