Ten Days in Israel

Vivacity, Urgency, Hope

In Israel, I collapsed into bed nightly, attempting to order thoughts in vain, knowing that come sundown the following evening, I would feel completely different. There have been rare times in my life when change in myself was happening so quickly I could feel it, and each one of those has proven special. It’s as if Israel swept me up in a vivid, spiraling tornado, floating alongside accumulated debris that I have barely the power to order, only notice:

Spinning along side me I see rubble lifted from the Old City, freed from the beautiful, illuminated structures that welcomed me into the country. I gazed over Jerusalem that first night, broke bread, hugged my friends, and knew I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I remember that sun-setting view, I smiled as the wind brushed my cheek as if Jerusalem was reaching out toward me. Was it asking something of me, in the silence of Shabbat, before I dove into its uniquely human layers of complexity? I didn’t leave with any answers, only attachments.

In this tornado, the ancient stone floating next to me is freed from its architecture, freed from its contention, its symbolism, its historic relevance. Swirling here I might be tempted to say it’s just a rock. “What now?” I ask myself. What if, when the storm calms, the rock is never recovered? What if the empires, centuries, doctrines, and devoted people never again locate it? Should I save it? But this is not Jerusalem’s first storm. The human spirit that bestowed responsibility and a multiplicity of significance upon this imperfectly perfect relic, will never be so easily silenced. From my confused position in this whirlwind, of that I’m sure.

Next to the rock I see a green sweater, V-neck, feminine, and I instantly recognize it. It must have been picked up from Ramallah, a few miles outside of Jerusalem, where it belonged to a passionate 21-year-old Palestinian who took the time to eat dinner with me. She spoke with the honesty that accompanies anger. Her articulate voice weaved in and out of attack and slight self-reflection, happy jokes and deep wounds. I cried as I tucked myself into bed that night; I left Ramallah with a friend. Like I felt in Jerusalem, in her I felt an intense spirit. Jerusalem seemed to grasp onto itself so tightly that it couldn’t look outward. She seemed to want anything but to be grasped, held back, and was only starting to be able to look inward.

When Ari Shavit spoke to us before our wheels touched down in Israel, he discussed Israeli’s incredible vivacity as a symptom of existing in a nation whose own future existence is in question—a frightening and enlightening reality. This spirit was the music of our trek, alive and palpable as I danced through dimly lit Jerusalem markets on Purim, danced traditional steps with an entire community in the Arab-Israeli village of Arraba, danced in a cab in Tel Aviv, for a driver who continued to blast his favorite American tunes for us even after we exited the vehicle.

As an American, listening to Ari Shavit speak about his promised land from the distance of a Harvard University room, I tried my best to imagine this spirit, tried my best to imagine what it would be like to regularly believe that my home could slip away before my eyes. From Harvard, I failed to even plausibly imagine a practical manner in which this would happen — a reality of which I feel immensely fortunate, but a mentality of which I had to attempt to bury in order to approach the multiplicity of narratives Israel introduced me to. In my spiraling Israel storm, pieces of the holy land’s infrastructure and art twirl around a background of sandy yellows and bright greens. Yellow like the desert gazed over from the heights of Masada, stomped on near the waters of the Dead Sea, The Sea of Galilee, and the Mediterranean. Greens like the rolling hills of the Golan Heights, a view I sat and overlooked on a sunny morning. Israel, fence, Syria. The miles of serene land between me and the white-capped mountains outlining the distance were dotted with floating and dipping birds of species I’ve never met. This serenity was only interrupted by the thuds of Israel Defense Forces’ drilled blasts that played in the background of a young IDF battalion commander’s speech. It was difficult, sitting there in the sun listening to him calmly and steadily speak, to imagine the scene that played out on this same stage less than a day before, when four IDF soldiers were wounded (one fatally) by a detonated explosive. It must have been a long night for the tired battalion commander speaking to us. For him, Israel’s existential fight is clearly urgent. For me, this urgency I repeatedly ran into in Israel, was the most shocking and unimaginable aspect of the spirit Shavit discussed while at Harvard.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is urgent for my green-sweatered friend in Ramallah whose house had been destroyed twice. Ambassador Dore Gold and Col. (res) Dr. Eran Lerman spoke to us about security at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. One map after another filled the screen in front of us as our speakers turned geographic boundaries into calculated threats, like the range of rockets, or the time needed to mobilize troops from A to B. For them, Israel’s fight is urgent. The man who spoke to us at Yasser Arafat’s grave emphasized the grave’s temporary location, to be moved to Jerusalem when (not if) Palestine reclaims the city. The conflict, for him, is urgent. For our six Israeli trek leaders whose childhood’s bare the mark of witnessing bombs explode, Israel, their home, is urgent. How could our trek group not feel the urgency of the Israel-Palestine conflict as we listened to Nabil Sha’ath, a senior Palestinian official and chief negotiator, speak to us at the same time that Palestinian authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas was in Washington D.C. meeting with President Obama? For the Israeli representative of the West Bank settlement Eli, who with slight irritation discussed the possibility of having to leave his home come a two state solution, the conflict is urgent. It is urgent for Ali Jarbawi, Minister of Planning and Administrative development of the Palestinian National Authority, who expressed his reality by describing his future headstone to read: “Born, Lived, and Died Under Occupation.” Jodi Rudoren, the New York Times Israel bureau chief, explained the speed and frequency of which Israeli’s consume news articles. For these citizens, including our impressive tour guide Jeremy who taught us about the region’s biblical and political history and showed us around modern Israel without ever lacking answer to a question, Israel is urgent.

My whirlwind constantly consumed more information in Israel; the conflicts, the stories, the emotions, the landscape, placed me in the middle of a huge, possibly daunting storm, but my optimistic nature cannot help but search for hope. I don’t see the tornado I daily became more embedded in as the precursor to a colossal catastrophe but a powerful opportunity for good. It was Jeremy who painted a picture of a Jerusalem where different religions and ethnicities lived in peace and equality, posing the thought: “If it could happen here, amidst all opinions and beliefs, imagine what kind of model this could serve for the world.” So, our trek, with countless opinions and narratives, was not without hope. We stayed two nights at a kibbutz guesthouse in the Tiberias Area, an interesting society that seemed to emerge outside of and in contrast to Jerusalem. Instead of living in close proximity to strangers representing strong differing beliefs, the kibbutz seemed to be a close-knit community, lessening the significance of differing opinions in the name of collective good. While I found this uplifting and while my stay was admittedly brief, I could not help but feel vaguely confined and somehow faintly removed from the exciting diversity that our speakers represented.

Then, we arrived in Tel Aviv. Differences here were not brushed past, they were not subdued, they were loud, they were celebrated. And out of this celebration, this lack of attempt at singular definition, the city boomed with creativity and freedom. Speakers at Campus Tel Aviv Google discussed the high number of startups emerging from the city and some spoke of creative attempts to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Jewish-Israeli, Arab-Israeli economic disparity. But relaxing, finally, on the beautiful beach and amidst the high-rise structures, swept up in the creativity and individuality of Tel Aviv, it seemed a bit easier to feel removed from Israel’s existential urgency. In opposition to Jerusalem, historic claims, religious foundations, ancient structures, Tel Aviv seemed to look forward, future, start-ups, and skyscrapers. I felt lighter here; I felt hopeful…but I felt divided, like I was choosing the future at the expense of the past. Every narrative I heard, from religious to political to personal wove together to create for me an unforgettable experience and a colorful image of a beautiful place. It would be impossible for me to choose a future Israel that ignored my experience of Jerusalem, Arraba, Ramallah, or Tel Aviv. In my mind they spin and blur together seamlessly, I loved them all — and my endless maybe naïve optimism hopes that others could see Israel this way as well.

So there it is, the colorful, complicated, Israel as it appeared to me, in the short ten days I was lucky enough to spend there. I realize I pose no resolution, no conclusion, no end to the story. Back at Harvard I’m still grasped by the information storm, resiliently spinning just as quickly, and I’m unsure what to do about it. The last ten days were intense, exhausting, but highly engaging and inspiring; schoolwork seems immeasurably unimportant in contrast. At this point, I don’t think I could disengage with Israel if I wanted to –and I know that I don’t want to. Ending the story would mean separating myself from an urgent, vivid, and immensely hopeful reality.