Some years back, I was in line to check in for a flight from Ben
Gurion to London Gatwick. I had been in
Israel for a week and a half: a week for
a little study at a yeshiva, and a few extra days to attend the wedding of one
of Clara’s nieces. Clara didn’t travel
to Israel for the wedding because our kids were young and it was too much
trouble. But as I happened to be there
anyway, I extended my stay to attend.
Having stayed at
Clara’s parents’ home for a few days for the wedding, I of course found myself
loaded down with care packages to take home.
If you’ve got a mother-in-law, you probably understand this. There was no way I was leaving that house
without a mountain of foodstuffs thrust upon me. Good thing I wasn’t coming to Australia! I tried the I Don’t Have Room in My
Suitcase ruse, but it didn’t work.
There was an extra suitcase in the house; I was welcome to use it.
So I set off to the
airport. If you’ve flown in or out of
Israel, you know of the extra security.
Before reaching the check-in counter, you and all your luggage face a
security agent, who questions you at length about what you’re carrying, who
packed it, and how you controlled it. Maybe I’m a pathological truth-teller; I found
myself unable to lie and say that I’d packed the bags myself.
Did anybody give
you anything to carry on the flight?
Yes.
Who gave you
something?
My wife’s mother.
Do you know what it
is?
Food for my children.
Ah, that’s a savta’s
job. And
she affixed the security tape to my bag and passed me through.
Backward a bunch of
years. I was in Israel to study, and I
had travelled to Ashkelon to spend Shabbat with Clara and her family. I took the Thursday evening bus. On Friday morning, looking for something to
do, I borrowed Clara’s car and drove to Beersheva to see the old Beduin
Market. Returning to Ashkelon, I did
what people did in those days; I filled the car with hitch hikers. One was an older woman. Once she realised my Hebrew carried a foreign
accent, she began giving me the Third Degree.
Where are you from?
The United States.
Why are you here?
I’m studying.
Whose car is this?
My fiance’s.
Why haven’t you become a citizen?
I’m going back to the US to finish
my studies.
Oh, that’s okay. The State
of Israel isn’t running away. (Meaning: You’ve got the rest of your life to
immigrate.)
I can tell you a dozen more, cute
stories, from a dozen different visits, but the aforementioned encounters well
illustrate the joy of being in Israel.
It’s not that it’s the world’s most beautiful country. There is not more to do in Israel than
anywhere else. And it’s not that the
people are more, or less, kind than the people anywhere else. It’s just that the Israeli people you
encounter are likely to be almost exclusively Jewish. Except for the staff at hotels where you
might stay. There you’ll encounter
Israeli Arabs, but otherwise you don’t meet them in casual encounters along the
way. But Jews are not shy as a
group. In chance encounters, they will
talk to you, advise you, interrogate you.
It’s just so quintessentially Jewish.
And because of that, each and every encounter with them brings a delight
– or an exasperation – that turns the encounter into far more than its script
conveys.
In short, every conversation feels
like you’re talking to your distant cousin Shmeulik, son of Uncle Yankef whom
you’ve only seen at your bar mitzvah and your father’s funeral. The last time you saw your mother, she
mentioned Shmuelik so you know he’s out there.
But if you should chance to visit the city where he lives, and ring him
up, and go over for dinner or meet him for drinks at your hotel, each of you
takes a proprietary interest in his cousin immediately. That’s Israel.
If you have a proprietary interest
in the Israelis, then even more so the land where they live. Even if you haven’t studied the Tanach
diligently over a lifetime, you will recognise place names that you encounter
along the way from the Bible stories.
For example, if you drive to Jerusalem after arriving at Ben Gurion
Airport. You turn to the east on Highway
One and one of the first turnoffs you’ll pass is Modi’in. It’s a modern town in the Judaean Hills, but
of course its name is important in the story of Hanukkah. It was there where the elderly priest
Mattathias resisted the Assyrians. His
sons rallied the populace to join in the resistance. When Jews across the land heard of this
wondrous event, some left their homes and went out into the countryside to seek
out this band of rebels and join in the small army to take the fight to the entire
country. It’s like that nothing more
than a glimpse of a roadside, will bring all these thoughts to the forefront.
Not everybody hearing or reading my
words today can appreciate Jewish humour.
Perhaps you’ve only encountered
Jewish nosiness, or Jewish chutzpah, to a limited extent so that it isn’t
a trope for you yet. But chances that
you’ve read some Tanach. So when you see
a road sign for, or actually set foot in, a place like Modi’in…or Beth El…or
Beersheva…or the Sea of Galilee, that experience will engender for you a sense
of being in a place connected to important people and events. And if you’ve read the history of how we Jews
reestablished ourselves in the land beginning in the nineteenth century, you
will similarly react to such place names as Rosh Pinna, Rishon Letziyon, Yad
Mordechai, and Zichron Yaakov.
Many Jews, be they Jewish from birth
or Jewish via conversion, resist travelling to Israel. This is more than understandable. If you live in Australia, it’s very far, and
since there are no direct flights from this country, travelling there is a long
and arduous trip. Not to mention
expensive. Additionally, many resist
going to Israel because of the negative image drawn up by a bad press. A press that only seems to report the crisis
aspect of Israeli life. The image one
gets is highly distorted. For example,
one hears the word ‘Apartheid’ thrown around regarding Israel: Israel shoves its Arab citizens, and the
Palestinians living into the territories, into tribal ‘bantustans’ in order to
keep them away from Jews. I’ll respond
to that with two images from my recent trip.
In Tiberias, a small city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee,
one sees Arabs in their traditional mode of dress all over. In the shops, on the streets…in the health
clinic where we took Eyal for his physiotherapy. Nobody assaults, or insults, or runs from
them. They’re just part of the
landscape, the same as Jews are. The
other image: Ashkelon is a city on the
south coast, just north of the Gaza Strip.
You surely have this image of Gaza being under siege, nothing more than
a huge concentration camp where the people are bottled up in a pressure
cooker. But on Highway 4 outside Ashkelon,
the main coast road that leads to Tel Aviv, one sees cars, trucks, and mini-busses
with Gaza number plates day and night.
And by the way, if you look at the Gaza Strip on Google Earth, you’ll
see as much open land as populated. It’s
still a very densely populated piece of land.
But then, Israel is one of the most densely populated countries on
earth. If it weren’t for mini-states like
Singapore, Lichtenstein, Monaco, and the Vatican City, it would be closer to
the top of the list. And yet in the
entire country, as in Gaza, it is possible to find wide-open spaces. Just don’t expect the Australian Outback.
Another falsehood about Israel is
that they Jews have systematically perpetrated ‘genocide’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’
against the Arabs. That lie is easily
dispelled by a simple drive, say from Ashkelon to Beit Shean. To get there, one first drives on Highway 6,
which at times skirts the Green Line, the border between Israel proper and the
Palestinian territories of the West Bank.
Along the way, you see six large Palestinian towns that are situated
just over the border. South to north,
they are: Qafr Qassem, Qalqiliya, Taibe,
Tulkarm, Jat, and Baka el Garbiya. You’ve
probably heard at least some of these names before. They are all large, thriving towns, each with
a profusion of construction cranes towering over the cityscape. When you come to where you have to turn east on
Highway 65 to get to your destination, you are in the Lower Galilee, in the
area of Israel proper that’s known as ‘The Arab Triangle.’ There, before you see a single Jewish town,
the highway passes between four Israeli Arab towns: Qafr Qani’a, Ar’ara, Basma and Umm al
Fahm. These are also all large, thriving
towns. They fill the valley, through which
the highway passes…not to mention the hillsides on either side. The only Hebrew you see when passing through
is on the road signs which, like in the rest of the country, are in Hebrew,
Arabic and English. All of the signs on
businesses, and all the roadside billboards, are in Arabic exclusively. Looming over the towns in great profusion are…construction
cranes. These towns,and their sister
towns in the West Bank, are all experiencing the explosive expansion that
Jewish Israel is going through. In
short, there’s definitely no ‘ethnic cleansing’ going on. The only ‘ethnic cleansing’ is of Jews, who dare
not live in these places.
I know I’ve gone on more than long
enough for a Friday night. But indulge
me a moment longer to make a point. In
Australia as elsewhere in the Diaspora, one encounters Jews as individuals or
in rather small groups who make very little difference in the land as a
whole. Despite this, people you
encounter seem to have strong opinions about the Jews. But it is difficult to see the Jewish
collective as really mattering in the life of the country. So everything that you read about in the Tanach,
every one of the rabbi’s assertions that what we’re taught in the Torah matters
for all humanity, seems very remote and theoretical. And Israel, distant and encountered mainly
through bad press, seems to indicate that we Jews have no particularly positive
contribution to make to the world. For
that, it is really necessary to go to Israel.
To walk the streets and shop in the malls and markets, to sit in the
parks, to drive on the highways. To have
endearing encounters with Israelis. And frustrating
encounters. It’s like any other country…and
not like any other country. But
as a Jew, you have a stake in it. To be
Jewish in the fullness that the identity offers, it is necessary for the
State and Land of Israel to take a central role. A close encounter with Israel will enrich
your Jewish identity beyond your wildest dreams. You don’t have to live there. But, after visiting, yu may just want to
live there. Of all the risks you take
when visiting Israel, that’s probably the biggest one! Shabbat shalom.
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