After seven months in the States, living a solitary Jewish lifestyle (meaning, an incredibly hollow one, sans community), day after day of ten hour shifts of packing candy on assembly lines, sitting on my tuchus in a call center selling fruit baskets and truffles to rich elderly folks, and waitressing a few hours here and there at a local Indian restaurant, I've somehow found my way back to the Holy Land. It's been a journey, mostly one of monotony and a perseverance of the type that I didn't realize I was capable of, and at long last, I'm back; back in the Middle East, in Israel, in Pardes, in Jerusalem, in Rachavya, in my old apartment, with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, as my unlikely neighbor. I think I'd be a better fiction writer if my life weren't stranger than fiction.
Because Israel is a place of surprises and unlikelihoods converging together to make up an entire country of simultaneous contradictions that somehow function in a strange, kind of symbiotic harmony that on the surface doesn't appear to function at all except by happy accident, I find myself surprised, and yet not, by the way in which I've reacted to my familiar, but new surroundings. When I began my day long trek from the West Coast of the United States to Israel, I expected myself to be a bundle of excited nerves and emotions; after all, I had dreamt about Jerusalem every day since I'd left, and had been pining away and longing for the vibrant Jewish existence that allows converts such as myself to fall in love with Judaism all over again in every enriching moment that we're here. I romanticized my return to an almost absurd degree, expecting myself to burst into happy and exhausted tears during the final descent into Tel Aviv, and to feel an immense amount of pride in myself for tirelessly striving for the moment that my feet would hit the hallowed grounds of the Holy Land, even the parts beneath the pavement of the Ben Gurion airport's runways and streets. Surely, the heavens would open up, angels would sing, I'd kiss the dirty, holy ground without shame, and my happiness would burst forth from the very center of my nefesh, enough to power the sherut cab all the way to Jerusalem.
Of course, this ecstatic state of being, didn't happen to me--not exactly. My emotions, though always a bit more intense than I'd like them to appear, stayed in check, as I was too grumpy from lack of sleep and was nursing a slight hangover from the night before, as my sister and I had one last hurrah in the wee hours leading up to my early morning flight. I boarded four different planes over the course of 20 hours or so, tried to sleep, failed, watched two good movies (The Fighter, and quite fittingly, the Israeli film Footnote), suffered through half of Dinner for Shmucks until, in my half-confused exhaustion, I wondered why I was subjecting myself to abject torture in the midst of a 20 hour long trip half way across the globe, turned it off, bored myself with a dry documentary on the Great Wall of China, watched two episodes The Big Bang Theory that I've seen at least a billion times, chatted with the excited and bubbly Birthright kids that I was sitting in between, and tried to focus on Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, until I realized that my brain stew was not retaining enough of the novel to actually recall a word of it, and then tried (and failed) to sleep some more. Just between you and me, it's hard to be a bundle of excitement and happiness under such circumstances.
Still, there were glimmers of incredibly happy moments along the way, especially on the last leg of the trip from New York to Tel Aviv, such as when I found myself smiling at the busy and obviously excited crowd at the terminal. Amid the buzz of the crowd, there were dozens of Birthright kids chatting noisily about their typically Jewish, over-achieving academic aspirations, brimming with excitement over the prospect of partying in Israel, and the cute IDF soldiers and lowered drinking age laws awaiting them. There were large Haredi families that I couldn't help but watch later on with quiet fascination as they davened Shacharit, the morning prayers, right in the aisles of the plane while the rest of us dozed restlessly or stared at our movie screens with glassy, tired eyes. Then there were the tourists who have been to the Holy Land dozens of times, and yet think of it as a second (if not first) home. And of course, there were the Israelis heading back to their country and, in typical Israeli fashion, doing their part to turn the line to board the plane into a crowded free-for-all, all while shouting in Hebrew into their cell phones.
Such moments I've come to expect after living in Israel for a year, and from becoming familiar with the ways in which this country works, how Jewish life here exists both in Israeli and visiting Anglo terms, what it means to be a part of it, to be swimming in it, to be an extension of it, and how absurd, amazing, frustrating, exhausting, trying, fulfilling, rewarding and strangely normal it can suddenly all be. I know from experience that it can be impossible to explain to people who haven't been afflicted with Jerusalem Syndrome (the kind where you fall hopelessly in love with the place, not where you suddenly think that you're Jesus or a biblical prophet) what it's like to be here and feel more at home than anywhere else in the world, even with the language and cultural barriers, even with the political situation, even with the existing tensions, and even without all the luxuries of living in most places in the West (public transportation and open businesses on Saturday and readily available hot water are a couple of things that come to mind). It's not a paradise if you're looking for a slice of an idyllic and relaxed life, where people and the environment are easy going and life seems to hand itself to you on a silver platter. Life here in Israel is far too complicated for that, and being here does require a thick enough skin to appreciate Israeli brusqueness (a friendly kind of bluntness, in my opinion), a sincere and realistic understanding of the political situation in order to realize that living here isn't nearly as treacherous as the media in the West would have you think, and perhaps of course, a love affair with Judaism that is as complicated as every other love affair that I've been involved in (love is never so simple, is it?)
But it was all so normal for me to come back to, as though I was simply picking up my life where I'd left off after taking a long pause. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy being with my family and friends back in the States, or that I didn't value the time that I did have to collect my thoughts about my next move in my life, and the direction in which I'd like to go; far from it. Whatever steps I had to take to get back to this life that I ultimately want to call my permanent, settled, day to day living, they were a part of a larger learning process where I was, more or less, figuring things out. My parent's home will always be the home that I grew up in, and Oregon, from Medford to Portland, is also a place for me to call home--and there's a certain kind of security and comfort in the familiarity of it all. But the difference between those homes and Jerusalem as my home, is that I'm all grown up now, and being grown up means to leave the nest and build one of your own. This nest will take some time to build in its entirety, but I've found the tree to build it in, which is the first step. That tree is called Jerusalem. Perhaps my quiet happiness over my return to Jerusalem, as opposed to the grandiose emotional display that I was bracing myself to erupt in, is a signal of my settling in. I don't feel as panicked this time about missing out while I'm here, or what I'm going to do about aliyah, or if the perceived legitimacy of my conversion is going hinder my ability to be as freely Jewish as one who was born into their Jewishness. This time, I feel much more Israeli in my approach to my life here: "yihyeh beseder...le'at, le'at" (it'll be fine...slowly, slowly).
After landing in Tel Aviv, I had an extraordinary turn of good luck and spent only minutes in customs, which was not the case last time I came to Israel, ("Are you Jewish? What was the last Jewish holiday you celebrated? Can you speak Hebrew? Why are you in the country? Do you know people here? Did anyone ask you to bring a package into the country? Why are you traveling with a Tanakh? Do you know what your "Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me'uman" sticker on your laptop means?"), found my bag almost immediately, and hopped on a sherut just minutes later, and was on my way to Jerusalem. A rare morning snow had blanketed the city, and as we careened into the city limits (what other way do you travel with an Israeli driver, except to careen madly down the road?), a white carpet greeted me as I became reunited once again with the city that I've come to think of as home. For the next five months, Jerusalem will be my home, and is there ever anywhere better to be?
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Why Can't We Be Friends?
A couple of weeks ago, I posted in this very blog about Operation Pillar of Defense. I expressed my dismay at Hamas aiming rockets towards the holy city of Jerusalem, of the continued assault on Israeli civilians without a care in the world for civilian life, my concern for my friends taking refuge in bomb shelters, and my worry about the escalation of tensions, and what that means for peace on both sides of the conflict. I also expressed my desire to be in Israel and to stand with her and the people I care about, because I'm one of those wacky people who sees Israel as an actual functioning democracy in a sea of extremism and violence, imperfect as it may be, and love it so much, that I don't want to see its destruction. After having lived there for a year and having many friends and loved ones there who call it home, and actually possessing a non-biased education on the conflict itself, I sort of feel, you know, entitled to my opinion.
Entitled or not, I am usually pretty quiet about my political beliefs these days, meaning, I don't bother to preach them; I just live them instead. I've learned that some things cannot be discussed calmly and rationally with some people, and no matter what your intentions might be, you can't change a mind that doesn't want to be changed. But what can I say? Every once in a while I go out on a limb and talk about the things that I think and feel to people who may not be so sympathetic, or with one of those rare people who can disagree with me without hating me. Since I'm not the best at handling confrontation (I tend to get flustered and either sound like I've forgotten how to speak English or I start crying pathetically once the confrontation gets tense), I bite my tongue a lot. In some ways, it's taught me to let things go, shrug things off, and keep friends from all across the political, religious, and social spectrum. Still, I have had moments where I've felt personally attacked, and a bit disappointed in myself for not "saying something." There's something to be said for not saying anything sometimes, though. We are taught to"stand up for ourselves" so much in our culture that we seem to disregard that you can do that without starting an argument. We're also taught to pick our battles, but for some reason, we're never told how to actually do that; a battle is a battle well fought as long as we walk away feeling that we've won, and we've been vindicated through our perceived victory. We may walk away with one less friend or with a gaping wound in the relationship that is sure to only fester due to a lack of personal resolution, but damn it, who cares as long as you're still so sure that you're right?
So, I dared to discuss what was troubling me during the conflict, and it costed me a "friend." And I endured the loss of that friend in the most insulting way possible: I was unfriended on Facebook.
That's right! Unfriended. In this day and age, you might as well kick someone in the shins to express your dissatisfaction with them if you're going to remove them from your friends list. And since I was sort of anticipating less than positive feedback from some people, I kept an eye on the number of people on my friends list after posting a link to my blog, just in case someone was so disgusted with my views that they no longer wanted to even peripherally be my friend via a social network site that claims that we have hundreds of friends, simply because they are on a list of people that we know really well, went to high school with, are vaguely acquainted with, or met at a party once. Sure enough, that list changed to one number less, and I was filled with that ever familiar sense of anxiousness, because I was sure that it meant that someone had unfriended me due to my blog, and because it's pretty exciting to think that someone actually took the time to read my blog in the first place. Hey! Did this mean I had written something "controversial?" How thrilling! I felt an odd blend of pride in my rebelliousness and disappointment in what I was sure was someone unfriending me over my different opinion.
I had the culprits of my unfriending narrowed down to a few likely candidates, and pretty soon, I found out who it was. The predictability of it only compounded my sense of disappointment; I was hoping someone would surprise me, or that the unfriending wasn't due to what I knew it was over, but instead over something like someone realizing that we had met at a drunken party three years ago and had no reason to be friends with me, because I barely exist in the fuzzy, drunken memory in that person's psyche. But I was right, and I knew who it was almost immediately. Usually, like anyone, I love it when I'm right. But sometimes, I hate it because I don't want my assumptions to be correct. I messaged the culprit and asked him if I'd done anything to offend him. His only response was, "I support Palestine."
It's an interesting response because I support Palestine, too. I would support a Palestinian state, just like there was supposed to be one during the UN partition that was going to ensure an Arab state and a Jewish state in British mandate Palestine 65 years ago, before the Arabs declared war on the new Jewish state that supported them. I support them so much, that if I could be given any kind of reliable reassurance that such a state could co-exist peacefully with Israel, I'd be the first to wish a sincere mozel tov to my new Arab neighbors in their new homeland. Since it's been 65 years and we've been shown time and time again that that is not the aim of a Palestinian state as of yet, I don't have high hopes. Hamas says it will never recognize Israel, and I believe them. I also support a theoretical Palestine so much, that I care about Palestinian safety, freedom and well being, that I don't support Hamas, an extremist terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist. I support Palestinians so much, that I'd love to see them overthrow violence, extremism, propaganda, censorship, corruption and hatred in their governing bodies. I support Palestine, but nobody knows what that means in practice. You have to actually know what the reality is first before you can say that you support or don't support Palestinians or Israelis. People are baffled when you say both, because they don't know that it doesn't have to be an Us vs. Them situation. So far, the Palestinians give Israel no choice. Israel defends itself, the world watches while it gets pummeled with rocket fire, and somehow, Israel is the villain. Call me crazy, but that's crazy.
In any case, nuance is not a strong suit of a lot of people, especially in regards to such a polarizing issue, in the very polarized country that we live in. Being moderate tends to get looked down upon, no matter how moderate people claim to be. I've met true blue extremists who insist that they are so moderate, that they can't understand why everyone thinks they're crazy.
I used to be extreme in my views as well. I was very far left, and believed in ideals more than I believed in reality. I have nothing against ideals these days, but at some point, you have to take in your experiences as you grow, and understand that it is a rare treat when life presents you with such clear cut, black and white, right and wrong, good guys and bad guys situations. Life is so complicated, and yet, we seem to be unable to resist the urge to simplify things down to a yes or a no, or a right or a wrong. We're all guilty of that sometimes. I used to live that way, too. I didn't want any friends who could challenge my notions of the world, and because I was in my early 20s, I was sure that I knew everything, and was beyond impatient and intolerant of people who didn't agree with me. Needless to say, I was angry a lot, and my friends started to bore me, and my life started to bore me, and I started to bore myself. Sometimes, you need someone around who will challenge and push you to question all those things that you are so sure of. Once I started to allow those views into my life without fear of being proven wrong (and those views started with an academic interest in Judaism), life became a lot more colorful and I became a lot more open, and less angry. I made more friends, and they came from all over the spectrum of human experiences and thought. I began to value disagreements, and was humbled to be proven wrong from time to time. Turns out, it can be really satisfying to be wrong. Victory is not everything, especially when you're still angry after you've won.
So, why can't we be friends? I can't speak for the person who no longer wants to be my friend over my blog post, and it's tempting to assume what his reasons are. Whatever they are though, it makes me a bit sad. I still hold out hope that one day, the conflict will come to a peaceful resolution for both Israel and the Palestinians, even though it, as always, looks grim. It feels even more hopeless when you realize that this is an issue that some people cannot agree to to disagree upon, and that friendships can break to pieces over it. If we can't peacefully disagree with each other over a political situation and there are no rockets, or suicide bombers, or bus bombs or military operations standing between us, then I wonder what we can expect from the people who do have these things between them, and between conflict and peace?
This is one of those things that I'd love to be wrong about.
Entitled or not, I am usually pretty quiet about my political beliefs these days, meaning, I don't bother to preach them; I just live them instead. I've learned that some things cannot be discussed calmly and rationally with some people, and no matter what your intentions might be, you can't change a mind that doesn't want to be changed. But what can I say? Every once in a while I go out on a limb and talk about the things that I think and feel to people who may not be so sympathetic, or with one of those rare people who can disagree with me without hating me. Since I'm not the best at handling confrontation (I tend to get flustered and either sound like I've forgotten how to speak English or I start crying pathetically once the confrontation gets tense), I bite my tongue a lot. In some ways, it's taught me to let things go, shrug things off, and keep friends from all across the political, religious, and social spectrum. Still, I have had moments where I've felt personally attacked, and a bit disappointed in myself for not "saying something." There's something to be said for not saying anything sometimes, though. We are taught to"stand up for ourselves" so much in our culture that we seem to disregard that you can do that without starting an argument. We're also taught to pick our battles, but for some reason, we're never told how to actually do that; a battle is a battle well fought as long as we walk away feeling that we've won, and we've been vindicated through our perceived victory. We may walk away with one less friend or with a gaping wound in the relationship that is sure to only fester due to a lack of personal resolution, but damn it, who cares as long as you're still so sure that you're right?
So, I dared to discuss what was troubling me during the conflict, and it costed me a "friend." And I endured the loss of that friend in the most insulting way possible: I was unfriended on Facebook.
That's right! Unfriended. In this day and age, you might as well kick someone in the shins to express your dissatisfaction with them if you're going to remove them from your friends list. And since I was sort of anticipating less than positive feedback from some people, I kept an eye on the number of people on my friends list after posting a link to my blog, just in case someone was so disgusted with my views that they no longer wanted to even peripherally be my friend via a social network site that claims that we have hundreds of friends, simply because they are on a list of people that we know really well, went to high school with, are vaguely acquainted with, or met at a party once. Sure enough, that list changed to one number less, and I was filled with that ever familiar sense of anxiousness, because I was sure that it meant that someone had unfriended me due to my blog, and because it's pretty exciting to think that someone actually took the time to read my blog in the first place. Hey! Did this mean I had written something "controversial?" How thrilling! I felt an odd blend of pride in my rebelliousness and disappointment in what I was sure was someone unfriending me over my different opinion.
I had the culprits of my unfriending narrowed down to a few likely candidates, and pretty soon, I found out who it was. The predictability of it only compounded my sense of disappointment; I was hoping someone would surprise me, or that the unfriending wasn't due to what I knew it was over, but instead over something like someone realizing that we had met at a drunken party three years ago and had no reason to be friends with me, because I barely exist in the fuzzy, drunken memory in that person's psyche. But I was right, and I knew who it was almost immediately. Usually, like anyone, I love it when I'm right. But sometimes, I hate it because I don't want my assumptions to be correct. I messaged the culprit and asked him if I'd done anything to offend him. His only response was, "I support Palestine."
It's an interesting response because I support Palestine, too. I would support a Palestinian state, just like there was supposed to be one during the UN partition that was going to ensure an Arab state and a Jewish state in British mandate Palestine 65 years ago, before the Arabs declared war on the new Jewish state that supported them. I support them so much, that if I could be given any kind of reliable reassurance that such a state could co-exist peacefully with Israel, I'd be the first to wish a sincere mozel tov to my new Arab neighbors in their new homeland. Since it's been 65 years and we've been shown time and time again that that is not the aim of a Palestinian state as of yet, I don't have high hopes. Hamas says it will never recognize Israel, and I believe them. I also support a theoretical Palestine so much, that I care about Palestinian safety, freedom and well being, that I don't support Hamas, an extremist terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist. I support Palestinians so much, that I'd love to see them overthrow violence, extremism, propaganda, censorship, corruption and hatred in their governing bodies. I support Palestine, but nobody knows what that means in practice. You have to actually know what the reality is first before you can say that you support or don't support Palestinians or Israelis. People are baffled when you say both, because they don't know that it doesn't have to be an Us vs. Them situation. So far, the Palestinians give Israel no choice. Israel defends itself, the world watches while it gets pummeled with rocket fire, and somehow, Israel is the villain. Call me crazy, but that's crazy.
In any case, nuance is not a strong suit of a lot of people, especially in regards to such a polarizing issue, in the very polarized country that we live in. Being moderate tends to get looked down upon, no matter how moderate people claim to be. I've met true blue extremists who insist that they are so moderate, that they can't understand why everyone thinks they're crazy.
I used to be extreme in my views as well. I was very far left, and believed in ideals more than I believed in reality. I have nothing against ideals these days, but at some point, you have to take in your experiences as you grow, and understand that it is a rare treat when life presents you with such clear cut, black and white, right and wrong, good guys and bad guys situations. Life is so complicated, and yet, we seem to be unable to resist the urge to simplify things down to a yes or a no, or a right or a wrong. We're all guilty of that sometimes. I used to live that way, too. I didn't want any friends who could challenge my notions of the world, and because I was in my early 20s, I was sure that I knew everything, and was beyond impatient and intolerant of people who didn't agree with me. Needless to say, I was angry a lot, and my friends started to bore me, and my life started to bore me, and I started to bore myself. Sometimes, you need someone around who will challenge and push you to question all those things that you are so sure of. Once I started to allow those views into my life without fear of being proven wrong (and those views started with an academic interest in Judaism), life became a lot more colorful and I became a lot more open, and less angry. I made more friends, and they came from all over the spectrum of human experiences and thought. I began to value disagreements, and was humbled to be proven wrong from time to time. Turns out, it can be really satisfying to be wrong. Victory is not everything, especially when you're still angry after you've won.
So, why can't we be friends? I can't speak for the person who no longer wants to be my friend over my blog post, and it's tempting to assume what his reasons are. Whatever they are though, it makes me a bit sad. I still hold out hope that one day, the conflict will come to a peaceful resolution for both Israel and the Palestinians, even though it, as always, looks grim. It feels even more hopeless when you realize that this is an issue that some people cannot agree to to disagree upon, and that friendships can break to pieces over it. If we can't peacefully disagree with each other over a political situation and there are no rockets, or suicide bombers, or bus bombs or military operations standing between us, then I wonder what we can expect from the people who do have these things between them, and between conflict and peace?
This is one of those things that I'd love to be wrong about.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Times like these....
Dear readers (all three of you), as you can see, it's been almost four months since I've written for my blog. I could blame writer's block or the typical day to day distractions as the reason behind my silence. For instance, I've been getting into Lost, because my parents have Netflix, and I'm a sucker for TV dramas. This is like Star Trek: Deep Space 9 all over again, when watching five episodes in one extremely late night became a common occurrence. That time, I believe my addiction nearly destroyed my Hebrew classes in college, because I lent the series to my professor; I managed to hook he and his wife both, like a junkie looking for fellow junkies to connect with as we slip further in between the cracks of the productive parts of society, boldly spiraling to where no man has gone before (except for millions of other hopeless Trekkies). Talk about distractions. But the reason for my virtual silence is really quite simple; I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted, and thinking of my beloved Israel and Jerusalem is even more exhausting. I miss being there so much, that it drains me to think about it. I then get sad, and when I get sad, it looks very similar to anger, and my poor family has had to put up with my sad/angry shit for years. I'd rather not be sad and angry, if for nothing else, to save my family the headache of my bellyaching.
However, my exhaustion isn't just from my perpetual state of longing for Israel; it also comes from what has been my job for the last couple of months. You see, I'm a candy packager. I get up at 4:00 in the morning to work from 5:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. And yes, I work full time, standing on my feet for seemingly endless hours, placing truffles into boxes on an assembly line, putting lids onto boxes, tying bows onto boxes, folding boxes, labeling boxes, taking things out of boxes only to put them into new boxes, and taking the old boxes out to the recycling to make room for the new boxes. This job is the definition of monotony, the most concrete example of tedium that I can imagine, so much so, that I've fallen asleep on my feet while doing it (my hands never missing a beat as I nod off and jerk back awake, startled and disoriented), and I've cried in the women's room in the middle of the day, hiding in a stall and talking myself down, while making a mental list of why I'm voluntarily doing this to myself (It's all for my return to Israel! Israel, my cruel, tormenting mistress! I love you dangerously close to insanely)! I start a new job tomorrow where I'll sit on my butt in a cubicle, dealing with customer complaints for our company's products via the phone. Right now, I should be practicing my "I'm smiling widely and am so happy with you yelling at me, sir" voice, which I've cultivated from all my years in customer service positions, having reverted back to my naturally occurring Daria-style cadence of speech after spending months imprisoned in a candy factory, away from civilization. I know that I have a whole new level of monotony and tedium in store for me until January 10th, when I make my way back to the Holy Land, and resume this thing called "my life." See? It's exhausting to even type it all out.
"My life" in Israel is not as I left it, though. Last week, Israel's IDF eliminated top Hamas operatives in Gaza in the interest of maintaining Israeli safety. This prompted Hamas to do what they apparently love to do more than anything, which is to shoot rockets into Israel, with not a care in the world for Israeli civilian life, or even Palestinian civilian life. Well, actually it was more rockets than usual, because Hamas has been tempting fate by doing what every country in the world would call and act of war, by firing into Israel as though it's Hamas' way of saying "hello." Rockets reached Tel Aviv. They reached the outskirts of Jerusalem, a first in Hamas' history of terror and violence. Apparently, Jerusalem isn't as holy as declaring jihad on normal, every day civilians, whether they be Jewish, Christian, Muslim--just whoever happens to be in the line of indiscriminate fire. Sirens went off as the rockets were fired in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities. This is unusual for these cities, while places in the south, such as Ashkelon and Ashdod, are used to the sound of air raid sirens and rocket attacks from Gaza; this is how they have to live their lives. The sirens are not common in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem though, and my stomach churned each time I read the news. I know what those sirens sound like from drills and tests that occasionally took place in Jerusalem while I was there last year, just in case the unthinkable were to happen; those sirens are terrifying to hear. They wail like the end of the world is upon us, and we all need to act quickly, if we hope to save our lives. When I heard those sirens though, Hebrew class went on as normal, and we practiced grammar as they howled forebodingly throughout the city. This time though, when the sirens went off, my friends and loved ones were ducking into bomb shelters and stairwells, posting about their safety on Facebook, flooding my news feed with reassurances, calls for prayers for a ceasefire, and new headlines would pop up with the breaking news of where the rockets had landed. One of them landed in Gush Etzion, a settlement (as much as I hate to call it that, it is what the media has decided we need to know this community as) just outside of Jerusalem, where several teachers of mine live. I've spent time in Gush Etzion, had Shabbat dinners there, strolled through the peaceful streets of a quiet Modern Orthodox neighborhood in the summer, when little kids were running around outside, playing in the middle of the night, because it's so peaceful and quiet there, it truly feels as though there's no reason to be concerned about their safety. I imagined the rocket exploding there, my teachers, their children, their grandchildren, all scurrying for shelter, just as their Arab neighbors would be doing at the same time. And all last week I packaged candy, feeling like I live in another world.
As I chatted and emailed with friends, some of them in the IDF themselves, some of them students, some of them long time Israeli citizens, some of them new Israeli citizens, I was, quite understandably, asked over and over again; well, now what am I going to do? Am I really going to go back there with all the rocket fire? What if, even if things quieted down, it all started up again while I'm there? Would I come back to the States? Would I stay? Considering how easily the conflict can explode, how suddenly things can escalate, am I sure I want to go back? Aren't I scared? Worried? Anxious?
The truth is, it didn't even occur to me to not go back. It didn't occur to me to cancel my plans for five months of my life between January and June, to cancel my aliyah application with Nefesh b'Nefesh, to rethink my plans to study creative writing at Bar-Ilan University, to find a new place to call "home" after falling in love with Jerusalem. These considerations did not come to me, even as I watched the rockets above Tel Aviv's skyline on the news--I still love swimming those beaches and walking those busy streets, marveling at the modern, secular, cosmopolitan buildings, billboards and people, just a 45 minute bus ride from the ancient, religious, cobblestone streets of Jerusalem. I love Tel Aviv so much, I'll put up with her disgusting humidity in the summer, because she's worth it to me. These considerations did not come to me when my chats with Jerusalem friends were interrupted because a siren went off, and they needed to get to shelter, just in case. These considerations did not come to me even when a city bus exploded in Tel Aviv, a city that I've bussed around in numerous times. These considerations didn't come to me when the terror suspect for the bus bomb was apprehended in Ramat Gan, where Bar-Ilan University is, where I want to hone my writing skills, and obtain my Master's degree. These considerations didn't come to me because I've been sitting here fuming over the fact that I'm not there right now.
Sounds crazy, right? I want to be in the middle of a war zone. But I can't help it. I love Israel and feel that Jerusalem is my home. If your home was under attack, wouldn't you want to get back home right away? Wouldn't you want to see the people you care about with your own eyes, and have the comfort of having them at your side? Wouldn't you rather huddle into a bomb shelter with them and get through it together, rather than feeling that you live across the universe now, passing your days by putting truffles into boxes and counting down the minutes of your unbelievably long shifts until you can run to a computer and get the latest news on what's happening at home? Call me crazy (it's probably partly true, anyway), but I want to be there. I wouldn't abandon something that means so much to me, something that I love when things are at their worst. I'd stand by it, and what's more, I truly believe that I could live like an Israeli, cautious and concerned, but still able to sip coffee in a cafe after the sirens stop and we get out of the shelters, still going to the shuk to shop for Shabbat dinner, still heading to the Kotel to pray for a ceasefire, and hopefully, a long lasting peace for all of us, Israeli, Arab, immigrant, sabra, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever. I think I could live my life, even without the reassurance that most of us have in the States, that we're mostly safe from rockets, from bombs, from terrorism, from suicide attacks, from hatred, and a blindness that has turned conflict into a propaganda-ridden political issue, with such misinformed blowhards screaming ridiculous solutions to a problem that they don't understand, one would think that exploding from frustration is just as likely as dying in an explosion on a bus or from a rocket. Sure, anything could happen anywhere. But there's a difference between calling Israel your home and calling the United States your home; one is constantly under threat, the other is peripherally under threat. And while the U.S. will always be my home, it will be my home from my childhood, so to speak. Israel is the home you find when you grow up and have to leave the nest.
So what does one do in times like these? Certainly, Hamas will not succeed in changing my life by scaring me off with rockets and saber rattling. The ceasefire has quieted things down, which means of course, that things are back to the status quo: Israel ceases, and Hamas still fires, although they've gone back to their usual, sporadic rocket fire, and not their constant barrage of rocket fire. I suppose I'll just start my new job tomorrow, earn my paycheck and put it away for my life in Israel, which is rapidly coming upon me. It's what an Israeli would do. What else can you do with your life except live it?
However, my exhaustion isn't just from my perpetual state of longing for Israel; it also comes from what has been my job for the last couple of months. You see, I'm a candy packager. I get up at 4:00 in the morning to work from 5:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. And yes, I work full time, standing on my feet for seemingly endless hours, placing truffles into boxes on an assembly line, putting lids onto boxes, tying bows onto boxes, folding boxes, labeling boxes, taking things out of boxes only to put them into new boxes, and taking the old boxes out to the recycling to make room for the new boxes. This job is the definition of monotony, the most concrete example of tedium that I can imagine, so much so, that I've fallen asleep on my feet while doing it (my hands never missing a beat as I nod off and jerk back awake, startled and disoriented), and I've cried in the women's room in the middle of the day, hiding in a stall and talking myself down, while making a mental list of why I'm voluntarily doing this to myself (It's all for my return to Israel! Israel, my cruel, tormenting mistress! I love you dangerously close to insanely)! I start a new job tomorrow where I'll sit on my butt in a cubicle, dealing with customer complaints for our company's products via the phone. Right now, I should be practicing my "I'm smiling widely and am so happy with you yelling at me, sir" voice, which I've cultivated from all my years in customer service positions, having reverted back to my naturally occurring Daria-style cadence of speech after spending months imprisoned in a candy factory, away from civilization. I know that I have a whole new level of monotony and tedium in store for me until January 10th, when I make my way back to the Holy Land, and resume this thing called "my life." See? It's exhausting to even type it all out.
"My life" in Israel is not as I left it, though. Last week, Israel's IDF eliminated top Hamas operatives in Gaza in the interest of maintaining Israeli safety. This prompted Hamas to do what they apparently love to do more than anything, which is to shoot rockets into Israel, with not a care in the world for Israeli civilian life, or even Palestinian civilian life. Well, actually it was more rockets than usual, because Hamas has been tempting fate by doing what every country in the world would call and act of war, by firing into Israel as though it's Hamas' way of saying "hello." Rockets reached Tel Aviv. They reached the outskirts of Jerusalem, a first in Hamas' history of terror and violence. Apparently, Jerusalem isn't as holy as declaring jihad on normal, every day civilians, whether they be Jewish, Christian, Muslim--just whoever happens to be in the line of indiscriminate fire. Sirens went off as the rockets were fired in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities. This is unusual for these cities, while places in the south, such as Ashkelon and Ashdod, are used to the sound of air raid sirens and rocket attacks from Gaza; this is how they have to live their lives. The sirens are not common in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem though, and my stomach churned each time I read the news. I know what those sirens sound like from drills and tests that occasionally took place in Jerusalem while I was there last year, just in case the unthinkable were to happen; those sirens are terrifying to hear. They wail like the end of the world is upon us, and we all need to act quickly, if we hope to save our lives. When I heard those sirens though, Hebrew class went on as normal, and we practiced grammar as they howled forebodingly throughout the city. This time though, when the sirens went off, my friends and loved ones were ducking into bomb shelters and stairwells, posting about their safety on Facebook, flooding my news feed with reassurances, calls for prayers for a ceasefire, and new headlines would pop up with the breaking news of where the rockets had landed. One of them landed in Gush Etzion, a settlement (as much as I hate to call it that, it is what the media has decided we need to know this community as) just outside of Jerusalem, where several teachers of mine live. I've spent time in Gush Etzion, had Shabbat dinners there, strolled through the peaceful streets of a quiet Modern Orthodox neighborhood in the summer, when little kids were running around outside, playing in the middle of the night, because it's so peaceful and quiet there, it truly feels as though there's no reason to be concerned about their safety. I imagined the rocket exploding there, my teachers, their children, their grandchildren, all scurrying for shelter, just as their Arab neighbors would be doing at the same time. And all last week I packaged candy, feeling like I live in another world.
As I chatted and emailed with friends, some of them in the IDF themselves, some of them students, some of them long time Israeli citizens, some of them new Israeli citizens, I was, quite understandably, asked over and over again; well, now what am I going to do? Am I really going to go back there with all the rocket fire? What if, even if things quieted down, it all started up again while I'm there? Would I come back to the States? Would I stay? Considering how easily the conflict can explode, how suddenly things can escalate, am I sure I want to go back? Aren't I scared? Worried? Anxious?
The truth is, it didn't even occur to me to not go back. It didn't occur to me to cancel my plans for five months of my life between January and June, to cancel my aliyah application with Nefesh b'Nefesh, to rethink my plans to study creative writing at Bar-Ilan University, to find a new place to call "home" after falling in love with Jerusalem. These considerations did not come to me, even as I watched the rockets above Tel Aviv's skyline on the news--I still love swimming those beaches and walking those busy streets, marveling at the modern, secular, cosmopolitan buildings, billboards and people, just a 45 minute bus ride from the ancient, religious, cobblestone streets of Jerusalem. I love Tel Aviv so much, I'll put up with her disgusting humidity in the summer, because she's worth it to me. These considerations did not come to me when my chats with Jerusalem friends were interrupted because a siren went off, and they needed to get to shelter, just in case. These considerations did not come to me even when a city bus exploded in Tel Aviv, a city that I've bussed around in numerous times. These considerations didn't come to me when the terror suspect for the bus bomb was apprehended in Ramat Gan, where Bar-Ilan University is, where I want to hone my writing skills, and obtain my Master's degree. These considerations didn't come to me because I've been sitting here fuming over the fact that I'm not there right now.
Sounds crazy, right? I want to be in the middle of a war zone. But I can't help it. I love Israel and feel that Jerusalem is my home. If your home was under attack, wouldn't you want to get back home right away? Wouldn't you want to see the people you care about with your own eyes, and have the comfort of having them at your side? Wouldn't you rather huddle into a bomb shelter with them and get through it together, rather than feeling that you live across the universe now, passing your days by putting truffles into boxes and counting down the minutes of your unbelievably long shifts until you can run to a computer and get the latest news on what's happening at home? Call me crazy (it's probably partly true, anyway), but I want to be there. I wouldn't abandon something that means so much to me, something that I love when things are at their worst. I'd stand by it, and what's more, I truly believe that I could live like an Israeli, cautious and concerned, but still able to sip coffee in a cafe after the sirens stop and we get out of the shelters, still going to the shuk to shop for Shabbat dinner, still heading to the Kotel to pray for a ceasefire, and hopefully, a long lasting peace for all of us, Israeli, Arab, immigrant, sabra, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever. I think I could live my life, even without the reassurance that most of us have in the States, that we're mostly safe from rockets, from bombs, from terrorism, from suicide attacks, from hatred, and a blindness that has turned conflict into a propaganda-ridden political issue, with such misinformed blowhards screaming ridiculous solutions to a problem that they don't understand, one would think that exploding from frustration is just as likely as dying in an explosion on a bus or from a rocket. Sure, anything could happen anywhere. But there's a difference between calling Israel your home and calling the United States your home; one is constantly under threat, the other is peripherally under threat. And while the U.S. will always be my home, it will be my home from my childhood, so to speak. Israel is the home you find when you grow up and have to leave the nest.
So what does one do in times like these? Certainly, Hamas will not succeed in changing my life by scaring me off with rockets and saber rattling. The ceasefire has quieted things down, which means of course, that things are back to the status quo: Israel ceases, and Hamas still fires, although they've gone back to their usual, sporadic rocket fire, and not their constant barrage of rocket fire. I suppose I'll just start my new job tomorrow, earn my paycheck and put it away for my life in Israel, which is rapidly coming upon me. It's what an Israeli would do. What else can you do with your life except live it?
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About the Person Manipulating the Mouse and Keyboard
- Ma'ayan Dyer
- Jerusalem, Israel
- I write about being Jewish, but not being born Jewish, living in the Jewish homeland, longing for living in the Jewish homeland when I'm not living there, Jewish holidays, customs, ideas, thoughts, and the occasional thing that has nothing to do with anything Jewish. But mostly, this blog is very Jewish.