Sunrise over Eilat

So my trip is over. I’ve traveled from the land of milk and honey back to the land of Mac Donalds and Wal Mart, and I’m still not sure how I feel about.

I’m not sure if I can sum anything up for you internet readers, given that I can’t even sum things up for myself. But I thought you deserved one last post.

I don’t know where this hot idealist’s path may lie. Perhaps I stay in the good ole US of A and work on setting up that life I am supposed to get when I graduate college. Maybe I leave the country again, and you’ll hear more stories of suffering and change and hope from all the pieces of the world I’m determined to save.

However the future tumbles, this journey has been the best thing that could have happened to me. A bold statement, one I cannot prove, but one I believe nonetheless. Thank you, thank you for sharing it with me.

And as I told all my friends in Israel, this isn’t the end.

See you later.

I halfheartedly watch sappy movies I would never touch under normal circumstances (Dear John and Valentine’s Day and other monstrosities of sentimentality … it was a long flight) so that maybe my row-mates will think I cried only for the pure blubber on the screen.

I feel a hollow ache in my chest every time I realize that I am on my way back to America. I fear this vacancy means I have left my heart in Israel, alongside my hair. Which, for those of you who know me well (and those of you getting an inkling from this here all-too-public blog), means I truly deserve the superlative my fellow Tikkun Olam-ers elected for me: most changed.

What a trip.

Trying to console me about my imminent departure and the pain in the butt that is packing up after five months of residence, an Israeli friend of mine hypothesized that packing would allow me to reflect on my time here.

It did not.

Packing is not nearly so much fun and reflective as unpacking. Unpacking is full of hope and possibility and nervous energy. Packing is full of weight limits and the possibility of sticky substances exploding all over your clothes.

I cannot believe that my entire life here fits into a couple of duffles. It’s utterly surreal that I’m double checking flight times and charging up my American cell phone and throwing away the riff raff that’s accumulated on the walls and bedside table. The room looks empty.

Did I really live here? In this smaller than twin size bed, laughing with Becky as the room got flooded when it rained and became a sauna when the sun beat down? Did I really do all those things I’ve written about (and all those things that I didn’t)?

This is a melancholy goodbye. Having put in the work, started at the bottom and hiked my way up to the top, I loath to leave the outlook with the incredible view. Look how much progress I’ve made! Why would I want to surrender the high ground?

Flying home feels a bit like skating down the mountain. I’m leaving behind the hard questions I’ve wrestled with, the people I’ve loved and those landmarks I now recognize. I won’t get to watch my Mesila babies grow up or the Peace Players teams join a real basketball league. And like hiking, the way down can often be harder on the knees than the way up. Leaving this place–Israel and this place in my life–will be one of the hardest things I’ve done since arriving.

Let’s face it. I am a lazy bugger. I’d love to see the view from my next mountaintop, or even know where that mountain happens to be located (Dad, I know you’re loving my overuse of this hiking analogy). But its hard to make another upward hike look worthwhile from way up here. Especially since it’s probably scattered with rocks and cliffs and such (too far? One can never take a silly analogy too far!).

I said I wanted a teleport. Dayna said she wanted a ski lift.

A towering concrete wall slices through a city.

The security fence forces a border into the heart of this country, and before I left I was determined to see what was on the other side.

A barricaded road in Hebron

I started my two day tour of the west bank quite auspiciously: with two hours of sleep under my belt, playing pillow to a religious Jewish woman on the sherute to Jerusalem. There is a curious sort of intimacy engendered by the large shared taxi, a perfect alternate world where strangers usher each other to the land of communal dreams for a spell. And an alternate world is what I seemed to have stepped into for my time in the west bank–I am a veritable modern-day Alice down the rabbit hole. The facts of the matter actively twist and squirm, illusive and uncatchable.

For the first time in my life, and within the borders of Israel, I am asked to actively hide the fact that I am Jewish.

Reclaiming Street Names in Silwan

Building in a historic city is difficult in any country. Building in Jerusalem is another story entirely. And building a legal addition to your Jerusalem home if you are Palestinian is nigh well impossible. Walking through Silwan, a neighborhood directly adjacent to the old city, the social tensions created by unequally enforced legislation are visible everywhere. One family has had their home destroyed twice after they built additions to house new members. Before a home demolition, the army traditionally gives fifteen minutes warning. If the family in question is lucky, they will get half an hour notice before the bulldozers arrive in their front yard.

A Silwan resident called after us in English, swearing and demanding to know where the promised peace was. But, as my parent’s tour guide was found of saying, “This is the promised land. Everybody makes promises and nobody keeps them.” In the Al-Bustan neighborhood, 88 homes have been scheduled for demolition to make way for a park to be attached to the City of David archeological tourist site. The residents have refused the proffered resettlement package. Israeli and Palestinian children play together in the better quality Jewish playgrounds of Silwan, but the Palestinian children can be hauled off by the border police at any time–even if the only provocation is using a football court desired by a more legal citizen.

A religious tourist bus with all its windows broken

The Palestinian children act out by throwing rocks. But then innocent and guilty children alike get accused of such activity and are put under house arrest until their day in court. Parents must take on the constant care of a hemmed-in child in addition to the exorbitant lawyer fees to fight charges that can be leveled at any time with very little evidence. 50% of Palestinian males over the age of 18 have been arrested, detained or imprisoned. I have rarely seen such incredible sadness as that in the eyes of a teenage boy smoking a cigarette inside his parent’s illegal falafel shop as he tried to chat as if his small world wasn’t eroding away from the inside.

Instilling Silwan Pride

But these “facts” are all from the mouth of the Palestinian who runs the unofficial community center of Silwan, where he passes out Free Palestine literature and Silwan pride flags. He will not send his children to school because he fears that if he does, his east Jerusalem resident permit will be revoked. He claims that he wants only his civil rights, for Israel to look Palestine in the face and not flinch at the demographic question its existence poses for the state.

Charicature expressing how nobody looks Palestine in the face

Nothing in (or about) the west bank is without its bias, and my head is quickly overwhelmed trying to apply the correct torque against each speaker’s spin.

We spent the night in Shakeshura, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Our guide told us that most natives spend all of their time on either the east or west side of the city; even the roads are designed to be more passable north-south than east-west. It’s amazing that there is such blindness where there should be such obvious understanding. Within a block of crossing into east Jerusalem, the poverty of the area visibly increases.

East Jerusalem has been alternately ruled by Jordan and Israel, so here land ownership is even more complicated than in the rest of a country where a 99 year lease is the traditional mode of sale. Settlers challenged the Palestinian ownership of Shakeshura, claiming it was included in an earlier unspecific grant of land near Jerusalem to a Jewish conglomerate. The courts could not clarify the historical ownership of the land, so told all parties to leave the property. Settlers then moved into the houses and squatted, alternating every year so no further court cases could be brought against them.

Whether this version of the story holds a fraction of truth is frankly irrelevant when I listen to a burly, bear of a father type calmly tell us of watching a police officer evict his family, take the house key, kiss it, and hand it to a settler. Now, in a small sort of rebellion, he holds court across the street form his occupied house on a frayed couch and watches a settler family live in his home. My heart breaks when he talks about his visions for peace within a single state.

Slowly, and all at once, people appear in the street for a protest poetry slam. They peer through the slats of the fence the settlers have erected around the house and take turns at the blowhorn to shout anthems of hurt and healing and peace into the night.

A protester photographing the graffiti on a Settler's house in Shakeshura

I sleep deeply upon borrowed cushions in the protest tent covered in slogans and graffiti. I sleep through the shouts of “Free Palestine” and the loud music that pierces the night as the protestors needle the settlers from afar. I sleep through the election of guards to watch over the tent. I find out later that the last group who stayed the night in the tent had vomit poured on their heads by settlers while they slept. I wake up briefly as the Muslim call to morning prayer wafts over these contested hills.

Pro-Palestinian graffiti on the window ledge of the settler's house

The Ma’an News Network serves both the West Bank and Gaza, but is based in Bethlehem. The editor in chief of the network believes that the majority of Palestinians are angry and frustrated, but not violent. He believes that “The wall has made us deaf. They can’t hear our pain and we can’t hear their pain.” In fact, he cannot understand what the wall means; geographically it divides a single state, demographically it does not separate Jews from Palestinians, and religiously it walls in the fanatics so they cannot escape brushing elbows. He wonders why soldiers must aggravate the issue by overt presence in the territories–”What are you doing here with your gun?”

The head of the Ma’an radio station left the west bank during a war, so lost his family’s land. When he returned, he lived in a refugee camp. To escape the camp, he sold all of his wife’s dowery to buy a parcel of land in Bethlehem. Now his land has been confiscated to build the wall. He will receive no compensation from the state. He believes that Israel values security above all else, which translates to a lack of basic human rights for Palestinians. The west bank is under military rule, which translates to soldiers, cameras, barbed wire, and no appeals. He fears that his land will eventually be given to settlers rather than used solely to build the wall. I wonder how he can hope in this environment. He leans calmly against the wall of his office and explains that he can’t feel the hurt every day. He’s watched all the money of his life confiscated and now lives in the refugee camp once more–”What can you do?” My heart breaks again when he smiles. He doesn’t hope for a war, but his clear eyes see one coming. He translates an arabic saying for us: “The cat in a small corner will scratch you.”

While I always thought Israel had no business making a ghetto out of Gaza and the West Bank so soon after the Holocaust, I can also see the other side. One year after the “security fence” was erected, terrorist bombings in Israel ceased completely. The wall has been built along what will likely become the Palestinian border, so will serve as a security measure between the countries in the future. Hurt people lash out, and the wall prevents that pain from exponentially increasing through perpetual retaliation. If the left feels terrorized, they move politically rightward, which narrows the opportunity for peace, so preventing terror logically furthers the peace process. I’ve been told that the west bank is actually economically developing quite well for its circumstances.

The fact is that the wall sucks, and that the wall works.

The covered market in the old city of Hebron

Walking through the market in the mixed city of Hebron is at once bizarrely reminiscent of Jaffa’s own market, and completely alien. One moment I am accosted by children selling juice for one shekel, and the next I am passing alley upon alley of forcibly closed shops overlooked by military outposts and roads ending in concrete and barbed wire.

A settlement directly above the market

Our guide draws our attention to the nets strung above our heads. They are filled with garbage, which the settlers throw down upon the shoppers in the market.

An army outpost above the streets of Hebron

I have never felt so oppressively watched. Twice soldiers stop us to question our activity. Our guides whip out tired yet angry responses of inquiring after a written order that would remove us from the area. We get accused of photographing military bases and my notepad is mentioned … in my opinion a notepad is only threatening to those petrified of paper cuts or witnesses. I wanted to laugh, or maybe cry.

One of the many cameras overlooking the city

121 cameras watch the old city. There are 101 checkpoints and road blocks in 1 square kilometer. 512 shops have been forcibly closed and many more have closed for lack of customers.

I could never have imagined this uncomfortable, hair raising feel of wrongdoing (when all I was doing was walking around) from the carefree city limits of Tel Aviv. One of my friends calls Hebron an open air prison under her breath. I wonder how many Israelis know what it feels like to live the life of these settlers and Palestinians. I wonder how these people continue to get up every day with a smile and face the sneaking oppression of the guarded streets.

On the other hand, the area we walked through was the worst of Hebron. It is a buffer belt between the Israeli and Palestinian controlled areas, where Palestine has civil control, but Israel has military control. Boundaries of power are slippery and all are on high alert for violent outbreaks from both sides. 18 year-old boys in combat units are nervous and scared, trying desperately to keep things under control. One soldier we talk to describes the hardship of being away from home for such long stretches. He gets flack from both sides of the city as well as his commander. He says that the Palestinians cause more trouble because the Jews have no reason to.

A member of the Christian Peacemaking Team in Hebron tells us of the settler’s tours of the old city, where they ostentatiously look for proof of land ownership, but really (according to her) throw rocks, spit on locals and generally stir up trouble. She recounts the latest episode of violence her team could not prevent (through simple observation-a person watched is a person with more to lose by violent acts): an 11 year-old boy spit back at the settlers after they spit on a shopkeeper he considered his mother; later that night he was taken to a closed room by five soldiers and their commander and beaten up. The CPT member says sadly, “This is not a normal world.” She tells of losing her Palestinian ID when she married a European and moved to his country. She calls it legal ethnic cleansing.

The settler’s bus back to Jerusalem is filled with Jews and soldiers. The windows are made of bulletproof glass, and fog the view until all that can be seen are smudges of gray. As I stare at the inscrutable, impressionistic landscape, our guide falls asleep on my shoulder. I have come full circle.

Settler's children playing in the streets of Hebron

It took me nearly a week to be able to write about my experience in the West Bank. The more I talked about it, the less it seemed to make sense. I couldn’t, and still can’t, wrap my head around all sides of the issue. I can’t even give you a glimpse of the truth of the area, because I can’t separate the truth from the fiction. My madrich, Dan, explained that there is a myth of modern philosophy where if you study enough, see enough, and think enough you will be able to understand a thing entirely. There is no truth or understanding or academic explaining of the territories. There are only the people. And the people on both sides are hurting.

The history of the place has a death grip about its present. But the present is the stuff of nightmares, and people can only take so much. Time is running out. Those speaking the language of coexistence and basic human rights may give up if they can’t connect across the divide. Winston Churchill once said that “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Accountability, like power, must derive from the citizens to compensate in a flawed democracy. And in Israel, the citizens have become a sluggishly blind watchdog indeed. I have no insight to offer into the issue and the life of West Bank except this:

I may be running in circles, but at least my eyes are open. Be the witness, and you can become the understanding. Bridge the wall. This is my small truth.

I am a Jew. I am a Christian. I also think I might be Atheist. I like tradition. More and more I hate religion and what it does to people who follow it too fondly.

I am a film nut, a baking fiend, and a writer. Sometimes I consider myself an artist, a teacher, a mentor and a friend. I wonder how this turns into an identity that somehow manages to hem me in. I wonder this a lot.

I have no direction in life and that is petrifying. A nicer way to say this is that I have all the choices in the world. This is still petrifying.

Logic and Reason tell me that I can’t be all things and see myself on both sides of the equation. This causes my right and left brain to have a shouting match inside my skull, which makes my skull a very crowded place to be, especially when I am trying to fall asleep.

I am trying to figure out what I’ve become since I’ve been here to write a neat wrap up post to finish this blog. But I cannot seem to get a good angle on myself. My experience is nearly over and my questions have only begun to surface, let alone morph into answers.

During our wrap up meeting, one participant said that Tikkun Olam makes confused assholes (Israeli pushiness just seeping in around the seams). I wonder if this is as much true about what I am as my moralizing, hopeful, epiphany posts.

I am me. And herein lies my contradiction, my confusion, my challenge.

one burger: not kosher, with a large amount of fries and onion rings

one barbeque chicken pizza: they don’t seem to understand the concept of barbeque sauce here, and prefer to put tuna or corn on pizza

several orders of Thai food: peanut tofu curry, pad thai, those crunchy rolls with yummy stuff in them with peanut sauce for dipping

one order of spring rolls from that Pho restaurant with that godly peanut hoisan sauce

one taco salad

one night of too much chinese food: we’re talking cashew chicken, boneless spare ribs and hot and sour soup

one steak that melts in my mouth like butter

Garden Salsa Sunchips, Lays Barbeque Chips, Cap Cod Potato Chips and Cheetos

Lots and Lots of fresh bagels with temptee cream cheese (and one fresh bagel egg sandwich with parmesan bagel, fried egg, cheese and tomato)

And let’s not forget dessert …

One Shaws-type chocolate cake with vanilla frosting–the kind that’s so sugary it hurts your teeth

One Gregg’s chocolate cake (or chocolate peanut butter cake, or both)

Too much American Candy: snickers, milky way, peanut butter m&ms, peanut butter cups, peppermint patties, chocolate covered oreos, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered nuts

Too much Brighams Ice Cream

Kettle Corn, Caramel Apples, Fried Dough and all the other summer fairground staples that clog your arteries and fill your heart

A Cinnabon

A chocolate glazed Dunkin Donut

An Auntie Anne’s cinnamon sugar pretzle

A Frosty (the original kind, not the vanilla kind or the mix-ins kind)

A DQ blizzard (toppings to be decided on the spur of the moment)

American Style chocolate chip cookies and brownies (which I can buy instead of painstakingly making myself)

Hot chocolate, frozen chai, and a strawberry smoothy made with ice cream

To all those awaiting my return, consider this my registry. See you (and eat with you) sooner than I care to comprehend …

It’s a weird sort of feeling, watching the end of things slowly slide closer, like a tubular slug of doom. Okay, that’s a bit overdramatic, but when I do get on that plane at the end of the month (and I will get on that plane or my family will personally fly out here to murder me in the most inventive way possible), something wonderful will officially, inescapably, be over.

And there’s a not much fanfare about that. Today I got a couple passing hugs from the teachers of Neve Ofer, a genuine but distracted hug from a thirteen-year-old girl who had decided that we were friends a couple weeks back, and a disinterested hug from her friend,who felt obligated. And then Julia and I left, fifteen minutes after we’d arrived and still sweaty from our walk over. No muss, no fuss, no exchanged phone numbers or promises waiting to be unkept. Just a wave of the hand and back to working on whatever it is that teachers work on when their students study only leisure.

I wonder what sort of sense of completion I’ll feel if my goodbyes continue to be as routine as this one.  So I didn’t change anybody’s life in the way that leads to traumatic, tearful partings … but isn’t that, after all, the point of my time here? To make a small difference, one that will hibernate in these kids until that day where they decide not to propagate the bigotry of their parents? I won’t be around to measure the greater success of my Mesila children because I played with them, or the willingness of my class to try new things because I taught them basketball. But I suppose the possibility that these changes will happen, and be witnessed by others as proof that change is possible–just that slim possibility that despite my lack of a green thumb I’ve managed to plant some useful seeds–will have to be enough.

My second visit to the Western Wall, on our first official day of reflection over the program, feels oddly repetitive.Once more, I don’t really feel the reverence, at least, certainly not the way the two religious teenagers I’m sandwiched between do (how do I know, you ask? They loudly bawled into the travel sized torah’s they held open, cupped against their faces. Like they could absorb the word of Hashem through osmosis. Like they were proclaiming to the world through tear leakage just how Holy with a capital H life is at the moment). I am too rational, too cynical, too unemotional, too atheist, too, too, too … well, too me to feel the moment the way everyone around me seems able to. Annete tells me on her way to the wall, “I need to have a chat with her.” And chat with her is just what she does. How comforting that must be, to talk into a really old block of stone and feel that someone–something even, is listening with a patient, caring ear against a drinking glass on the other side like some child at his parents’ door. See? There I go again, trivializing the spiritual.

But then, how can one not laugh when, even as the teenagers cry and the old women rock rhythmically (heel toe, heel toe), two male janitors invade the women’s small region and begin to sweep up the notes overflowing from the foot of the wall? And then they put them in a plastic trash bag attached to those yellow cleaning carts you see in elementary schools. And then they start talking about what they’re going to have for dinner: schnitzel or falafel.

I almost break and let out a chuckle when I get bowled over by a devoute, walking backwards up the ramp so as to never loose sight of the wall. And then I have to immediately dodge another. Geeze, these relig need some rearview mirror baseball caps or something.

So I find now, three or four some odd months later, that my original note stuffed into the cracks of the wall still holds. I still need to find the meaning hiding behind the absurdity. Then maybe I won’t get so many dirty looks from those who pray. If there really is a god, I might be royally screwed when the weighing time comes if the dirty looks of the praying are counted against the chuckles of the prayed for.